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Be Prepared
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to
all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires
and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,
looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of
our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.
(Titus 2:11-13)
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God;
and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive
and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with
the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
(1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)
Now as to the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need of
anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well
that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.
While they are saying, "Peace and safety!" then destruction will
come upon them suddenly like birth pangs upon a woman with child;
and they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness,
that the day should overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons
of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so
then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.
For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get
drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be
sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a
helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for
wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who died for us, that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live
together with Him. Therefore encourage one another, and build up
one another, just as you also are doing.
(1 Thessalonians 5:1-11)
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that
with the Lord one day is as thousand year, and a thousand years as
one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness,
but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all
to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief,
in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will
be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be
burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way,
what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,
looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, on account
of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements
will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking
for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
(2 Peter 3:8-13)
Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be
found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience
of our Lord to be salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul,
according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his
letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard
to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also
the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore,
beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard lest, being carried
away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness,
but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
(2 Peter 3:14-18)
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one
receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. And everyone who
competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it
to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in
such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air.
(1 Corinthians 9:24-26)
Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet;
but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching
forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the
prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
(Philippians 3:13-14)
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