Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily, and justly, and faultlessly we conducted ourselves among you that believe:

For ye, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus: for ye suffered the same things also yourselves from your own countrymen, as they too have of the Jews;

who both murdered the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are in opposition to all mankind;

For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?

For ye are our glory and joy.

that no man might be shaken by these tribulations; for ye yourselves know that thereunto we are appointed.

But now when Timothy returned to us from you, and brought us the glad tidings of your faith and love, and that ye retain a kind remembrance of us always, earnestly desirous to see us, as we are also to see you:

Now concerning brotherly love, I have no need to write unto you: for ye yourselves are divinely taught to love one another.

And indeed ye practise it towards all the brethren that are throughout Macedonia: but we conjure you, brethren, to abound more and more;

Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are fallen asleep, that ye be not afflicted, as the rest [of mankind] who have no hope.

For this I say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent those who are fallen asleep.

then we who are alive, who remain, shall be caught up together with them into the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day should overtake you as a thief.

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of day: we are not the children of night, nor of darkness.

For they who sleep, sleep in the night, and they who are drunken, are drunken in the night;

but let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.