1   From Simeon Peter, servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the justice of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ share our faith and enjoy equal privilege with ourselves.

2   Grace and peace be yours in fullest measure, through the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.

3   His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and true religion, enabling us to know the One who called us by his own splendour and might. 4   Through this might and splendour he has given us his promises, great beyond all price, and through them you may escape the corruption with which lust has infected the world, and come to share in the very being of God.

5   With all this in view, you should try your hardest to supplement your faith with virtue, 6   virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with fortitude, 7   fortitude with piety, piety with brotherly kindness, and brotherly kindness with love.

8   These are gifts which, if you possess and foster them, will keep you from being either useless or barren in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9   The man who lacks them is short-sighted and blind; he has forgotten how he was cleansed from his former sins. 10   All the more then, my friends, exert yourselves to clinch God's choice and calling of you. If you behave so, you will never come to grief. 11   Thus you will be afforded full and free admission into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

12   And so I will not hesitate to remind you of this again and again, although you know it and are well grounded in the truth that has already reached you. 13   Yet I think it right to keep refreshing your memory so long as I still lodge in this body. 14   I know that very soon I must leave it; indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has told me so. ^note 15   But

The remedy for doubt I will see to it that after I am gone you will have means of remembering these things at all times.

16   It was not on tales artfully spun that we relied when we told you of the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming; we saw him with our own eyes in majesty, 17   when at the hands of God the Father he was invested with honour and glory, and there came to him from the sublime Presence a voice which said: ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, ^note on whom my favour rests.’ 18   This voice from heaven we ourselves heard; when it came, we were with him on the sacred mountain.

19   All this only confirms for us the message of the prophets, ^note to which you will do well to attend, because it is like a lamp shining in a murky place, until the day breaks and the morning star rises to illuminate your minds.

20   But first note this: no one can interpret any prophecy of Scripture by himself. 21   For it was not through any human whim that men prophesied of old; men they were, but, impelled by the Holy Spirit, they spoke the words of God.

1   But Israel had false prophets as well as true; and you likewise will have false teachers among you. They will import disastrous heresies, disowning the very Master who bought them, and bringing swift disaster on their own heads. 2   They will gain many adherents to their dissolute practices, through whom the true way will be brought into disrepute. 3   In their greed for money they will trade on your credulity with sheer fabrications.

But the judgement long decreed for them has not been idle; perdition waits for them with unsleeping eyes. 4   God did not spare the angels who sinned, but consigned them to the dark pits of hell, ^note where they are reserved for judgement. 5   He did not spare the world of old (except for Noah, preacher of righteousness, whom he preserved with seven others), but brought the deluge upon that world of godless men. 6   The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah God burned to ashes, and condemned them to total destruction, making them an object-lesson for godless men in future days. 7   But he rescued Lot, who was a good man, shocked by the dissolute habits of the lawless society in which he lived; 8   day after day every sight, every

The remedy for doubt sound, of their evil courses tortured that good man's heart. 9   Thus the Lord is well able to rescue the godly out of trials, and to reserve the wicked under punishment until the day of judgement.

10   Above all he will punish those who follow their abominable lusts. They flout authority; reckless and headstrong, they are not afraid to insult celestial beings, 11   whereas angels, for all their superior strength and might, employ no insults in seeking judgement against them before the Lord.

12   These men are like brute beasts, born in the course of nature to be caught and killed. They pour abuse upon things they do not understand; 13   like the beasts they will perish, suffering hurt for the hurt they have inflicted. To carouse in broad daylight is their idea of pleasure; while they sit with you at table they are an ugly blot on your company, because they revel in their own deceptions. ^note

14   They have eyes for nothing but women, eyes never at rest from sin. They lure the unstable to their ruin; past masters in mercenary greed, God's curse is on them! 15   They have abandoned the straight road and lost their way. They have followed in the steps of Balaam son of Beor, 16   who consented to take pay for doing wrong, but had his offence brought home to him when the dumb beast spoke with a human voice and put a stop to the prophet's madness.

17   These men are springs that give no water, mists driven by a storm; the place reserved for them is blackest darkness. 18   They utter big, empty words, and make of sensual lusts and debauchery a bait to catch those who have barely begun to escape from their heathen environment. 19   They promise them freedom, but are themselves slaves of corruption; for a man is the slave of whatever has mastered him. 20   They had once escaped the world's defilements through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; yet if they have entangled themselves in these all over again, and are mastered by them, their plight in the end is worse than before. 21   How much better never to have known the right way, than, having known it, to turn back and abandon the sacred commandments delivered to them! 22   For them the proverb has proved true: ‘The dog returns to its own vomit’, and, ‘The sow after a wash rolls in the mud again.’

1   This is now my second letter to you, my friends. In both of them I have been recalling to you what you already know, to rouse

The remedy for doubt you to honest thought. 2   Remember the predictions made by God's own prophets, and the commands given by the Lord and Saviour through your apostles.

3   Note this first: in the last days there will come men who scoff at religion and live self-indulgent lives, and they will say: 4   ‘Where now is the promise of his coming? Our fathers have been laid to their rest, but still everything continues exactly as it has always been since the world began.’

5   In taking this view they lose sight of the fact ^note that there were heavens and earth long ago, created by God's word out of water and with water; 6   and by water that first world was destroyed, the water of the deluge. 7   And the present heavens and earth, again by God's word, have been kept in store for burning; they are being reserved until the day of judgement when the godless will be destroyed.

8   And here is one point, my friends, which you must not lose sight of: with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. 9   It is not that the Lord is slow in fulfilling his promise, as some suppose, but that he is very patient with you, because it is not his will for any to be lost, but for all to come to repentance.

10   But the Day of the Lord will come; it will come, unexpected as a thief. On that day the heavens will disappear with a great rushing sound, the elements will disintegrate in flames, and the earth with all that is in it will be laid bare. ^note

11   Since the whole universe is to break up in this way, think what sort of people you ought to be, what devout and dedicated lives you should live! 12   Look eagerly for the coming of the Day of God and work to hasten it on; that day will set the heavens ablaze until they fall apart, and will melt the elements in flames. 13   But we have his promise, and look forward to new heavens and a new earth, the home of justice.

14   With this to look forward to, do your utmost to be found at peace with him, unblemished and above reproach in his sight. 15   Bear in mind that our Lord's patience with us is our salvation, as Paul, our friend and brother, said when he wrote to you with his inspired wisdom. 16   And so he does in all his other letters, wherever he speaks of this subject, though they contain some obscure passages, which the

The remedy for doubt ignorant and unstable misinterpret to their own ruin, as they do the other scriptures. ^note

17   But you, my friends, are forewarned. Take care, then, not to let these unprincipled men seduce you with their errors; do not lose your own safe foothold. 18   But grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. ^noteTo him be glory now and for all eternity!

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