Although these false teachers promise such people freedom, they themselves are enslaved to immorality. For whatever a person succumbs to, to that he is enslaved.

For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn back from the holy commandment that had been delivered to them.

Therefore, dear friends, since you are waiting for these things, strive to be found at peace, without spot or blemish, when you come into his presence.

speaking of these things in all his letters. Some things in these letters are hard to understand, things the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they also do to the rest of the scriptures.

When this voice was conveyed from heaven, we ourselves heard it, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

And many will follow their debauched lifestyles. Because of these false teachers, the way of truth will be slandered.

(for while he lived among them day after day, that righteous man was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)

yet even angels, who are much more powerful, do not bring a slanderous judgment against them before the Lord.

But, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness truly resides.

I can pray this because his divine power has bestowed on us everything necessary for life and godliness through the rich knowledge of the one who called us by his own glory and excellence.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith excellence, to excellence, knowledge;

But concerning the one who lacks such things – he is blind. That is to say, he is nearsighted, since he has forgotten about the cleansing of his past sins.

And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation pronounced long ago is not sitting idly by; their destruction is not asleep.

But these men, like irrational animals – creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed – do not understand whom they are insulting, and consequently in their destruction they will be destroyed,

suffering harm as the wages for their harmful ways. By considering it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight, they are stains and blemishes, indulging in their deceitful pleasures when they feast together with you.

They are illustrations of this true proverb: “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and “A sow, after washing herself, wallows in the mire.”

Above all, understand this: In the last days blatant scoffers will come, being propelled by their own evil urges

and saying, “Where is his promised return? For ever since our ancestors died, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.”

For they deliberately suppress this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water.

But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, by being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.