3 First, knowing this, that there will come in [the] last days scoffers walking according to their own lusts4 and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since [the] fathers fell asleep, all things continue as [they were] from the beginning of creation.5 For this is hidden from them [by their] willing it, that the heavens were of old, and the earth out of the water, and through water, being held together by the word of God,6 through which the world that then was, being flooded by water, perished.7 But the present heavens and the earth being kept in store by the same word, are being kept for fire until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.