Thessalonians (The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the )

For you know what injunctions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

For this is God's will, your sanctification, [for] you to abstain from fornication,

each one of you to know to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor,

not in passion of lust, even as also the nations [do], not knowing God;

not to go beyond and to overreach his brother in the matter, because [the] avenger concerning all these [is] the Lord, even as we told you before, and solemnly testified.

For God did not call us to impurity, but in sanctification.

Therefore, the [one] that despises does not despise man, but God, even He giving His Holy Spirit to us.

Now as to brotherly love, you have no need [for me] to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

For you also do it toward the brothers in all Macedonia. But, brothers, we exhort you to abound more.

And eagerly aspiring to be quiet, and to do [your] own things, and to work with your own hands, as we enjoined you,

that you may walk becomingly toward those outside, and that you may have need of nothing.

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who sleep, that you not grieve, as the rest also, not having hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will also bring with Him all those who have fallen asleep through Jesus.

For we say this to you in [the] Word of [the] Lord, that we the living who remain to the coming of the Lord not at all will go before those who have fallen asleep.

Because the Lord Himself shall come down from Heaven with a commanding shout of an archangel's voice, and with God's trumpet. And the dead in Christ will rise again first.

Then we who remain alive will be caught up together with them in [the] clouds to a meeting with the Lord in [the] air. And so we will always be with [the] Lord.

So, then, comfort each other with these words.