2 Peter 2:12-22

12But these false teachers speak against things that they do not understand. They are like wild animals. Their minds cannot think properly. They only do what their nature causes them to do. Wild animals are born so that people can catch them and kill them. In the same way, God will destroy the false teachers.

13They have caused other people to have much trouble. In return, God will cause them to have trouble. They just do things which will make their bodies happy. They have wild parties, even during the day. They eat and drink too much when they eat meals with you. They enjoy all these bad ways to be happy. As a result, people think bad things about you as well. They cause people to be ashamed about you. So they are like dirty marks that spoil something which is clean.

14All the time, they are looking for women who will have sex with them. They never stop doing wicked things. They teach people who have weak minds to believe wrong things. They just want more and more things to make themselves happy. God will certainly punish these people, because they are so bad.

15These false teachers have left the way which is good and right. Like Balaam, Beor's son, they have gone the wrong way. Balaam wanted money so much that he did wrong things to get it.

16But a donkey told him that he was not obeying God. We know that donkeys cannot talk. But that donkey spoke with a human voice. It stopped the prophet Balaam from doing more crazy things.

17These false teachers promise good things that will never happen. They are like a dry well that has no water. They are like clouds in a storm which the wind blows away so that no rain comes. God will certainly send them to the darkest place in hell. He has kept that place ready for them.

18The messages that these teachers speak seem very important. But their words really mean nothing. In that way, they lead people away from God. Some people have not been believers for very long. They have only just become free from the wrong things that people do. But the false teachers tell these people to do bad things that will make them happy.

19The false teachers tell these believers to do whatever they want to do. They promise that this will make them really free. But the false teachers themselves are not free. Instead, they are like slaves. They cannot stop doing the bad things that will destroy them. We know that if something has power over a person, then that person is its slave.

20People like that learned about our Lord Jesus Christ, who saves us. As a result, they had stopped doing the bad things that belong to this world. They had become free from the power of those things. But now they have started to do those bad things again. Those things have power over them and they cannot stop doing them. So now, these false teachers are worse than they were at the beginning, before they believed in the Lord Jesus.

21It would have been better for them if they had never known God's good way. But they did understand about the right things that God wants us to do. And then they turned away from that way of life. They stopped obeying God's good rules, that people had taught them.

22You know these true proverbs: ‘After a dog has been sick, it returns to eat it again.’ Also: ‘After you wash a pig, it will quickly roll in the dirt again.’ These words describe how the false teachers live.