II Peter

New Testament · 3 chapters · 61 verses.

Chapter 1

1:1Simeon Peter, a slave and an apostle of Jesus the Anointed One, to those who have obtained an equally precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus the Anointed One:
1:2Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
1:3His divine power has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who called us through glory and excellence,
1:4through which He has given us exceedingly great and precious promises, so that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
1:5And for this very reason, making every effort, add to your faith excellence, and to excellence knowledge,
1:6and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control endurance, and to endurance godliness,
1:7and to godliness brotherly affection, and to brotherly affection love.
1:8For if these things are in you and abound, they make you neither idle nor unfruitful in the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus the Anointed One.
1:9For the one who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted, having forgotten the cleansing of his former sins.
1:10Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and God’s choice sure, for if you do these things, you will never stumble.
1:11For in this way entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Anointed One will be richly supplied to you.
1:12Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, though you know them and have been established in the present truth.
1:13And I think it right, so long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you,
1:14knowing that the laying aside of my tent is soon, even as our Lord Jesus the Anointed One also showed me.
1:15And I will also be diligent to ensure that after my departure you may always call these things to mind.
1:16For we did not follow skillfully devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus the Anointed One, but became eyewitnesses of His majesty.
1:17For He received honor and glory from God the Father when such a voice was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory: “This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I delight.”
1:18And we heard this voice borne out of Heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
1:19And we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to give heed as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,
1:20knowing this first: no prophecy of the Writing comes from one’s own interpretation,
1:21for prophecy never came by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Chapter 2

2:1But false prophets also arose among the people, as false teachers will also be among you, who will secretly bring in destructive factions, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.
2:2And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of the truth will be spoken of as evil.
2:3And in greed they will exploit you with fabricated words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber.
2:4For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the deepest pit and delivered them into chains of deepest gloom, to be kept for judgment,
2:5and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, one of eight, a proclaimer of righteousness, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly,
2:6and reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, condemning them to destruction and making them an example to those who would live ungodly lives,
2:7and rescued righteous Lot, worn down by the licentious conduct of the lawless—
2:8for that righteous man, dwelling among them and seeing and hearing their lawless deeds day after day, tormented his righteous soul—
2:9then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment,
2:10and especially those who follow after the flesh in defiling lust and despise authority. Daring and self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of glorious ones,
2:11whereas angels, though greater in strength and power, do not bring a slanderous judgment against them before the Lord.
2:12But these, like unreasoning natural beasts born to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of things they do not understand, and in their destruction they too will be destroyed,
2:13receiving the wages of unrighteousness. They count revelry in the daytime a pleasure. They are spots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while feasting with you,
2:14having eyes full of adultery and unable to cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having hearts trained in greed—children of a curse.
2:15Forsaking the right way, they went astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness,
2:16but received a rebuke for his own lawlessness: a speechless donkey, speaking with a man’s voice, restrained the madness of the prophet.
2:17These are springs without water and clouds driven by a storm, for whom the deepest gloom of darkness has been kept through the age.
2:18For speaking boastful words of emptiness, they entice through fleshly desires and licentiousness those who had truly escaped from people living in error.
2:19They promise them liberty while they themselves are slaves of corruption, for by whatever anyone is overcome, by this he is also enslaved.
2:20For if, having escaped the defilements of the world through the full knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus the Anointed One, they are again entangled in these things and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.
2:21For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.
2:22What the true proverb says has happened to them: “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallow in mire.”

Chapter 3

3:1Beloved, this is now the second letter I write to you. In both I stir up your sincere mind by way of reminder,
3:2that you may remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment from us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior,
3:3knowing this first: scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own desires
3:4and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things remain as they were from the beginning of creation.”
3:5For they deliberately overlook this: the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God,
3:6through which the world that then existed was flooded by water and destroyed.
3:7But by the same word, the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
3:8But do not let this one thing be hidden from you, beloved: with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
3:9The Lord is not slow concerning the promise, as some count slowness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
3:10But the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a rushing noise, the elements will be dissolved with burning heat, and the earth and the works in it will not be found.
3:11Since all these things are being dissolved, what kind of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,
3:12waiting for and hastening the coming of the Day of God, because of which the heavens, being on fire, will be dissolved, and the elements will melt with burning heat?
3:13But according to His promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
3:14Therefore, beloved, while waiting for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless.
3:15And count the long-suffering of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, also wrote to you,
3:16as also in all his letters, speaking in them concerning these things. In them are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable twist, as they do also the other Writings, to their own destruction.
3:17You therefore, beloved, knowing these things beforehand, guard yourselves, lest you be carried away with the error of the lawless and fall from your own steadfastness.
3:18But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Anointed One. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. So be it.