2 Peter

¹ From: Simeon Peter, enslaved worker and emissary of Jesus Christ

To: Those who have received their share of faithfulness as valuable as ours by the justness of our God and our Liberator, Jesus Christ.

² May generosity and peace be increased with knowledge of God and Jesus Christ our Lord.

³ That happens since everything of God's divine power that promotes life and respectfulness has been given to us through knowledge about the one who called us to God's own praiseworthiness and virtue. ⁴ Because of those valuable and important things, God has given promises to us so that through these things you could become sharers in divine characteristics after escaping from the decay that is throughout the world system.

⁵ With that very thing in view, concurrently with what is given, commit to every effort in supporting your faithfulness with virtue, your virtue with knowledge, ⁶ your knowledge with composure, your composure with endurance, your endurance with respectfulness, ⁷ your respectfulness with familial caring, and your familial caring with love.

⁸ These things existing and multiplying among you cause your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ not to be ineffective or unproductive. ⁹ Yet, whomever is not at the ready for these things, they are blind, nearsighted, having forgotten the cleansing of their former deviations. ¹⁰ Because of this, Family, make even more effort to keep your calling and chosenness on track because you would certainly never stumble while doing these things. ¹¹ This is how entrance into the agelong Reign of our Lord and Liberator Jesus Christ will be supported for you.

¹² Because of this, I intend to keep reminding you about these things, even though you have seen and been established in the truth that is readily available. ¹³ I consider it appropriate to wake you up with a reminder for as long as I am in this tent ¹⁴ since I have seen that the removal of my tent is soon because that’s what our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. ¹⁵ I will also make an effort for you always to have a reminder to do these things after my departure.

¹⁶ We weren’t led out following cleverly devised stories when we made known to you the power and arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead, we were eyewitnesses of his importance ¹⁷ when he received honor and praise from Father God when a voice was carried down to him as this impressive praise: “This is my beloved son with whom I am delighted.” ¹⁸ We also heard this voice carried from the heavens since we were together with him on the sacred mountain.

¹⁹ We also have the reliable prophetic message, which you do well when you pay attention to it as if to a light shining in a murky place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts ²⁰ with the primary understanding that every prophecy of scripture does not come into being from someone’s own initiative. ²¹ You see, no prophecy was every prompted by a person’s own intention; rather, people spoke them from God when prompted by the Sacred Life-breath.

¹ But false prophets came to be among the people, just like false teachers will also be among you, who will sneak in destructive values and who reject the master who purchased them. Bringing on themselves quick destruction, ² many will also follow them away toward unrestrained indulgence, and because of them the true path will be slandered. ³ They will exploit you greedily by saying whatever they need to say. The sentence for them that was started long ago isn’t resting, and their destruction isn’t nodding off.

⁴ You see, if God did not preserve messengers who deviated but locked them up in chains in the darkness of Tartarus to keep them for assessment, ⁵ and if God did not preserve the original world system but protected Noah, who publicly conveyed the message of justice, and seven others when God brought a flood upon the disrespectful world system, ⁶ and if God sentenced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction, turning them to ashes, which has been laid out as a warning for those who are going to come with disrespectfulness, ⁷ and if God rescued Lot, who was just and was oppressed by those who were treacherous in their lifestyle of unrestrained indulgence ⁸ (while he lived among them day by day, that just person tormented his very being with the sight and sound of torah-less actions), ⁹ then the Lord knows to rescue people who live respectfully from trials, but to guard over the unjust for punishment on the day of assessment, ¹⁰ especially those who return to following their contaminated bodily impulses and disregarding authority.

Egocentric, overconfident people are not afraid to speak disrespectfully against those with impressive reputations, ¹¹ whereas messengers who have more strength and power do not bring a disrespectful assessment from the Lord against them. ¹² Nevertheless, these people—like instinct-driven, irrational animals that have been born for capture and death—since they speak disrespectfully about what they don’t understand, will also be destroyed by their own decay, ¹³ suffering injustice as repayment for injustice. Their injustices include thinking of amusement and luxury all day long, so they are spots and blemishes pampering themselves with their corruption while they feast alongside you. ¹⁴ They have eyes focused on infidelity and endless deviation, enticing insecure human beings, having worked hard developing a heart for greed, children with a declaration of hardship.

¹⁵ They wandered away, leaving the straight path behind and following along the path of Balaam son of Bosor who loved payment for injustice. ¹⁶ However, he had his own rebuke for bypassing torah: a speechless beast of burden that, when making sound with a human voice, blocked the prophet’s insanity.

¹⁷ These people are waterless springs and clouds driven by a violent storm for whom the underworldly darkness has been reserved. ¹⁸ As they make noise with delusional self-importance, they entice with unrestrained bodily desires those who are actually escaping from the ones who are making themselves at home where they’ve wandered. ¹⁹ While they promise them freedom, they are enslaved workers laying the foundation for destruction. You see, by whatever someone has been overcome, to this they have been enslaved. ²⁰ If, after escaping the contaminants of the world system by the knowledge of our Lord and Liberator Jesus Christ, they now again embrace them, then they are overcome by them; the end has become worse for them than how it started. ²¹ You see, it would have been better for them not to have known the path of justice than after knowing it to return from the sacred direction that was handed over to them. ²² The proverb has turned out to be true for them: “A feral dog returns to his own vomit,” and “A pig, after washing herself, returns to rolling in the mud.”

¹ Loved ones, this is now the second letter I am writing to you with which I am waking up your uncontaminated way of thinking with a reminder ² to remember the statements said previously by the prophets who were dedicated for sacred purposes and the direction from the emissaries of the Lord and Liberator. ³ I want you to understand this first: people who taunt and proceed based on their own desires will come during the last days with taunts ⁴ and say, “Where is his promised arrival? The ancestors fell asleep without it, and everything still stays the same way it has been from the beginning of creation.” ⁵ This causes those who wish it to forget that the heavens existed long ago and the land has been constructed out from the water and through the water by God’s conversation. ⁶ The world system at that time was also destroyed by it when it was flooded with water. ⁷ But now, the heavens and the land have been reserved by the same conversation and are being kept for fire on a day of assessment and destruction of the disrespectful people.

⁸ Loved ones, in this don’t let it cause you to forget that in the Lord’s perception, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day. ⁹ The Lord isn’t stalling the Promise as some think of stalling; instead, the Lord is patient for your benefit since the Lord doesn’t want anyone to be destroyed but for everyone to turn toward transforming their mind. ¹⁰ Then the day of the Lord will arrive like a thief. On that day, the heavens will pass away with a hiss, and the fundamental assumptions will be dissolved, burned up, and the land and the things done in it will be found out.

¹¹ With all these things to be dissolved this way, it is necessary to lay the foundation as the sort of people with a way of life dedicated to sacred purposes and with respectfulness, ¹² expecting and pursuing the arrival of the day of God by which the heavens, being purified with fire, will be melted down and the fundamental assumptions burned up and dissolved. ¹³ So, based on God's promise, we are expecting a new heavens and a new land in which justice is established.

¹⁴ Loved ones, because of this, while you are expecting these things, pursue being found out to be spotless and unblemished with him regarding peace, ¹⁵ and think of our Lord’s patience as liberation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you based on the wisdom given to him. ¹⁶ He has also spoken about these things in all his letters. There are things in them that are counterintuitive, which people who don’t understand and are insecure distort as they also do with the rest of the scriptures to their own destruction. ¹⁷ Therefore, loved ones, since you know in advance, be vigilant so that you do not fall away from your own firm footing by being led away into the wandering of the people who abandon their commitments. ¹⁸ Grow in generosity and knowledge of our Lord and Liberator, Jesus Christ. Praise be to him both now and in the day of the Age.