Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁶ Noach was 600 years old when the water flooded the earth. ⁷ Noach went into the ark with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives, because of the floodwaters. ⁸ Of clean animals, of animals that are not clean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, ⁹ couples, male and female, went in to Noach in the ark, as God had ordered Noach.

¹⁰ After seven days the water flooded the earth.

8 God remembered Noach, every living thing and all the livestock with him in the ark; so God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water began to go down. ² Also the fountains of the deep and the windows of the sky were stopped, the rain from the sky was restrained, ³ and the water came back from completely covering the earth. It was after 150 days that the water went down. ⁴ On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵ The water kept going down until the tenth month; on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains were seen.

2 But among the people there were also false prophets, just as there will be false teachers among you. Under false pretenses they will introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, and thus bring on themselves swift destruction. ² Many will follow their debaucheries; and because of them, the true Way will be maligned. ³ In their greed they will exploit you with fabricated stories.

Their punishment, decreed long ago, is not idle; their destruction is not asleep! ⁴ For God did not spare the angels who sinned; on the contrary, he put them in gloomy dungeons lower than Sh’ol to be held for judgment. ⁵ And he did not spare the ancient world; on the contrary, he preserved Noach, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, and brought the Flood upon a world of ungodly people. ⁶ And he condemned the cities of S’dom and ‘Amora, reducing them to ashes and ruin, as a warning to those in the future who would live ungodly lives; ⁷ but he rescued Lot, a righteous man who was distressed by the debauchery of those unprincipled people; ⁸ for the wicked deeds which that righteous man saw and heard, as he lived among them, tormented his righteous heart day after day. ⁹ So the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and how to hold the wicked until the Day of Judgment while continuing to punish them, ¹⁰ especially those who follow their old natures in lust for filth and who despise authority.

Presumptuous and self-willed, these false teachers do not tremble at insulting angelic beings;