MATTHEW 7:15-20
A Tree and Its Fruit
(Luke 6.43-45)

Watch out for false prophets!  They dress up like sheep, but inside they are wolves who have come to attack you.  You can tell what they are by what they do.  No one picks grapes or figs from thorn bushes.  A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit.  A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.  Every tree that produces bad fruit will be chopped down and burned.  You can tell who the false prophets are by their deeds.

2 PETER 2:1-22
False Prophets and Teachers

Sometimes false prophets spoke to the people of Israel.  False teachers will also sneak in and speak harmful lies to you.  But these teachers don't really belong to the Master who paid a great price for them, and they will quickly destroy themselves.  Many people will follow their evil ways and cause others to tell lies about the true way.  They will be greedy and cheat you with smooth talk.  But long ago God decided to punish them, and God doesn't sleep.

God did not have pity on the angels that sinned.  He had them tied up and thrown into the dark pits of hell until the time of judgment.  And during Noah's time, God did not have pity on the ungodly people of the world.  He destroyed them with a flood, though he did save eight people, including Noah, who preached the truth.

God punished the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and this is a warning to anyone else who wants to sin.  Lot lived right and was greatly troubled by the terrible way those wicked people were living.  He was a good man, and day after day he suffered because of the evil things he saw and heard.  So the Lord rescued him.  This shows that the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their sufferings and to punish evil people while they wait for the day of judgment.

The Lord is especially hard on people who disobey him and don't think of anything except their own filthy desires.  They are reckless and proud and are not afraid of cursing the glorious beings in heaven.  Although angels are more powerful than these evil beings, even the angels don't dare to accuse them to the Lord.  These people are no better than senseless animals that live by their feelings and are born to be caught and killed.  They speak evil of things they don't know anything about.  But their own corrupt deeds will destroy them.  They have done evil, and they will be rewarded with evil.

They think it is fun to have wild parties during the day.  They are immoral, and the meals they eat with you are spoiled by the shameful and selfish way they carry on.  All they think about is having sex with someone else's husband or wife.  There is no end to their wicked deeds.  They trick people who are easily fooled, and their minds are filled with greedy thoughts.  But they are headed for trouble!  They have left the true road and have gone down the wrong path by following the example of the prophet Balaam.  He was the son of Beor and loved what he got from being a crook.  But a donkey corrected him for this evil deed.  It spoke to him with a human voice and made him stop his foolishness.

These people are like dried up water holes and clouds blown by a windstorm.  The darkest part of hell is waiting for them.  They brag out loud about their stupid nonsense.  And by being vulgar and crude, they trap people who have barely escaped from living the wrong kind of life.  They promise freedom to everyone.  But they are merely slaves of filthy living, because people are slaves of whatever controls them.

When they learned about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they escaped from the filthy things of this world.  But they are again caught up and controlled by these filthy things, and now they are in worse shape than they were at first.  They would have been better off if they had never known about the right way.  Even after they knew what was right, they turned their backs on the holy commandments that they were given.  What happened to them is just like the true saying, "A dog will come back to lick up its own vomit.  A pig that has been washed will roll in the mud."

1 JOHN 4:1-6
God Is Love

Dear friends, don't believe everyone who claims to have the Spirit of God.  Test them all to find out if they really do come from God.  Many false prophets have already gone out into the world, and you can know which ones come from God.  His Spirit says that Jesus Christ had a truly human body.  But when someone doesn't say this about Jesus, you know that person has a spirit that doesn't come from God and is the enemy of Christ.  You knew that this enemy was coming into the world and now is already here.

Children, you belong to God, and you have defeated these enemies.  God's Spirit is in you and is more powerful than the one that is in the world.  These enemies belong to this world, and the world listens to them, because they speak its language.  We belong to God, and everyone who knows God will listen to us.  But the people who don't know God won't listen to us.  That is how we can tell the Spirit that speaks the truth from the one that tells lies.