2 Peter 2:1–10

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.^{* 2}Even so, many will follow their debaucheries, and because of these teachers^h 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.^*

⁴For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to chainsⁱ of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment;^{* 5}and 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 the world of the ungodly;^{* 6}and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to destruction^j and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;^{k 7}and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the debauchery 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 until the day of judgment, when they will be punished^{* 10}—especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust and who despise authority.

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