| 1 Be quite sure that there will be difficult times in the last days. | |
| 2 People will become selfish, lovers of money, boastful, conceited, gossips, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy. | |
| 3 They will be unable to love and to forgive; they will be slanderers, without self-control, cruel, enemies of good, | |
| 4 traitors, shameless, full of pride, more in love with pleasure than with God. | |
| 5 They will keep the appearance of piety, while rejecting its demands. Keep away from such people. | |
| 6 Of the same kind are those who enter houses and captivate weak women, full of sins, swayed by all kinds of passion, | |
| 7 who are always learning but never grasping knowledge of the truth. | |
| 8 These people of corrupt mind and false faith oppose the truth just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses. | |
| 9 Yet they may not go very far, for their folly will be clear to all, as in the case of those two. | |
| 10 You, instead, have closely followed my teaching, my way of life, my projects, faith, patience, love, endurance, | |
| 11 persecutions and sufferings. You know what happened to me at Antioch, Iconium and Lystra. How many trials I had to bear! Yet the Lord rescued me from them all. | |
| 12 All who want to serve God in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, | |
| 13 while evil persons and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. | |
| 14 As for you, continue with what you have learned and what has been entrusted to you, knowing from whom you received it. | |
| 15 Besides, you have known the Scriptures from childhood; they will give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. | |
| 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, refuting error, for correcting and training in Christian life. | |
| 17 Through Scripture the man of God is made expert and thoroughly equipped for every good work. | |
