1 But know this: difficult times will come in the last days.2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good,4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,5 holding to the form of religion but denying its power. Avoid these people!6 For among them are those who worm their way into households and capture idle women burdened down with sins, led along by a variety of passions,7 always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.8 Just as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so these also resist the truth, men who are corrupt in mind, worthless in regard to the faith.9 But they will not make further progress, for their lack of understanding will be clear to all, as theirs was also.10 But you have followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, and endurance,11 along with the persecutions and sufferings that came to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from them all.12 In fact, all those who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.13 Evil people and imposters will become worse, deceiving and being deceived.14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing those from whom you learned,15 and that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness,17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.