Ridiculers Foretold

3, 4. To what “sayings” of Jesus’ apostles did Jude refer?

³ Providing an important reminder, Jude wrote:

“As for you, beloved ones, call to mind the sayings that have been previously spoken by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how they used to say to you: ‘In the last time there will be ridiculers, proceeding according to their own desires for ungodly things.’

Jude said much to expose the “ungodly men” who slyly crept into the congregation. Then, entreating fellow believers for whom he had great affection, Jude bid them to recall words previously spoken by Jesus’ apostles. Recalling those sayings should have moved all genuine Christians to “put up a hard fight for the faith.”

⁴ The apostle Paul warned fellow overseers that from among them men would “rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves.” (Acts 20:29, 30) He told Timothy that ‘in later times some would fall away from the faith.’ (1 Timothy 4:1, 2) And the apostle Peter specifically warned that ‘in the last days there would come ridiculers, saying: “Where is this promised presence of his?”’​—2 Peter 3:1-4.

5. How may faithful Christians have been treated by the “ungodly men” who had slipped into the congregation, but how should godly persons have reacted to this?

⁵ Hence, recipients of Jude’s letter had good reason to expect “ridiculers” to appear during the period that immediately preceded the end of the Jewish system of things. It was not unlikely that the “ungodly men” who had slipped into the congregation were ridiculing faithful believers who adhered to Jehovah’s righteous standards and would not join the “false brothers” in loose conduct. But it was essential that godly persons “put up a hard fight for the faith,” even though they might have been derided by false teachers who ‘proceeded according to’ and were driven by their own immoral “desires for ungodly things.”​—Compare 2 Corinthians 11:26; Galatians 2:4, 5.