Dear friends, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common Salvation, I felt that I must write to you at once to urge you to fight in defense of the Faith that has once for all been entrusted to the keeping of Christ's People.

Now I want to remind you--but you already know it all--that, though the Lord delivered the People from Egypt, yet he afterwards destroyed those who refused to believe in him;

and that even those angels, who did not keep to their appointed spheres, but left their proper homes, have been kept by him for the judgment of the Great Day in everlasting chains and black darkness.

But these men malign whatever they do not understand; while they use such things as they know by instinct (like the animals that have no reason) for their own corruption.

Alas for them! They walk in the steps of Cain; led astray by Balaam's love of gain, they plunge into sin, and meet their ruin through rebellion like that of Korah.

to execute judgment upon all men, and to convict all godless people of all their godless acts, which in their ungodliness they have committed, and of all the harsh words which they have spoken against him, godless sinners that they are!'