2 Peter 2
1But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive sects, even denying the Master-Owner who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2And many will follow their ways of unbridled sensuality, and because of them, the Way of Truth will be slandered. 3In their greed, they will exploit you with fabricated stories; for them, the judgment pronounced long ago is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber.
4For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but committed them to the pits of gloom in Tartarus to be kept for judgment; 5and if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of justice, as the eighth person when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, making them an example of what is coming for the ungodly; 7and if he rescued the just man Lot, who was oppressed by the conduct of the lawless in their unbridled sensuality 8(for by what he saw and heard while living among them day after day, that just man was torturing his just soul because of their lawless deeds)— 9then the Lord knows how to rescue the devout from testing, and how to keep the unjust under punishment until the day of judgment, 10especially those who go after the flesh in the lust of defilement and despise lordship. Daring and arrogant, they do not tremble when slandering the Celestial Majesties, 11whereas angels, though greater in strength and power, do not bring a slandering judgment against them before the Lord. 12But these people—like irrational animals, creatures of instinct born to be caught and destroyed—slander things they do not understand. In their corruption, they will also be destroyed, 13suffering harm as the wages of injustice. They consider it a pleasure to revel in broad daylight. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceits while they feast with you. 14They have eyes full of an adulteress and are restless in sin; they entice unstable souls; they have hearts trained in greed; they are children of a curse.
15Leaving the straight path, they have wandered off, following the path of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of injustice 16but received a rebuke for his own lawbreaking: a speechless beast of burden, speaking with a human voice, restrained the prophet’s madness.
17These people are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm-gale, for whom the gloom of darkness has been reserved. 18For by speaking swelling words of emptiness, they entice by the lusts of the flesh and by unbridled sensuality those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. 19They promise them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever a person is defeated by, to that they are enslaved. 20For if, after escaping the defilements of the world through the full knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and defeated, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21For it would have been better for them not to have fully known the way of justice than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment handed down to them. 22What the true proverb says has happened to them: “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mud.”