Coming Challenges

¹But you must know this, that difficult times will come in the last days.

²Humans will be self-lovers and money-lovers, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,

³unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, savage, not goodness-lovers,

⁴traitors, reckless, conceited, pleasure-lovers rather than God-lovers,

⁵having a form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people.

⁶For some among them creep into houses and captivate gullible women overwhelmed by sins and led away by a variety of desires,

⁷always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

⁸Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these also oppose the truth, humans of corrupted minds unapproved for the faith.

⁹But they will proceed no further. For their folly will be evident to everyone, as it was for those men.

¹⁰But you have followed my teaching, my way of life, purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance,

¹¹persecutions, and the sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. I endured those persecutions, and the Lord delivered me from them all.

¹²Indeed, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

¹³But evil humans and charlatans will advance from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

¹⁴But you must remain in the things which you have learned and become convinced of, because you know those from whom you have learned,

¹⁵and from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

¹⁶Every Scripture is God-exhaled and profitable for teaching, refutation, correction, and training in righteousness,

¹⁷so that the human who belongs to God may be complete and equipped for every good work.