Chapter 3

Be sure of this, that in the world’s last age there are perilous times coming.

Men will be in love with self, in love with money, boastful, proud, abusive; without reverence for their parents, without gratitude, without scruple,

without love, without peace; slanderers, incontinent, strangers to pity and to kindness;

treacherous, reckless, full of vain conceit, thinking rather of their pleasures than of God.

They will preserve all the outward form of religion, although they have long been strangers to its meaning. From these, too, turn away.

They count among their number the men that will make their way into house after house, captivating weak women whose consciences are burdened by sin; women swayed by shifting passions,

who are for ever inquiring, yet never attain to recognition of the truth.

Moses found rivals in Jannes and Mambres; just so the men I speak of set themselves up in rivalry against the truth, men whose minds are corrupt, whose faith is counterfeit;

yet they will come to little, they will soon be detected, like those others, in their rash folly.

Not such was the schooling, the guidance, thou hadst from me; in firm resolve, in faith, in patience, in love, in endurance;

all my persecutions and suffering, such as those which befell me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra; what persecutions I underwent! And yet the Lord brought me through them all safely.

And indeed, all those who are resolved to live a holy life in Christ Jesus will meet with persecution;

while the rogues and the mountebanks go on from bad to worse, at once impostors and dupes.

It is for thee to hold fast by the doctrine handed on to thee, the charge committed to thee; thou knowest well, from whom that tradition came;

thou canst remember the holy learning2 thou hast been taught from childhood upwards. This will train thee up for salvation, through the faith which rests in Christ Jesus.

Everything in the scripture has been divinely inspired, and has its uses; to instruct us, to expose our errors, to correct our faults, to educate us in holy living;

so God’s servant will become a master of his craft, and each noble task that comes will find him ready for it.