Deliverance from False Prophets

1But there were also false prophets among the people, as there will be false teachers among you also, who will stealthily introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master having bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2And many will follow after their sensuality, through whom the way of the truth will be maligned. 3And through covetousness they will exploit you with fabricated words, for whom the judgment of long ago is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber.

4For if God did not spare the angels having sinned, but having cast them down to Tartarus, in chains of gloomy darkness,a delivered them, being kept for judgment; 5and He did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, one of eight, having brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6and He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b having reduced them to ashes, having set an example of what is coming on the ungodly;c 7and He rescued righteous Lot, being distressed by the conduct in sensuality of the lawless 8(for that righteous man dwelling, among them, day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul, through seeing and hearing their lawless deeds)— 9then the Lord knows to deliver the devout out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous being punished unto the day of judgment, 10and especially those walking after the flesh in the passion of defilement and despising authority. Bold, self-willed, they do not tremble blaspheming glorious ones, 11whereas angels, being greater in strength and power, do not bring against them a reviling judgment before the Lord.

12But these, like irrational animals, having been born as creatures of instinct for capture and destruction, blaspheming in what they are ignorant of, in their destruction also will be destroyed, 13suffering wrong as the wage of unrighteousness; esteeming carousal in daytime as pleasure; blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, feasting with you; 14having eyes full of adultery, and unceasing from sin; enticing unestablished souls; having a heart having been exercised in craving—children of a curse!

15Having forsaken the straight way, they have gone astray, having followed in the way of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wage of unrighteousness. 16But he had reproof for his own transgression by a mute donkey; having spoken in a man’s voice, it restrained the madness of the prophet.

17These are springs without water and mists being driven by storm, for whom gloom of darkness has been reserved. 18For speaking arrogant words of vanity, they entice to sensuality with the passions of the flesh those barely escaping from those living in error, 19promising them freedom, themselves being slaves of corruption. For by what anyone has been subdued, by that also he is enslaved.

20For if, having escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,d now again having been entangled in these they are subdued, the last state has become worse to them than the first. 21For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to have turned from the holy commandment having been delivered to them. 22The thing true of the proverb has happened to them: “A dog having returned to its own vomit,”e and, “A sow having washed, to her rolling place in the mire.”