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.