The Second Letter From Peter

1 Symeon Peter, servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those whose lot it has been in the justice of our God and Savior Jesus Christ to have as rich a faith as ours: 2 grace be yours in abundance, and peace, in awareness of God and of Jesus our Lord, 3 as his divine power has bestowed all the conditions for life and piety upon us through awareness of him who called us by his own glory and virtue, 4 through which we have the precious and immense promises bestowed on us, that by these you may become sharers in divine nature, having made your escape from the ruin by desire which is in the world. 5 And on this very account bring all your energies to bear and furnish virtue in your faith, and knowledge in your virtue, 6 and self-restraint in your knowledge, and endurance in your self-restraint, and piety in your endurance, 7 and brotherliness in your piety, and love in your brotherliness; 8 for if you possess these things, and plenty of them, they render you not idle nor unfruitful toward awareness of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9* For he who does not have these things about him is blindly nearsighted, oblivious of the purgation of his old-time sins. 10 Wherefore take the more pains, brothers, to make your call and election sure; for, doing this, you shall never stumble; 11 for thus shall be richly furnished to you the ingress into the eternal reign of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

12* Wherefore I shall ever be reminding you about these things,—even though you know and are firmly settled in the truth you have with you; 13 but I think it right, so long as I am in this tabernacle, to rouse you with reminders, 14 knowing that the laying off of my tabernacle is speedily due, as our Lord Jesus Christ too declared to me; 15 and I will also do my best that after my departure you may at every time be able to call these things to mind. 16 For we were not echoing trumped-up myths when we made known to you the power and advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, but had been eyewitnesses of his grandeur. 17 For as he received honor and glory from God the Father, when such a voice as this came wafted to him by the sublime glory, “My dear son is this, in whom I take pleasure,”— 18 and this voice we heard come wafted from the skies when we were with him on the sacred mountain. 19 And we have a surer thing, the word of prophecy, to which you do well to be attentive, as if to a lamp in a murky place, till day shall flush the sky and the Morning Star shall rise in your hearts— 20* knowing this in the first place, that any prophecy in a text is not a matter for particular interpretation; 21* for not by will of man was prophecy ever wafted to us, but, wafted by Holy Spirit, men spoke from God.

2 But there came pretended prophets too among the people, the same as among you too shall be pretendant teachers who shall introduce ruinous ideologies, repudiating the very Master that bought them, bringing upon themselves a speedy bane; 2 and many will follow the example of their immoralities, because of whom the path of truth will be vilified; 3 and with rapacious intent they will exploit you by well-turned phrases—men for whom judgment is not inert from of old, and their bane is not napping.

4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but, engulfing them in Inferno’s pits of darkness, committed them to be kept for judgment, 5 and did not spare the primitive world, but reserved among seven others Noah, preacher of righteousness, while bringing a deluge upon the world of the impious, and, 6* laying in ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, doomed them to obliteration, making them the example of men who should act impiously, 7 and delivered honest Lot, irked by the immoral living of the conscienceless,— 8 for with sight and hearing the honest man, residing among them, day by day tortured his honest soul with their lawless deeds,— 9 the Lord knows how to deliver pious men out of temptation but to keep doers of wrong under punishment to the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who go after flesh in desire for pollution and despise lordship. Cynically audacious, they do not quail at vilifying glories, 11 when angels, superior in strength and power, do not bring a defamatory charge against them before the Lord. 12 But these, like brute beasts, creatures of nature born to be caught and to perish, vilifying what they are ignorant of, shall perish too in their undoing, 13 suffering injury in payment for injuriousness. Taking luxury for the day as their idea of pleasure, blots and blemishes, luxuriating in their deceits while they feast with you, 14 with eyes full of a paramour who is another man’s wife and unresting in sin, luring unsteady souls, their hearts expert in greed, children of a curse, 15 they left the straight road and strayed, treading over again the road of Balaam the son of Beor, who fell in love with the pay of wrong-doing— 16 but he had evidence of his dereliction: a dumb beast, speaking with a man’s voice, checked the prophet’s craziness. 17 These are waterless springs and wind-driven puffs of mist, for whom the blackness of darkness is kept.

18 For, uttering extravagant futilities, they lure with the desires of flesh, with debaucheries, those who are making a narrow escape from those that live a life of misguided wanderings, 19 promising them liberty when they themselves are slaves of vice; for what one is beaten by he is enslaved to. 20* For if they make their escape from the pollutions of the world by awareness of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and are entangled in them again and beaten, they have the last turn out worse than the first; 21 for it would have been better for them not to been aware of the path of righteousness than after being aware of it to revert from the holy commandment that had been transmitted to them. 22 They have been through what the true proverb speaks of, “A dog turning back to its own vomit, and a bathed hog to wallowing in mud.”

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.

MARGINAL NOTES TO SECOND PETER