## The Rise of False Prophets 

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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. 

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And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned. 

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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. 

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For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the pit and delivered them to chains of darkness, being kept for judgment; 

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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; 

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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; 

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and _if_ He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men 

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(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), 

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_then_ the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, 

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and especially those who go after the flesh in _its_ corrupt lust and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they blaspheme glorious ones, 

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whereas angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. 

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But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, 

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suffering unrighteousness as the wages of _their_ unrighteousness, considering it a pleasure to revel in the daytime--_they are_ stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they feast with you, 

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having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed--_they are_ accursed children. 

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Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the _son_ of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, 

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but he received a rebuke for his own lawlessness, _for_ a mute donkey, speaking out with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet. 

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These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been kept. 

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For speaking out arrogant _words_ of vanity, they entice by sensual lusts of the flesh, those who barely escape from the ones who conducted themselves in error, 

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promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. 

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For if they are overcome, having _both_ escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and having again been entangled in them, _then_ the last state has become worse for them than the first. 

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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. 

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The _message_ of the true proverb has happened to them, "A dog returns to its own vomit," and, "A sow, after washing, _returns_ to wallowing in the mire."