For the Lord's message has rung out from you not only over Macedonia and Greece, but the story of your belief in God has gone everywhere, so that we never need to mention it.

For when people speak of us, they tell what a welcome you gave us, and how you turned from idols to God, to serve a true and living God,

and to wait for the coming from heaven of his Son, whom he raised from the dead??esus, our deliverer from God's coming wrath.

You know yourselves, brothers, that our visit to you was far from ineffectual.

For our appeal does not rest on a delusion, nor spring from any impure motive; there is no fraud about it.

We never sought praise from men, either from you or anyone else, though as Christ's apostles we might have stood on our dignity.

We for our part constantly thank God for another reason too??ecause when you received God's message from our lips, you welcomed it not as the message of men but as the message of God, as it really is, which does its work in the hearts of you believers.

For you, brothers, followed the example of God's churches in Judea that are in union with Christ Jesus, for you in your turn had to bear the same ill-treatment from your neighbors as they did from the Jews,

try to keep us from speaking to the heathen so that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God's wrath has overtaken them at last!

For our part, brothers, when we were separated from you for a little while??n person, though not in spirit??e were extremely eager and longed intensely to see you.

But now that Timothy has just come back to me from you, and brought me good news of your faith and love, and told me how kindly you think of me and that you long to see me just as much as I long to see you,

for now I can really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.

Now, brothers, we ask and entreat you, in the name of the Lord Jesus, to live as you learned from us that you must live, to please God??s indeed you are doing, only do it more and more.

It is God's will that you should be consecrated, that you abstain from immorality,

that each of you learn to take a wife for himself from pure and honorable motives,

For the Lord himself, at the summons, when the archangel calls and God's trumpet sounds, will come down from heaven, and first those who died in union with Christ will rise;