But if a widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to practice piety in the treatment of their own families, and to pay the debt they owe their parents or grandparents, for this is acceptable to God.

Keep the young widows off this roll, for when they get to indulging their lower nature in opposition to Christ, they want to marry,

Besides, as they get the habit of gadding about from house to house, they learn to be idle, and not only idle but gossips and busybodies, talking of things they ought not to mention.

Elders who do their duties well should be considered as deserving twice the salary they get especially those who keep on toiling in preaching and teaching.

Good deeds, too, are usually very evident, and if they are not, they cannot be completely concealed.

Those who have Christian masters must not pay them less respect because they are brothers; they must serve them all the better, because those who get the benefit of their service are believers and so are dear to them. These are the things that you must continue to teach and urge them to do.

in this way amassing for themselves the riches that forever endure in the life to come, so that at last they may grasp the life that is life indeed.

For this reason I am bearing anything for the sake of His chosen people, so that they too may obtain the salvation that comes through Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.

Continue shunning worldly, futile phrases, for they lead on to greater depths of godlessness,

Always avoid foolish discussions with ignorant men, for you know that they breed quarrels,

and they might recover their senses and escape from the devil's trap in which they have been caught by him to do his will.

Just as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, these people resist the truth, for they are depraved in mind and so counterfeits in the faith.

But they will not make any more progress, for their folly will be evident to everybody, as theirs was.

For a time will come when they will not listen to wholesome teaching, but to gratify their own evil desires will surround themselves with teachers who teach to gratify their own evil desires, because their ears are itching so to be tickled,

and they will cease to listen to the truth and will turn to listen to myths.

whose mouths must be stopped, for they upset whole families by teaching things they ought not to think, for the sake of dishonest gain.

Now this tendency is true. So continue correcting them severely, that they may be healthy in faith,

They profess to know God, but by their actions they disown Him; they are detestable, disobedient, and useless for anything good.

to stop resisting them and stealing from them, but to show such perfect fidelity as to adorn, in everything they do, the teaching of God our Saviour.

Give a hearty send-off to Zenas the lawyer, and Apollos, so that they may want for nothing.

They will perish, but you always remain; they all will grow old like a coat,

And you will fold them up just like a robe, and they will be changed like the changing of one's coat, but you are the same, and your years will never cease."

You must not harden your hearts as they did in provoking me, as on the day in the desert they tested me,

Where your forefathers found I stood their test, because they saw my works for forty years,

So I was indignant with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have never come to know my ways.'

So in my anger I took oath, 'They shall not be admitted to my rest!'"

and yet the warning continues to be spoken: "If you but hear His voice, you must not harden your hearts as they did in provoking me."

To whom did He take oath that they should not be admitted to His rest, if it was not to those who disobeyed Him?

So we see that it was because of their unbelief that they could not be admitted to it.

For we have had the good news told to us as well as they, but the message heard did them no good, because they were not by faith made one with those who heeded it.

For we who have believed are being admitted to that rest, just as He has said: "As in my anger I took oath, they shall not be admitted to my rest," although God's works had been completed at the creation of the world.

while in this passage again He says: "They shall not be admitted to my rest."

and then have fallen by the wayside -- it is impossible, I say, to keep on restoring them to their first repentance, since they continue to crucify the Son of God to their detriment and hold Him up to contempt.

And those of the descendants of Levi who accept the priesthood are authorized by the law to collect a tenth from the people; that is, from their own brothers, though they have sprung from Abraham.

And the Levitical priests, on the one hand, have become numerous, because they have been prevented by death from continuing in office,

and yet they officiate in a sanctuary that is a mere copy and shadow of the heavenly one, as Moses, when he was about to make the tent of worship, was warned, for, said He, "See to it that you make it all just like the pattern shown you on the mountain."

Unlike the one that I made with their forefathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them out from the land of Egypt, for they did not abide by their covenant with me, so I did not care for them,' says the Lord.

'For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel in those days,' says the Lord; 'I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. And nevermore will each one need to teach his fellow-citizen,

for it is merely a symbol of the present time in connection with which gifts and sacrifices are repeatedly offered though they cannot make the conscience of the worshiper perfect,

since they deal only with food and drink and various washings, that is, with mere material regulations which are in force only until the time of setting things straight.

Otherwise, would they not have ceased offering them, because those who offered them, having once been purified, would have had no further consciousness of sins?

Every other priest stands officiating day after day and over and over again offering the same sacrifices, although they are unable to take away our sins.

These people all died victoriously as a result of their faith, although they did not receive the blessings promised; that is, because they really saw them in the far-off future and welcomed them, and so professed to be only foreigners and strangers here on earth.

For people who make such a profession as this show that they are in search of a country of their own.

And if they had been cherishing the memory of the country they had left, they would have had an opportunity to go back.

But in reality they were aspiring for a better country, I mean, a heavenly one. This is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

By faith, Moses, at his birth was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw that he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king's decree.

By faith they crossed the Red Sea as though it were dry land, while the Egyptians, in attempting it, were drowned.

Women by a resurrection received their dead again; others endured tortures, because they would not accept release, that they might rise to a better life.

They were stoned to death, they were tortured to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. With nothing on their bodies but skins of sheep or goats they wandered here and there, destitute, oppressed, mistreated --

for God had provided something still better for us, that they, apart from us might not attain perfection.

For they disciplined us only a short time, as it seemed proper to them, but He does it for our good, in order that we may share His holy character.

for they did not try to bear the order, "Even if a wild animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death,"

See to it that you do not refuse to listen to Him who is speaking to you. For if they did not escape, because they refused to listen to him who warned them here on earth, how much less can we, if we reject Him who is from heaven?

You must not forget your former leaders, for it was they who brought you the message of God. Consider how they closed their lives; imitate their faith.

Continue to obey and to be submissive to your leaders, for they are ever watching in defense of your souls, as men who will have to give account of their trust. Treat them in this way, so that they may work with joy and not with grief.

Are not they the ones who scoff at the beautiful name you bear?

Look at ships, too; though great and driven by violent winds, they are steered with a tiny rudder wherever the pilot pleases.

Is anyone sick among you? He should call in the elders of the church, and they should pray over him, and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord,

It was made known to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in their searching for these things that have already been told to you by those who through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven brought you the good news. The angels long to take a peep into these things.

and: "A stone for them to stumble over and a rock to trip them up." They keep on stumbling over the message, because they are disobedient to it, and this is their appointed doom.

Dearly beloved, I beg you as aliens and exiles to keep on abstaining from the evil desires of your lower nature, because they are always at war with the soul.

Keep on living upright lives among the heathen, so that, when they slander you as evildoers, by what they see of your good deeds they may come to praise God on the judgment day.

You married women, in the same way, must be submissive to your husbands, so that, if any of them do not believe the message, they may be won over without a word through the living of the wives,

when they see how chaste and respectful you are.

but they must be of an internal nature, the character concealed in the heart, in the imperishable quality of a quiet and gentle spirit, which is of great value in the sight of God.

They were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah, for example, obeyed Abraham and called him master. You have become true daughters of hers, if you practice doing right and cease from every fear.

You married men, in the same way, must live with your wives in an intelligent consideration of them; you must show them deference, too, as the weaker sex, as they share with you the gracious gift of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

They are astonished that you are not still rushing hand in hand with them into the same excesses of profligate living, and they abuse you for it;

but they will have to give account for it to Him who is ready to judge living and dead.

This is why the good news was preached to the dead too, that they may be judged in their physical nature as men are, but live in the Spirit as God does.

For if you have these qualities and they continue to increase in you, they will make you neither idle nor unproductive in attaining a full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In their greed they will exploit you with messages manufactured by themselves. From of old their condemnation has not been idle and their destruction has not been slumbering.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but hurled them down to Tartarus and committed them to dark dungeons to await their doom,

especially those who satisfy their lower nature by indulging in its evil passions which defile them, and who despise authority. Daring, headstrong men! They do not tremble when they abuse persons of majesty,

These men, like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct created to be caught and killed, abuse the things that they do not understand, and so by their corruption they will be destroyed, suffering wrong as punishment for their wrongdoing.

They think their daily luxurious living real pleasure; they are spots and blots, deceitfully living in luxurious pleasure while they continue their religious feasting with you.

They have eyes full of adultery and insatiable by sin. They practice enticing unsteady souls. They have trained their hearts in greed. They are doomed to a curse!

They have left the straight road and gone astray. They have followed the road that Balaam, the son of Beor, trod, who fell in love with the profits of wrongdoing

Such men are dried-up springs, clouds driven by the storm, and they are doomed to densest darkness.

For by uttering arrogant nonsense, through base desires of the lower nature, they entice into immorality men who are just escaping from those who live in error,

promising them freedom, though they are slaves of destruction themselves; for a man is the slave of anything that conquers him.

For if, after men have escaped the corrupting ways of the world through a full knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they again become entangled in them and are conquered by them, then their last condition is worse than their former one.

For they willfully ignore the fact that long ago the heavens existed and the earth that had been formed by God's command out of water and through water,

speaking of it as he does in all his letters. In them are some things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsteady twist to their ruin, as they do the rest of the Scriptures.

They have gone out from our own number, but they did not really belong to us; for if they had, they would have stayed with us. It was to show that none of those who went out really belonged to us.

Dearly beloved, stop believing every so-called spiritual utterance, but keep testing them to see whether they come from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

They are children of the world; this is why they speak what the world inspires, and why the world listens to them.

Dearly beloved, you are acting faithfully in doing what you can for the brothers, especially as they are strangers.

They have testified before the church to your love. You will please send them off on their journey in a way befitting the service of God.

For they have started out for His name's sake and so accept nothing from the heathen,

But these persons abuse everything they do not understand, and they are going to be destroyed by the very things they know by instinct, like the irrational animals.

Alas for them, because they have trod the road that Cain did; for gain they have rushed into Balaam's error and have perished in rebellion like that of Korah!

They are blots on your love feasts while they feast with you, daringly caring for no one but themselves; rainless clouds swept along by winds; leafless trees that bear no fruit, doubly dead, uprooted;

to execute judgment upon all, to convict all the godless of their godless deeds which in their godlessness they have committed, and of all the harsh things that godless sinners have said against Him."

These persons are grumblers, ever complaining about their lot. They live to satisfy their evil passions, their lips boast arrogant things, and they flatter others for personal gain.

because they said to you, "In the last times there will be mockers who will live to satisfy their own godless passions."

"I know what you have done; your hard work and patient endurance; that you cannot tolerate wicked persons; that you have tested those who claimed to be apostles although they were not, and have found them to be imposters,

"I know your pressing trouble and poverty, but still you are rich; I know how you are abused by those who claim to be Jews although they are not, but are only a synagogue of Satan.

See! I am going to lay her on a bed of sickness, and bring down to great and pressing sorrow those who practice immorality with her, unless they repent of their practices;