Study Desk

For you are our glory and joy!

We sent Timothy, our brother and fellow worker for God in the gospel of Christ, to strengthen you and encourage you about your faith,

so that no one would be shaken by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this.

For in fact when we were with you, we were telling you in advance that we would suffer affliction, and so it has happened, as you well know.

So when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter somehow tempted you and our toil had proven useless.

For now we are alive again, if you stand firm in the Lord.

For how can we thank God enough for you, for all the joy we feel because of you before our God?

And may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we do for you,

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

For this is God's will: that you become holy, that you keep away from sexual immorality,

For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness.

Now on the topic of brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians.

For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Now on the topic of times and seasons, brothers and sisters, you have no need for anything to be written to you.

For you know quite well that the day of the Lord will come in the same way as a thief in the night.

But you, brothers and sisters, are not in the darkness for the day to overtake you like a thief would.

For you all are sons of the light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of the darkness.

For those who sleep, sleep at night and those who get drunk are drunk at night.