A Letter of Jude

     FROM JUDE, servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to  
     those whom God has called, who live in the love of God the Father   
     and in the safe keeping of Jesus Christ.   
        Mercy, peace, and love be yours in fullest measure.   
        My friends, I was fully engaged in writing to you about our salvation —   
     which is yours no less than ours — when it became urgently necessary to  
     write at once and appeal to you to join the struggle in defence of the faith,  
     the faith which God entrusted to his people once and for all.  It is in danger  
     from certain persons who have wormed their way in, the very men whom  
     Scripture long ago marked down for the doom they have incurred.  They  
     are the enemies of religion; they pervert the free favour of our God into  
     licentiousness, disowning Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.   
        You already know it all, but let me remind you how the Lord, having  
     once delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt, next time destroyed those  
     who were guilty of unbelief.  Remember too the angels, how some of them   
     were not content to keep the dominion given to them but abandon their  
     proper home; and God has reserved them for judgement on the great Day,  
     bound beneath the darkness in everlasting chain.  Remember Sodom and   
     Gomorrah and the neighbouring towns; like the angels, they committed  
     fornication and followed unnatural lusts; and they paid the penalty in  
     eternal fire, and example for all to see.   
        So too with these men today.  Their dreams lead them to defile the body,  
     to flout authority, and to insult celestial beings.  In contrast, when the  
     archangel Michael was in debate with the devil, disputing the possession  
     of Moses body, he did not presume to charge him with blasphemy,  
     but said, 'May the Lord rebuke you!'   
        but these men pour abuse upon things they do not understand; the    
     things they do understand, by instinct like brute beasts, prove their un-  
     doing.  Alas for them!  They have gone the way of Cain; they have plunged  
     into Balaam's error for pay; they have rebelled like Korah, and they share  
     his doom.   
        These men are a blot on your love-feasts, where they eat and drink with-  
     out reverence.  They are shepherds who take care only of themselves.  They  
     are clouds carried away by the wind without giving rain, trees that in  
     season bear no fruit, dead twice over and pulled up by the roots.  they are  
     fierce waves of the sea, foaming shameful deeds; they are stars that have  
     wandered from their course, and the place for ever reserved for them is  
     blackest darkness.   
        It was to them that Enoch, the seventh in descent from Adam, directed  
     his prophecy when he said: 'I saw the Lord come with his myriads of  
     angels, to bring all men to judgement and to convict all the godless of all  
     the godless deeds they had committed, and of all the defiant words which  
     godless sinners had spoken against him.'   
        They are a set of grumblers and malcontents.  They follow their lusts.   
     Big words come rolling from their lips, and they court favour to gain their  
     ends.  But you, my friends, should remember the predictions made by the  
     apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.  This was the warning they gave you:    
     'In the final age there will be men who pour scorn on religion, and follow  
     their own godless lusts.'    
        These men draw a line between spiritual and unspiritual persons,  
     though they are themselves wholly unspiritual.  But you, my friends,  
     must fortify yourselves in your most sacred faith.  Continue to pray in the  
     power of the Holy Spirit.  Keep yourselves in the love of God, and look   
     forward to the day when our Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy will give   
     eternal life.     
        There are some doubting souls who need your pity; snatch them from   
     the flames and save them.  There are others for whom your pity must be   
     mixed with fear; hate the very clothing that is contaminated with sensuality.    
        Now to the One who can keep you from falling and set you in the presence  
     of his glory, jubilant and above reproach, to the only God our Saviour, be  
     glory and majesty, might and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord,  
     before all time, now, and for evermore.  Amen.   

The New English Bible (with Apocrypha)
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970

สงครามสิ้นสุดลงแล้ว