2 Peter, chapter 1
1:
Simeon Peter, a servant and
apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal
standing with ours in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus
Christ:
2: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of
God and of Jesus our Lord.
3: His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to
life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to his
own glory and excellence,
4: by which He has granted to us his precious and very great
promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is
in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine
nature.
5: For this very reason make every effort to supplement your
faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge,
6: and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with
steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness,
7: and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly
affection with love.
8: For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from
being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
9: For whoever lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and
has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
10: Therefore, brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call
and election, for if you do this you will never fall;
11: so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the
eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
12: Therefore I intend always to remind you of these things,
though you know them and are established in the truth that you have.
13: I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to arouse you
by way of reminder,
14: since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as
our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.
15: And I will see to it that after my departure you may be able
at any time to recall these things.
16: For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made
known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were
eyewitnesses of his majesty.
17: For when He received honor and glory from God the Father and
the voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, "This is my
beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,"
18: we heard this voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him
on the holy mountain.
19: And we have the prophetic word made more sure. You will do
well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place,
until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
20: First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of
scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation,
21: because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men
moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
2 Peter, chapter
2
1: But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there
will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive
heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon
themselves swift destruction.
2: And many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them
the way of truth will be reviled.
3: And in their greed they will exploit you with false words;
from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction
has not been asleep.
4: For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast
them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept
until the judgment;
5: if He did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a
herald of righteousness, with seven other persons, when He brought a
flood upon the world of the ungodly;
6: if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomor'rah to ashes He
condemned them to extinction and made them an example to those who were
to be ungodly;
7:
and if He rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the
licentiousness of the wicked
8: (for by what that righteous man saw and heard as he lived
among them, he was vexed in his righteous soul day after day with their
lawless deeds),
9: then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to
keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment,
10: and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling
passion and despise authority. Bold and willful, they are not afraid to
revile the glorious ones,
11: whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not
pronounce a reviling judgment upon them before the Lord.
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12:
But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be
caught and killed, reviling in matters of which they are ignorant, will
be destroyed in the same destruction with them,
13: suffering wrong for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure
to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their
dissipation, carousing with you.
14: They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They
entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed
children!
15: Forsaking the right way they have gone astray; they have
followed the way of Balaam, the son of Be'or, who loved gain from
wrongdoing,
16: but was rebuked for his own transgression; a dumb ass spoke
with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.
17: These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for
them the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved.
18: For, uttering loud boasts of folly, they entice with
licentious passions of the flesh men who have barely escaped from those
who live in error.
19: They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of
corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved.
20: For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world
through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are
again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse
for them than the first.
21: For it would have been better for them never to have known
the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the
holy commandment delivered to them.
22: It has happened to them according to the true proverb, The
dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in
the mire.
2 Peter, chapter
3
1: This is now the second letter that I have written to you,
beloved, and in both of them I have aroused your sincere mind by way of
reminder;
2: that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets
and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.
3: First of all you must understand this, that scoffers will come
in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions
4: and saying, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever
since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were
from the beginning of creation."
5: They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God
heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means
of water,
6: through which the world that then existed was deluged with
water and perished.
7: But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have
been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and
destruction of ungodly men.
8: But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord
one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
9: The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness,
but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but
that all should reach repentance.
10: But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the
heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be
dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will
be burned up.
11: Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of
persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,
12: waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God,
because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved, and the
elements will melt with fire!
13: But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a
new earth in which righteousness dwells.
14: Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to
be found by Him without spot or blemish, and at peace.
15: And count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. So also
our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given Him,
16: speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are
some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable
twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.
17: You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest
you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own
stability.
18: But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.
Amen.
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