2 Thessalonians 1; 2 Thessalonians 2; 2 Thessalonians 3

1 From Paul, Silas, and Timothy.

2 Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 We must always thank God for you, brothers and sisters. This is only right, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love that every one of you has for each other is increasing.

4 So we brag about you to the other churches of God. We tell them about the way you continue to be strong and have faith even though you are being treated badly and are suffering many troubles.

5 This is proof that God is right in his judgment. He wants you to be counted worthy of his kingdom for which you are suffering.

6 God will do what is right. He will give trouble to those who trouble you.

7 And he will give rest to you who are troubled and to us also when the Lord Jesus appears with burning fire from heaven with his powerful angels.

8 Then he will punish those who do not know God and who do not obey the Good News about our Lord Jesus Christ.

9 Those people will be punished with a destruction that continues forever. They will be kept away from the Lord and from his great power.

10 This will happen on the day when the Lord Jesus comes to receive glory because of his holy people. And all the people who have believed will be amazed at Jesus. You will be in that group, because you believed what we told you.

11 That is why we always pray for you, asking our God to help you live the kind of life he called you to live. We pray that with his power God will help you do the good things you want and perform the works that come from your faith.

12 We pray all this so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ will have glory in you, and you will have glory in him. That glory comes from the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Brothers and sisters, we have something to say about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and the time when we will meet together with him.

2 Do not become easily upset in your thinking or afraid if you hear that the day of the Lord has already come. Someone may say this in a prophecy or in a message or in a letter as if it came from us.

3 Do not let anyone fool you in any way. That day of the Lord will not come until the turning awayn from God happens and the Man of Evil, who is on his way to hell, appears.

4 He will be against and put himself above anything called God or anything that people worship. And that Man of Evil will even go into God's Temple and sit there and say that he is God.

5 I told you when I was with you that all this would happen. Do you not remember?

6 And now you know what is stopping that Man of Evil so he will appear at the right time.

7 The secret power of evil is already working in the world, but there is one who is stopping that power. And he will continue to stop it until he is taken out of the way.

8 Then that Man of Evil will appear, and the Lord Jesus will kill him with the breath that comes from his mouth and will destroy him with the glory of his coming.

9 The Man of Evil will come by the power of Satan. He will have great power, and he will do many different false miracles, signs, and wonders.

10 He will use every kind of evil to trick those who are lost. They will die, because they refused to love the truth. (If they loved the truth, they would be saved.)

11 For this reason God sends them something powerful that leads them away from the truth so they will believe a lie.

12 So all those will be judged guilty who did not believe the truth, but enjoyed doing evil.

13 Brothers and sisters, whom the Lord loves, God chose you from the beginning to be saved. So we must always thank God for you. You are saved by the Spirit that makes you holy and by your faith in the truth.

14 God used the Good News that we preached to call you to be saved so you can share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

15 So, brothers and sisters, stand strong and continue to believe the teachings we gave you in our speaking and in our letter.

16

17 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father encourage you and strengthen you in every good thing you do and say. God loved us, and through his grace he gave us a good hope and encouragement that continues forever.

1 And now, brothers and sisters, pray for us that the Lord's teaching will continue to spread quickly and that people will give honor to that teaching, just as happened with you.

2 And pray that we will be protected from stubborn and evil people, because not all people believe.

3 But the Lord is faithful and will give you strength and will protect you from the Evil One.

4 The Lord makes us feel sure that you are doing and will continue to do the things we told you.

5 May the Lord lead your hearts into God's love and Christ's patience.

6 Brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ we command you to stay away from any believer who refuses to work and does not follow the teaching we gave you.

7 You yourselves know that you should live as we live. We were not lazy when we were with you.

8 And when we ate another person's food, we always paid for it. We worked very hard night and day so we would not be an expense to any of you.

9 We had the right to ask you to help us, but we worked to take care of ourselves so we would be an example for you to follow.

10 When we were with you, we gave you this rule: "Anyone who refuses to work should not eat."

11 We hear that some people in your group refuse to work. They do nothing but busy themselves in other people's lives.

12 We command those people and beg them in the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and earn their own food.

13 But you, brothers and sisters, never become tired of doing good.

14 If some people do not obey what we tell you in this letter, then take note of them. Have nothing to do with them so they will feel ashamed.

15 But do not treat them as enemies. Warn them as fellow believers.

16 Now may the Lord of peace give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.

17 I, Paul, end this letter now in my own handwriting. All my letters have this to show they are from me. This is the way I write.

18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.