for the word of the Lord has resounded from you not only through Macedonia and Achaia ??no, your faith in God has reached every place. We never need to speak about it.

People tell us of their own accord about the visit we paid to you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and a real God

and to wait for the coming of his Son from heaven ??the Son whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the Wrath to come.

For the appeal we make does not spring from any delusion or from impure motives ??it does not work by cunning;

we never sought honour from men, from you or from anybody else, though as apostles of Christ we had the power of claiming to be men of weight;

We thank God constantly for this too, that when you received the word of the divine message from us, you took it not as a human word but for what it really is, the word of God. It proves effective in you believers,

for you have started, my brothers, to copy the churches of God in Christ Jesus throughout Judaea; you have suffered from your compatriots just as they have suffered from the Jews,

by hindering us from speaking words of salvation to the Gentiles. So they would fill up the measure of their sins to the last drop! But the Wrath is on them to the bitter end!

But when Timotheus reached me a moment ago, on his return from you, bringing me the good news of your faith and love and of how you always remember me kindly, longing to see me as I long to see you,

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

The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a loud summons, when the archangel calls and the trumpet of God sounds; the dead in Christ will rise first;

and abstaining from whatever kind is evil.