But false prophets also arose among the People, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction.
And many will follow their unrestrained behavior, and because of them the way of the truth will be defamed,
and in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation, pronounced long ago, is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but threw them into Tartarus and consigned them to chains in gloomy darkness to be kept until the Judgment;
and if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, along with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, which made them an example of what is about to happen to ungodly people,
and rescued righteous Lot, who was worn down by the unrestrained way of life of immoral people
(for as he lived among them day after day, that righteous man kept tormenting his righteous soul by the lawless acts that he saw and heard);
then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly out of trials and to keep the unrighteous accountable until the Day of Judgment, when they will be punished,
and especially those who walk after the flesh with its desires that lead to defilement and who show contempt for authority. Bold and arrogant, they do not tremble in fear at defaming the glorious ones,
whereas angels, though greater in strength and power, do not bring a charge of defamation against them before the Lord.
But these people, like unreasoning animals (creatures of instinct born to be captured and destroyed), defame things of which they are ignorant, and in their destructive ways they also will be destroyed,
suffering harm as the wage of unrighteousness. They consider it a pleasure to indulge themselves in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, indulging in their deceitfulness even while they feast with you.
They have eyes full of adultery and are unable to cease from sin. They entice unstable souls and have a heart that has been trained in greed. Cursed children!
Forsaking the right way, they went astray, having followed the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness,
but he was rebuked for his own wrongdoing. A donkey that could not talk, spoke with a human voice and restrained the deranged thinking of the prophet.
These people are springs without water and mists driven away by a windstorm, for whom the deep gloom of darkness has been reserved.
For by speaking grandiose, empty words, they entice, by appealing to the desires of the flesh (that is, by unrestrained behavior), those who have just escaped from people who live in error.
They promise them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption. For a person is a slave to whatever overcomes him.
For if, after they have escaped from the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, then the last state has become worse for them than the first.
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 commandment delivered to them.
The true proverb has come to pass in them: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and “A sow that is washed returns to wallowing in the mud.”