3 knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts,

4 and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were since the beginning of creation.

5 For of this they are willfully ignorant: that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water,

6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same Word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.