Warnings Regarding False Teachers

1 And also arose false prophets among the people, even as also among you there shall be false teachers, who privately will bring in destructive heresies, and the Lord who bought them denying, they bring upon themselves swift destruction.
2 And many will follow their licentious ways, by reason of whom the way of the truth will be maligned.
3 And through covetousness, with false words they will exploit you; whose judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber.
4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but having cast them into hell held them in chains of gloomy darkness to be kept for judgment;
5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
6 and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to an example for those coming ungodly;
7 and rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentious conduct of the wicked (for that righteous one living among them day by day saw and heard their lawless deeds),
8 for by what he saw and heard while living among them, his righteous soul was tormented day by day with their unlawful deeds,
9 The Lord therefore knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment;
10 and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of defilement, and despise authority. Bold ones, self-willed, they do not tremble in speaking evil of dignities;
11 while angels, though greater in power and might, do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.
12 But these, like irrational animals born to be caught and destroyed, reviling as they go in the things they do not understand, will also perish in their own corruption;
13 will receive the wages of unrighteousness, those who count it pleasure to indulge in drinking strong drink in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you,
14 having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls; a heart they have exercised in covetous practices, children of curse;
15 having forsaken the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;
16 but was rebuked for his own transgression, a dumb donkey, speaking with a human voice restrained the folly of the prophet.
17 These wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, for which is reserved the black darkness of gloom for ever.
18 For, uttering great boastful words of emptiness, they entice by fleshly lusts, by licentiousness those who were just escaping from those who live in error;
19 promising them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is enslaved.
20 For if, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state for them has become worse than the first.
21 For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy command delivered to them.
22 But it has happened to them according to the true proverb, “The dog turned back to his own vomit again,” and “The sow that was washed, returning, is wallowing in the mire.”