Jude 1:1-10 ▼

1 Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James: To those who are in God the Father, enfolded in His love, and kept for Jesus Christ, and called.

2 May mercy, peace and love be abundantly granted to you.

3 Dear friends, since I am eager to begin a letter to you on the subject of our common salvation, I find myself constrained to write and cheer you on to the vigorous defense of the faith delivered once for all to God's people.

4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed--men spoken of in ancient writings as pre-destined to this condemnation--ungodly men, who pervert the grace of our God into an excuse for immorality, and disown Jesus Christ, our only Sovereign and Lord.

5 I desire to remind you--although the whole matter is already familiar to you--that the Lord saved a people out of the land of Egypt, but afterwards destroyed those who had no faith.

6 And angels--those who did not keep the position originally assigned to them, but deserted their own proper abode--He reserves in everlasting bonds, in darkness, in preparation for the judgement of the great day.

7 So also Sodom and Gomorrah--and the neighboring towns in the same manner--having been guilty of gross fornication and having gone astray in pursuit of unnatural vice, are now before us as a specimen of the fire of the Ages in the punishment which they are undergoing.

8 Yet in just the same way these dreamers also pollute the body, while they set authority at naught and speak evil of dignities.

9 But Michael the Archangel, when contending with the Devil and arguing with him about the body of Moses, did not dare to pronounce judgement on him in abusive terms, but simply said, "The Lord rebuke you."

10 Yet these men are abusive in matters of which they know nothing, and in things which, like the brutes, they understand instinctively--in all these they corrupt themselves.