Avoiding False Teachers

¹But false prophets also appeared among the people, just as there will be false teachers among y’all. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves.

²Many will follow their lifestyle of sensuality, and because of this, the way of the truth will be criticized.

³In greed, they will exploit y’all with deceptive words. Their judgement from of old is not idle, and their destruction is not sleeping.

⁴For if God didn’t spare angels when they sinned, but threw them into Tartarus, and committed them to chains of darkness to be kept until judgment;[#2:4 In Greek mythology, Tartarus was subterranean place, or Hell. The word here is a verbal form: to Tartarize, or thrown into Tartarus.]

⁵and if ʜᴇ didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved only eight people including Noah, a herald of righteousness, when ʜᴇ brought a flood on the ungodly world;

⁶and if ʜᴇ condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction, burning them down to ashes, and making them an example to those who would live in an ungodly way;

⁷and if ʜᴇ rescued righteous Lot, who was distressed by the lifestyle of sensuality of the lawless

⁸(for that righteous man living among them was tormented in his righteous soul by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds day after day),

⁹then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,

¹⁰especially those who indulge in the corrupt desires of theflesh and despise authority. Daring and arrogant, they are not afraid to insult glorious beings,

¹¹whereas even angels, though greater in strength and power, do not bring a slanderous judgment against them before the Lord.

¹²But these people are like animals who cannot reason but act only on instinct, born to be captured and destroyed. They blaspheme in matters about which they are ignorant, and in their destruction, they will be destroyed,

¹³being paid in harm for the harm they have done. They count it a pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and defects, reveling in their deceit while they feast with y’all.

¹⁴They have eyes full of adultery and never-ending sin, seducing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed—accursed children!

¹⁵Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness.

¹⁶But he was rebuked for his own disobedience. A speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

¹⁷These people are wells without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved.

¹⁸As they speak with high-sounding but empty words, they entice to the desires of the flesh and sensuality, those who are have barely escaped from those who live in error,

¹⁹promising them liberty, while they themselves are slaves of immorality. For whatever overcomes a person enslaves them.

²⁰For if, after they have escaped the corruption of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in it and overcome, their last state has become worse for them than the first.

²¹It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

²²This has happened to them according to the true proverbs, “A dog turns to its own vomit,” and “A sow that has washed returns to wallowing in the mire.”[#Proverbs 26:11]