3 First you should know this, that in the last days scoffers will come with their scoffing, living according to their own passions4 and saying, "Where is his promised coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things remain as they have been since the beginning of the creation?"5 For they willfully forget that there were heavens of old and an earth formed out of water and through water by God's word.6 By these means the world that then was was flooded with water and destroyed.7 But the present heavens and the earth are by the same word treasured up and kept for fire on the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.