1. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you. They will secretly bring in destructive heresies. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction upon themselves.
2. Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result the way of the truth will be maligned.
3. In their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber.
4. For God did not spare angels when they sinned, but threw them into Sheol. He put them in chains of gloomy darkness, to be held until the judgment.
5. He did not spare the ancient world. He preserved only Noah, a proclaimer of righteousness, along with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.
6. He devastated the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, reducing them to ashes—making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.
7. He rescued Lot, a righteous man deeply troubled by the shameless immorality of the wicked.
8. (For that righteous man, while living among them, was tormented in his righteous soul day after day by lawless deeds he saw and heard.)
9. Therefore the Lord certainly knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and how to keep the unrighteous being punished until the Day of Judgment—
10. especially those who follow after the flesh in its unclean desires and who despise the Lord’s authority. Brazen and arrogant, these people do not tremble while slandering glorious beings;
11. yet even angels, though stronger and more powerful, do not bring a slanderous charge against them before the Lord.
12. But these people are like irrational animals—creatures of instinct born to be captured and killed. They malign what they don’t understand, and in their destruction they will be utterly destroyed.