may mercy, peace, and love in abundance be given you.

Dearly beloved, while I was doing my best to begin writing you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write and urge you to carry on a vigorous defense of the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's people.

Now I want to remind you, though you know it all already, that although the Lord had saved a people out of the land of Egypt, He afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in His glorious presence faultless and full of triumphant joy,

For certain persons have sneaked in -- their doom was written down long ago -- godless persons, who turn the favor of our God into an excuse for licentiousness, and disown our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

In just the same way these dreamers defile the body, discard authority, and deride the majesties.

just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns which like them indulged in grossest immorality and unnatural vice, stand as a perpetual warning, in suffering the punishment of eternal fire.

And angels, who did not preserve their original rank but left their proper home, He has kept in everlasting chains under darkness, for the day of judgment,

Alas for them, because they have trod the road that Cain did; for gain they have rushed into Balaam's error and have perished in rebellion like that of Korah!

But these persons abuse everything they do not understand, and they are going to be destroyed by the very things they know by instinct, like the irrational animals.

It was about such men also that Enoch, the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied when he said: "See! The Lord comes with myriads of His people

wild waves of the sea foaming up their own shame; wandering stars that are forever doomed to utter darkness.

They are blots on your love feasts while they feast with you, daringly caring for no one but themselves; rainless clouds swept along by winds; leafless trees that bear no fruit, doubly dead, uprooted;

But you, dearly beloved, must remember the words that have already been spoken by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ,

to execute judgment upon all, to convict all the godless of their godless deeds which in their godlessness they have committed, and of all the harsh things that godless sinners have said against Him."

These persons are grumblers, ever complaining about their lot. They live to satisfy their evil passions, their lips boast arrogant things, and they flatter others for personal gain.

because they said to you, "In the last times there will be mockers who will live to satisfy their own godless passions."

you must keep yourselves in the love of God and continue to wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, to bring you to eternal life.

Some people, who continue to waver through doubts, you must pity

These are men who cause divisions; mere animals, destitute of any spiritual nature,

and save, snatching them out of the fire; and others you must pity with dread, loathing even the clothes that are soiled by their lower nature.

Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ, and a brother of James, to those who have been called, who are beloved by God the Father and have been kept through union with Jesus Christ:

But the archangel Michael himself, when he disputed and argued with the devil about Moses' body, did not dare to bring against him a charge of blasphemy, but merely said, "May the Lord rebuke you!"

But you, dearly beloved, must continue to build yourselves up on the groundwork of your most holy faith and to pray in the Holy Spirit;

to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, as it was before all time, both now and forever and ever. Amen.