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False Prophets and Their Punishment

2But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ²Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers^* the way of truth will be maligned. ³And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

4 For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell^* and committed them to chains^* of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgement; ⁵and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; ⁶and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction^* and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;^{* 7}and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless ⁸(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), ⁹then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgement ¹⁰—especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

Bold and wilful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones,^*