| 1. | But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. |
| 2. | People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, |
| 3. | callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, |
| 4. | traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, |
| 5. | as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power. Reject them. |
| 6. | For some of these slip into homes and make captives of women weighed down by sins, led by various desires, |
| 7. | always trying to learn but never able to reach a knowledge of the truth. |
| 8. | Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so they also oppose the truth--people of depraved mind, unqualified in the faith. |
| 9. | But they will not make further progress, for their foolishness will be plain to all, as it was with those two. |
| 10. | You have followed my teaching, way of life, purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, |
| 11. | persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, persecutions that I endured. Yet from all these things the Lord delivered me. |
| 12. | In fact, all who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. |
| 13. | But wicked people and charlatans will go from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived. |
| 14. | But you, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, |
| 15. | and that from infancy you have known (the) sacred scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. |
| 16. | All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, |
| 17. | so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work. |
