2 Peter

3 This, dear friends, is the second letter I am writing you, in which letters I am rousing your candid minds with reminders 2 to remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the injunction of your Lord and Savior’s apostles— 3 knowing this in the first place, that in the last days mockers will come with mockeries, going by their own desires 4* and saying “Where is the promise of his advent? for since the fathers went to their rest everything has remained as it was since the beginning of creation.” 5 For this they willfully ignore, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth, by the word of God compacted out of water and by water, 6 whereby the world of that time met its bane by being flooded with water, 7* but the present heavens and earth are by the same word stored with fire and kept for a day of judgment and the bane of impious men.

8 But do not you ignore this, dear friends, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. 9 The Lord is not lagging back from his promise, as some take it for a lagging, but is having patience with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should go to repenting. 10* But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, the day on which the heavens will whiz away and the heavenly bodies will be parched and disintegrated, and earth and the works in it will be fuel for fire. 11 When all these things are thus to disintegrate, what men ought you to be in holy lives and pious acts, 12 expecting and speeding the advent of the Day of God, at which the heavens will disintegrate in fire, and the heavenly bodies parch and melt; 13 but in accordance with his promise we expect new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness resides.

14 Wherefore, dear friends, having these expectations, do your best to have him find you spotless and unblamable in peace, 15* and deem our Lord’s patience your salvation, just as our dear brother Paul too wrote to you in accordance with the wisdom given to him, 16 the same as he does in all his letters, speaking in them of these things. In which letters there are some things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsteady twist, the same as they do the rest of the scriptures, to their own bane.

17 So for your part, dear friends, being forewarned, keep on your guard against being carried along with the wanderings of the conscienceless and falling away from your own steadiness, 18 but grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and to eternity’s day.