Verse 18.— How they told you there should be mockers in the last time. This is now what the inspired apostles had declared would occur. In the last time— that is, about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem— mockers should appear— men professing superior light and knowledge, disregarding the teaching of the chosen witnesses of Christ, setting it at naught, ridiculing and scoffing at it as of human invention and not God-given; and these mockers, although professing superior excellence, would conduct themselves after the low and beastly patterns set by the pagan idolaters.