Study Desk

I have known Silvanus as a faithful Christian brother and it is by him I have written this short letter to help you. It tells you of the true loving-favor of God. Stay true in His loving-favor.

May you have more and more of His loving-favor and peace as you come to know God and our Lord Jesus Christ better.

He gives us everything we need for life and for holy living. He gives it through His great power. As we come to know Him better, we learn that He called us to share His own shining-greatness and perfect life.

Through His shining-greatness and perfect life, He has given us promises. These promises are of great worth and no amount of money can buy them. Through these promises you can have God's own life in you now that you have gotten away from the sinful things of the world which came from wrong desires of the flesh.

Christian brothers, make sure you are among those He has chosen and called out for His own. As long as you do these things, you will never trip and fall.

We had nothing to do with man-made stories when we told you about the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His coming again. We have seen His great power with our own eyes.

But there were false teachers among the people. And there will be false teachers among you also. These people will work in secret ways to bring false teaching to you. They will turn against Christ Who bought them with His blood. They bring fast death on themselves.

God did not hold back from punishing the people of the world who sinned long ago. He brought the flood on the world of sinners. But Noah was a preacher of right living. He and his family of seven were the only ones God saved.

He saw and heard how the people around him broke the Law. Everyday his own soul which was right with God was troubled because of their sinful ways.

they have left the right way and have gone the wrong way. They have followed the way of Balaam, who was the son of Beor. He loved the money he got for his sin.

But he was stopped in his sin. A donkey spoke to him with a man's voice. It stopped this early preacher from going on in his crazy way.

But the heaven we see now and the earth we live on now have been kept by His word. They will be kept until they are to be destroyed by fire. They will be kept until the day men stand before God and sinners will be destroyed.

The Lord is not slow about keeping His promise as some people think. He is waiting for you. The Lord does not want any person to be punished forever. He wants all people to be sorry for their sins and turn from them.

You can be sure the long waiting of our Lord is part of His plan to save men from the punishment of sin. God gave our dear brother Paul the wisdom to write about this also.

He wrote about these things in all of his writings. Some of these things are hard to understand. People who do not have much understanding and some who are not strong in the faith change the meaning of his letters. They do this to the other parts of the Holy Writings also. They are destroying themselves as they do this.

We are preaching what we have heard and seen. We want you to share together with us what we have with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

If we live in the light as He is in the light, we share what we have in God with each other. And the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, makes our lives clean from all sin.

If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar. And His Word is not in our hearts.

He paid for our sins with His own blood. He did not pay for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.

We can be sure that we know Him if we obey His teaching.