¹⁵ For some have already turned aside after Satan.

² And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.

⁴ For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord ^[a]God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Old and New Apostates

⁵ But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that ^(A)the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

²⁰ For if, after they ^(A)have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are ^(B)again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. ²¹ For ^(C)it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. ²² But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: ^(D)“A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.”

^19 (A)They went out from us, but they were not of us; for ^(B)if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out ^(C)that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.

¹⁰ for ^(A)Demas has forsaken me, ^(B)having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica—Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia.

²⁰ of whom are ^(A)Hymenaeus and ^(B)Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan that they may learn not to ^(C)blaspheme.

¹⁸ For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are ^(A)the enemies of the cross of Christ: ^19 (B)whose end is destruction, ^(C)whose god is their belly, and ^(D)whose glory is in their shame—^(E)who set their mind on earthly things.

⁹ So ^(A)the great dragon was cast out, ^(B)that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, ^(C)who deceives the whole world; ^(D)he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

¹⁶ as also in all his ^(A)epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the ^(B)rest of the Scriptures.