The Rise of False Prophets

1But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned. 3And in their greed they will exploit you with false words, their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

4For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the [†]pit and delivered them to chains of darkness, being kept for judgment; 5and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a [†]preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; 7and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men 8(for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), 9then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from [†]trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, 10and especially those who go after the flesh in its corrupt lust and despise authority.

Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they blaspheme [†]glorious ones, 11whereas angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. 12But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge, will in [†]the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, 13suffering unrighteousness as the wages of their unrighteousness, considering it a pleasure to revel in the daytime—they are stains and blemishes, reveling in their [†]deceptions, as they feast with you, 14having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed—they are accursed children. 15Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, 16but he received a rebuke for his own lawlessness, for a mute donkey, speaking out with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.

17These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the [†]black darkness has been kept. 18For speaking out arrogant words of vanity, they entice by sensual lusts of the flesh, those who barely escape from the ones who conducted themselves in error, 19promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. 20For if they are overcome, having both escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and having again been entangled in them, then the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. 22The [†]message of the true proverb has happened to them, “A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”