Dual Panel1JUDE, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who have obeyed the call, who are loved by God the Father and kept in the faith by Jesus Christ
2may you ever experience more and more of mercy, peace and love!
3While I was fully engaged, dear friends, in writing to you about our common salvation, I felt compelled to make my letter to you an earnest appeal to put up a real fight for the faith which has been once and for all handed on to those who are committed to God.
4For there are men who have surreptitiously entered the Church but who have long ago been marked out for condemnation. They have no reverence for God, and they abuse his grace as an opportunity for immorality. They will not recognise the only master, Jesus Christ our Lord.
5I want to remind you of something that you really know already: that although the Lord saved all the people from the land of Egypt, yet afterwards he brought to their downfall those who would not trust him.
6And the very angels who failed in their high duties and abandoned their proper sphere have been deprived by God of both light and liberty until the judgment of the great day.
7Sodom and Gomorrah and the adjacent cities who, in the same way as these men today, gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion, stand in their punishment as a permanent warning
8by their filthy fantasies in just the same way; they show utter contempt for authority and make a jest of the heavenly glories.
9But I would remind you that even the archangel Michael when he was contending with the devil in the dispute over the body of Moses did not dare to condemn him with mockery. He simply said, the Lord rebuke you!
10These fellows, however, are ready to mock at anything that is beyond their knowledge, while in the things that they know by instruct like unreasoning beasts they are utterly depraved. I say,
11Woe to them! For they have taken the road of Cain; for what they could get they have rushed into the same error as Balaam; they have destroyed themselves by rebelling against God as did Korah long ago.
12These men are blots on the goodfellowship of your feasts, for they eat in your company without reverence, looking after no one but themselves. They are like clouds driven up by the wind, but they bring no rain. They are like trees in autumn without a single fruitdoubly dead for they have been pulled up by the roots.
13They are like raging waves of the sea producing only the spume of their own shameful deeds. They are like stars which follow no orbit, and their proper place is the everlasting blackness of the regions beyond the light.
14It was of these men that Enoch (seventh descendant from Adam) prophesied when he said: Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones,
15to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
16These are the men who complain and curse their fate while trying all the time to mould life according to their own desires. They "talk big" but will pay men great respect if it is to their own advantage.
17Now do remember, dear friends, the words that the messengers of Jesus Christ gave us beforehand
18when they said "there will come in the last days mockers who live according to their own godless desires".
19These are the men who split communities, for they are led by human emotions and never by the Spirit of God.
20But you, dear friends of mine, build yourselves up on the foundation of your most holy faith and by praying through the Holy Spirit
21keep yourselves within the love of God. Wait patiently for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ which will bring you to the life eternal.
22There are some whom you must pity because of their doubts;
23some you must save by snatching them out of the fire. But there are others whom you must pity with the utmost caution, hating the very clothes which their deeds have soiled.
24Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glory without fault and with unspeakable joy,
25to the only God, our saviour, be glory and majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before time was, now, and in all ages to come, amen.