But I am afraid that, as the serpent in his craftiness deceived Eve, so your minds may be led astray from their single-heartedness and their fidelity to Christ.
For there will rise up false Christs and false prophets, displaying wonderful signs and prodigies, so as to deceive, were it possible, even God's own People.
The father whose sons you are is the Devil; and you desire to do what gives him pleasure. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand firm in the truth–for there is no truth in him. Whenever he utters his lie, he utters it out of his own store; for he is a liar, and the father of lies.
The teacher must do the same in his teaching; and he who exhorts others, in his exhortation. He who gives should be liberal; he who is in authority should be energetic and alert; and he who succours the afflicted should do it cheerfully.
For the reason for our boasting is this–the testimony of our own conscience that it was in holiness and with pure motives before God, and in reliance not on worldly wisdom but on the gracious help of God, that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and above all in our relations with you.
We are; for, unlike most teachers, we are not fraudulent hucksters of God's Message; but with transparent motives, as commissioned by God, in God's presence and in communion with Christ, so we speak.
Nay, we have renounced the secrecy which marks a feeling of shame. We practice no cunning tricks, nor do we adulterate God's Message. But by a full clear statement of the truth we strive to commend ourselves in the presence of God to every human conscience.
Yet there was danger of this through the false brethren secretly introduced into the Church, who had stolen in to spy out the freedom which is ours in Christ Jesus, in order to rob us of it.
So we shall no longer be babes nor shall we resemble mariners tossed on the waves and carried about with every changing wind of doctrine according to men's cleverness and unscrupulous cunning, making use of every shifting device to mislead.
Let no one defraud you of your prize, priding himself on his humility and on his worship of the angels, and taking his stand on the visions he has seen, and idly puffed up with his unspiritual thoughts.
Take care lest there be some one who leads you away as prisoners by means of his philosophy and idle fancies, following human traditions and the world's crude notions instead of following Christ.
For this reason I also, when I could no longer endure the uncertainty, sent to know the condition of your faith, lest perchance the Tempter might have tempted you and our labour have been lost.
When I was on my journey to Macedonia I begged you to remain on in Ephesus that you might remonstrate with certain persons because of their erroneous teaching
Do not be drawn aside by all sorts of strange teaching; for it is well to have the heart made stedfast through God's grace, and not by special kinds of food, from which those who scrupulously attend to them have derived no benefit.
You, therefore, dear friends, having been warned beforehand, must continually be on your guard so as not to be led astray by the false teaching of immoral men nor fall from your own stedfastness.
Dear children, the last hour has come; and as you once heard that there was to be an anti-Christ, so even now many anti-Christs have appeared. By this we may know that the last hour has come.
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but put the spirits to the test to see whether they are from God; for many false teachers have gone out into the world.
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.
The great Dragon, the ancient serpent, he who is called `the Devil' and `the Adversary' and leads the whole earth astray, was hurled down: he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him.
He laid hold of the Dragon –the ancient serpent– who is the Devil and the Adversary, and bound him for a thousand years, and hurled him into the bottomless pit.