2 Peter 3

¹Behold this second epistle I write to you, my dearly beloved, in which I stir up by way of admonition your sincere mind:

²That you may be mindful of those words which I told you before from the holy prophets, and of your apostles, of the precepts of the Lord and Saviour.

³Knowing this first, that in the last days there shall come deceitful scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

⁴Saying: Where is his promise or his coming? for since the time that the fathers slept, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

⁵For this they are wilfully ignorant of, that the heavens were before, and the earth out of water, and through water, consisting by the word of God.

⁶Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

⁷But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men.

⁸But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

⁹The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some imagine, but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.

¹⁰But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up.

¹¹Seeing then that all these things are to be dissolved, what manner of people ought you to be in holy conversation and godliness?