Daily Bible GNT November 24 Scroll

False Teachers

2 Peter 2 False prophets appeared in the past among the people, and in the same way false teachers will appear among you. They will bring in destructive, untrue doctrines, and will deny the Master who redeemed them, and so they will bring upon themselves sudden destruction. ²Even so, many will follow their immoral ways; and because of what they do, others will speak evil of the Way of truth. ³In their greed these false teachers will make a profit out of telling you made-up stories. For a long time now their Judge has been ready, and their Destroyer has been wide awake!

⁴God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell, where they are kept chained in darkness, waiting for the Day of Judgment. ⁵God did not spare the ancient world, but brought the flood on the world of godless people; the only ones he saved were Noah, who preached righteousness, and seven other people. ⁶God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroying them with fire, and made them an example of what will happen to the godless. ⁷He rescued Lot, a good man, who was distressed by the immoral conduct of lawless people. ⁸That good man lived among them, and day after day he suffered agony as he saw and heard their evil actions. ⁹And so the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials and how to keep the wicked under punishment for the Day of Judgment, ¹⁰especially those who follow their filthy bodily lusts and despise God's authority.

These false teachers are bold and arrogant, and show no respect for the glorious beings above; instead, they insult them. ¹¹Even the angels, who are so much stronger and mightier than these false teachers, do not accuse them with insults in the presence of the Lord. ¹²But these people act by instinct, like wild animals born to be captured and killed; they attack with insults anything they do not understand. They will be destroyed like wild animals, ¹³and they will be paid with suffering for the suffering they have caused. Pleasure for them is to do anything in broad daylight that will satisfy their bodily appetites; they are a shame and a disgrace as they join you in your meals, all the while enjoying their deceitful ways! ¹⁴They want to look for nothing but the chance to commit adultery; their appetite for sin is never satisfied. They lead weak people into a trap. Their hearts are trained to be greedy. They are under God's curse! ¹⁵They have left the straight path and have lost their way; they have followed the path taken by Balaam son of Beor, who loved the money he would get for doing wrong ¹⁶and was rebuked for his sin. His donkey spoke with a human voice and stopped the prophet's insane action.

¹⁷These people are like dried-up springs, like clouds blown along by a storm; God has reserved a place for them in the deepest darkness. ¹⁸They make proud and stupid statements, and use immoral bodily lusts to trap those who are just beginning to escape from among people who live in error. ¹⁹They promise them freedom while they themselves are slaves of destructive habits--for we are slaves of anything that has conquered us. ²⁰If people have escaped from the corrupting forces of the world through their knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and then are again caught and conquered by them, such people are in worse condition at the end than they were at the beginning. ²¹It would have been much better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than to know it and then turn away from the sacred command that was given them. ²²What happened to them shows that the proverbs are true: "A dog goes back to what it has vomited" and "A pig that has been washed goes back to roll in the mud."

Jeremiah Is Taken to Egypt

Jeremiah 43 I finished telling the people everything that the LORD their God had sent me to tell them. ²Then Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the other arrogant men said to me, "You are lying. The LORD our God did not send you to tell us not to go and live in Egypt. ³Baruch son of Neriah has stirred you up against us, so that the Babylonians will gain power over us and can either kill us or take us away to Babylonia." ⁴So neither Johanan nor any of the army officers nor any of the people would obey the LORD's command to remain in the land of Judah. ⁵Then Johanan and all the army officers took everybody left in Judah away to Egypt, together with all the people who had returned from the nations where they had been scattered: ⁶the men, the women, the children, and the king's daughters. They took everyone whom Nebuzaradan the commanding officer had left under the care of Gedaliah, including Baruch and me. ⁷They disobeyed the LORD's command and went into Egypt as far as the city of Tahpanhes.

⁸There the LORD said to me, ⁹"Get some large stones and bury them in the mortar of the pavement in front of the entrance to the government building here in the city, and let some of the Israelites see you do it. ¹⁰Then tell them that I, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, am going to bring my servant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia to this place, and he will put his throne over these stones that you buried, and will spread the royal tent over them. ¹¹Nebuchadnezzar will come and defeat Egypt. Those people who are doomed to die of disease will die of disease, those doomed to be taken away as prisoners will be taken away as prisoners, and those doomed to be killed in war will be killed in war. ¹²I will set fire to the temples of Egypt's gods, and the king of Babylonia will either burn their gods or carry them off. As shepherds pick their clothes clean of lice, so the king of Babylonia will pick the land of Egypt clean and then leave victorious. ¹³He will destroy the sacred stone monuments at Heliopolis in Egypt and will burn down the temples of the Egyptian gods."

The LORD's Message to the Israelites in Egypt

Jeremiah 44 The LORD spoke to me concerning all the Israelites living in Egypt, in the cities of Migdol, Tahpanhes, and Memphis, and in the southern part of the country. ²The LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, said, "You yourselves have seen the destruction I brought on Jerusalem and all the other cities of Judah. Even now they are still in ruins, and no one lives in them ³because their people had done evil and had made me angry. They offered sacrifices to other gods and served gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors ever worshiped. ⁴I kept sending you my servants the prophets, who told you not to do this terrible thing that I hate. ⁵But you would not listen or pay any attention. You would not give up your evil practice of sacrificing to other gods. ⁶So I poured out my anger and fury on the towns of Judah and on the streets of Jerusalem, and I set them on fire. They were left in ruins and became a horrifying sight, as they are today.

⁷"And so I, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, now ask why you are doing such an evil thing to yourselves. Do you want to bring destruction on men and women, children and babies, so that none of your people will be left? ⁸Why do you make me angry by worshiping idols and by sacrificing to other gods here in Egypt, where you have come to live? Are you doing this just to destroy yourselves, so that every nation on earth will make fun of you and use your name as a curse? ⁹Have you forgotten all the wicked things that have been done in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem by your ancestors, by the kings of Judah and their wives, and by you and your wives? ¹⁰But to this day you have not humbled yourselves. You have not honored me or lived according to all the laws that I gave you and your ancestors.

¹¹"So then, I, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, will turn against you and destroy all Judah. ¹²As for the people of Judah who are left and are determined to go and live in Egypt, I will see to it that all of them are destroyed. All of them, great and small, will die in Egypt, either in war or of starvation. They will be a horrifying sight; people will make fun of them and use their name as a curse. ¹³I will punish those who live in Egypt, just as I punished Jerusalem--with war, starvation, and disease. ¹⁴None of the people of Judah who are left and have come to Egypt to live will escape or survive. Not one of them will return to Judah, where they long to live once again. No one will return except a few refugees."

¹⁵Then all the men who knew that their wives offered sacrifices to other gods, and all the women who were standing there, including the Israelites who lived in southern Egypt--a large crowd in all--said to me, ¹⁶"We refuse to listen to what you have told us in the name of the LORD. ¹⁷We will do everything that we said we would. We will offer sacrifices to our goddess, the Queen of Heaven, and we will pour out wine offerings to her, just as we and our ancestors, our king and our leaders, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. Then we had plenty of food, we were prosperous, and had no troubles. ¹⁸But ever since we stopped sacrificing to the Queen of Heaven and stopped pouring out wine offerings to her, we have had nothing, and our people have died in war and of starvation."

¹⁹And the women added, "When we baked cakes shaped like the Queen of Heaven, offered sacrifices to her, and poured out wine offerings to her, our husbands approved of what we were doing."

²⁰Then I said to all the men and the women who had answered me in this way, ²¹"As for the sacrifices which you and your ancestors, your kings and your leaders, and the people of the land offered in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem--do you think that the LORD did not know about them or that he forgot them? ²²This very day your land lies in ruins and no one lives in it. It has become a horrifying sight, and people use its name as a curse because the LORD could no longer endure your wicked and evil practices. ²³This present disaster has come on you because you offered sacrifices to other gods and sinned against the LORD by not obeying all his commands."

^24-25I told all the people, especially the women, what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, was saying to the people of Judah living in Egypt: "Both you and your wives have made solemn promises to the Queen of Heaven. You promised that you would offer sacrifices to her and pour out wine offerings to her, and you have kept your promises. Very well, then! Keep your promises! Carry out your vows! ²⁶But now listen to the vow that I, the LORD, have made in my mighty name to all you Israelites in Egypt: Never again will I let any of you use my name to make a vow by saying, 'I swear by the living Sovereign LORD!' ²⁷I will see to it that you will not prosper, but will be destroyed. All of you will die, either in war or of disease, until not one of you is left. ²⁸But a few of you will escape death and return from Egypt to Judah. Then the survivors will know whose words have come true, mine or theirs. ²⁹I, the LORD, will give you proof that I will punish you in this place and that my promise to bring destruction on you will come true. ³⁰I will hand over King Hophra of Egypt to his enemies who want to kill him, just as I handed over King Zedekiah of Judah to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, who was his enemy and wanted to kill him."

A Prayer for Protection

Psalm 140 Save me, LORD, from evildoers;

keep me safe from violent people.

²They are always plotting evil,

always stirring up quarrels.

³Their tongues are like deadly snakes;

their words are like a cobra's poison.

⁴Protect me, LORD, from the power of the wicked;

keep me safe from violent people

who plot my downfall.

⁵The proud have set a trap for me;

they have laid their snares,

and along the path they have set traps to catch me.

⁶I say to the LORD, "You are my God."

Hear my cry for help, LORD!

⁷My Sovereign LORD, my strong defender,

you have protected me in battle.

⁸LORD, don't give the wicked what they want;

don't let their plots succeed.

⁹Don't let my enemies be victorious;

make their threats against me fall back on them.

¹⁰May red-hot coals fall on them;

may they be thrown into a pit and never get out.

¹¹May those who accuse others falsely not succeed;

may evil overtake violent people and destroy them.

¹²LORD, I know that you defend the cause of the poor

and the rights of the needy.

¹³The righteous will praise you indeed;

they will live in your presence.

This reading is from The Holy Bible, Today's English Version, Second Edition copyright © American Bible Society, 1992;
Old Testament copyright © American Bible Society, 1976, 1992; New Testament © American Bible Society, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992.

These daily Bible readings from the Good News Translation (GNT), formerly the Today's English Version (TEV), are published by BibleNetUSA. The web site and BibleCard® designs are by iCreative. All BibleCard® images are copyrighted by iCreative. All rights reserved.