They're always on the lookout for adulterous relationships—they just can't stop sinning. They seduce the vulnerable; they have trained themselves in greed; they are offspring under a curse.
No babies will die after just a few days, and no adults will die without having lived a long life. Those who reach a hundred will be thought of as just a child, and anyone who doesn't reach a hundred will be seen as being under a curse.
Can Ethiopians change the color of their skin? Can a leopard change its spots? In the same way you can't change and do good because you're so used to doing evil.
and tell them that this is what the Lord God says: Disaster is coming to the women who sew bracelets of magic charms for their wrists and make veils for all kinds of people to wear as ways to trap and exploit them. Do you think you can trap the lives of my people yet still keep your own?
For false Messiahs and false prophets will appear, and they will perform miraculous signs and wonders to deceive the chosen of God, if that were possible.
These people are not serving Christ our Lord but their own appetites, and by their smooth-talking and pleasant words they deceive the minds of unsuspecting people.
All of us were once like that, our behavior determined by the desires of our sinful human nature and our evil way of thinking. Like everyone else, in our nature we were children of anger.
We shouldn't be little children any more, tossed about and blown along by every passing breeze of doctrine, confused by human trickery, led into error by crafty people who deceitfully scheme.
Don't let anyone cheat you out of your prize by insisting you have to beat yourself, or worship angels. They think they are better than anyone else because of visions they say they've had, and become ridiculously conceited in their sinful minds.
Inflated with their own nonsense, they appeal to sensual desires, luring back into immorality those who have only just escaped from those who live in error.
They will greedily exploit you with false tales. However, they are already condemned: their sentence has been hanging over them for a long time, and their destruction won't be postponed.
He spoke about these things, though some of what he wrote is certainly hard to understand. Some ignorant and unbalanced people have twisted what he wrote to their own loss—just as they do other scriptures.
For all the things of this world—our sinful desires, wanting everything we see, boasting about what we've accomplished in life— these things don't come from the Father but from the world.
They're in terrible trouble! For they have followed Cain's way. Like Balaam and his delusion, they have abandoned themselves to the profit motive. Like Korah and his rebellion, they have destroyed themselves.