[Such teaching will be spread] by hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared over as with a hot iron [i.e., making them insensitive to their guilt].
They have stopped caring [i.e., about morality], so God has abandoned them to lives of unrestrained indecency and to engage in all kinds of [moral] impurity, with a constant desire for more.
For such men are not serving our Lord Christ but their own [unspiritual] appetites. They are deceiving the minds of innocent people by their smooth talk and flattering words.
[Indeed, even] from among your own selves [i.e., the body of elders there in Ephesus] some men will arise and, by speaking false things, they will lead away the disciples, [influencing them] to follow them.
For they are spirits of demons, which perform [supernatural] signs. These spirits go out to the kings of the whole world to assemble them for battle on the great day of Almighty God.
And since these people refused to acknowledge God, He has allowed [or, abandoned] them to have degraded minds and to practice those things which they should not do.
For false christs and false prophets will appear and they will perform great [miraculous] signs and [supernatural] wonders in order to lead astray even the elect [i.e., God’s people], if possible.
Then we will no longer be [spiritual] babies, tossed back and forth [by waves], and blown around by every wind of [false] teaching, [deceived] by the clever trickery of people using deceptive schemes.