21 But 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 . 2 Many will follow their sensuality , and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned ;
3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words ; their judgment from long ago is not idle , and their destruction is not asleep . 4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned , but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness , reserved for judgment ; 5 and 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 ; 6 and 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 ;
7 and 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 ), 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation , and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment ,
10 and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority . Daring , self-willed , they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties , 11 whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord . 12 But these , like unreasoning animals , born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed , reviling where e they have no knowledge , will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed , 13 suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong . They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime . They are stains and blemishes , reveling in their deceptions , as they carouse with you, 14 having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin , enticing unstable souls , having a heart trained in greed , accursed children ; 15 forsaking 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 he received a rebuke for his own transgression , for a mute donkey , speaking with a voice of a man , restrained the madness of the prophet . 17 These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm , for whom the black darkness has been reserved . 18 For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires , by sensuality , those who barely escape from the ones who live in error , 19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption ; for by what a man is overcome , by this he is enslaved . 20 For if , after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ , they are again entangled in them and are overcome , the last state has become worse for them than the first . 21 For 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. 22 It has happened to them according to the true proverb , " A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT ," and, "A sow , after washing , returns to wallowing in the mire ."
