2 Peter 2
1 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, and bring swift destruction on themselves.
2 Many will follow their depraved ways, and because of them the way of truth will be slandered.
3 In their greed, they will exploit you with fabricated words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
4 For God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into Tartarus, into pits of darkness, and handed them over to be kept for judgment.
5 He did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought the flood on the world of the ungodly.
6 He reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, condemning them to destruction and making them an example for those who would live ungodly lives.
7 And he rescued righteous Lot, distressed by the lawless people’s depraved conduct.
8 For that righteous man, living among them, day after day tormented his righteous soul with what he saw and heard of their lawless deeds.
9 The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous for the day of judgment, when they will be punished.
10 Especially those who follow the flesh in its impure desire and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones.
11 Yet angels, though greater in strength and power, do not bring an abusive judgment against them before the Lord.
12 But these people, like irrational animals, born by nature to be captured and destroyed, blaspheme what they do not understand, and in the destruction of those animals they too will be destroyed.
13 They suffer harm as the wages of wrongdoing. They consider daytime debauchery a pleasure; they are stains and blemishes, delighting in their deceptions as they feast with you.
14 Their eyes are full of adultery and never stop sinning; they lure unstable people. Their hearts are trained in greed. Accursed children!
15 They have abandoned the straight path and gone astray, following the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wrongdoing.
16 But he was rebuked for his own transgression: a voiceless beast of burden spoke with a human voice and stopped the prophet’s madness.
17 These people are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. The deepest darkness has been reserved for them.
18 For, speaking empty and arrogant words, they lure with the lusts of the flesh and depraved ways those who have only just escaped from people living in error.
19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for a person is enslaved by whatever has conquered them.
20 For if, after escaping the world’s defilements through the full knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they become entangled in them again and are overcome, their final state is worse than their 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 commandment handed down to them.
22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit,” and “The washed sow goes back to wallowing in the mud.”
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