(Jude 1:3–16)
1
False prophets came to the people, and false teachers will also come to you. They will secretly bring with them destructive heresies, and they will deny the master who bought them. They are bringing quick destruction upon themselves.
2
Many will follow their sensuality, and through them the way of truth will be blasphemed.
3
With greediness they will make a profit off of you with deceptive words. Their condemnation does not delay for long; their destruction does not sleep.
4
For God did not spare the angels who sinned. Instead he handed them down to Tartarus to be kept in chains of lower darkness until the judgment.
5
Also, he did not spare the ancient world. Instead, he preserved Noah, who was a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly.
6
God also reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to destruction, as an example of what is to happen to the ungodly.
7
But as for the righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the behavior of lawless men in sensuality, God rescued him.
8
For that righteous man, who was living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul because of what he saw and heard.
9
The Lord knows how to rescue godly men out of trials, and how to hold unrighteous men for punishment at the day of judgment.
10
This is especially true for those who continue in the corrupt desires of the flesh and despise authority. They are presumptuous and arrogant. They are not afraid to blaspheme the glorious ones.
11
Angels have greater strength and power, but they do not bring insulting judgments against them to the Lord.
12
But these mindless animals are naturally made for capture and destruction. They do not know what they insult. They will be destroyed.
13
They will receive the reward of their wrongdoing. They think that luxury during the day is a pleasure. They are stains and blemishes. They enjoy their deceitful actions while they are feasting with you.
14
They have eyes full of adulterous women; they are never satisfied with sin. They entice unstable souls into wrongdoing, and they have their hearts trained in covetousness. They are children of a curse!
15
They have abandoned the right way. They went astray, and they have followed the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved to receive payment for unrighteousness.
16
But he obtained a rebuke for his own transgression. A mute donkey speaking in a human voice stopped the prophet’s insanity.
17
These men are like springs without water. They are like clouds that a storm drives along. Thick darkness is reserved for them.
18
They speak with vain arrogance. They entice people through the lusts of the flesh. They entice people who try to escape from those who live in error.
19
They promise freedom to them, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For a man is a slave to whatever overcomes him.
20
Whoever escapes the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and then returns to those defilements again, the last state has become worse for them than the first state.
21
It would have been better for them not to know the way of righteousness than to know it and turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them.
22
This proverb is true for them: “A dog returns to its own vomit. A washed pig returns to the mud.”
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