and "A stone to stumble over, and a rock to trip them up." They stumble over the message because they will not obey it; that is their destiny.

Live upright lives among the heathen, so that even if they charge you with being evil-doers, they may from observing the uprightness of your conduct come to praise God on the Day of Judgment.

when they see how chaste and submissive you are.

It was in that way in ancient times that those pious women who set their hopes on God made themselves attractive. They were submissive to their husbands,

They are amazed that you no longer join them in plunging into the flood of dissipation, and they abuse you for it;

but they will have to answer for it to him who is ready to judge living and dead.

This is why the good news was preached to the dead also, that though they are judged in their physical nature as men are, they may yet live, like God, in the Spirit.

For if you have these qualities in their fulness, they will make you neither idle nor unproductive when it comes to the understanding of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For they were no fictitious stories that we followed when we informed you of the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and of his coming, but we had been eye-witnesses of his majesty.

Many people will follow their immoral ways, and they will cause the true way to be maligned.

In their greed they will exploit you with pretended arguments. From of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not slumbered.

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

and saved the upright Lot who was so distressed by the immoral conduct of unprincipled men??8 for as long as that upright man lived among them, day after day his upright soul was tormented by what he saw and heard of their lawless actions??9 then the Lord knows how to rescue God-fearing people from trial and to punish wrongdoers while they are being kept for the Day of Judgment,

especially those who yield to their physical nature and indulge in passions that defile them, and despise authority. Rash, headstrong men! They stand in no awe of majesty, but deride beings

These men, like unreasoning animals, mere creatures of instinct created to be caught and killed, abuse what they do not understand and will be destroyed like animals,

suffering wrong as the reward for their wrongdoing. They find pleasure in the indulgence of the moment; they are a stain and a disgrace, and they revel in their deceit while they join in your religious meals.

They have eyes for nobody but adulterous women??yes insatiable in sin. They lure unsteadfast souls. Their hearts are trained in greed. They are accursed!

They have left the straight path and gone astray. They have followed the path of Balaam, the son of Beor, who set his heart on dishonest gain,

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

They utter arrogant nonsense and use physical cravings to lure into immorality men who are just escaping from among those who live in error;

promising them freedom when they are themselves slaves of destruction; for a man is the slave of whatever overcomes him.

For if after men have escaped the corrupting influences of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they again become entangled in them and are overcome by them, their final condition is worse than their former one.

For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of uprightness than after knowing it to have turned their backs upon the sacred command with which they had been intrusted.

For they wilfully ignore the fact that long ago there existed heavens and an earth which had been formed at God's command out of water and by water,

speaking of it as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which ignorant, unsteadfast people twist to their own ruin, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures.

They have gone out from our number, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had, they would have stayed with us. It was to make it clear that none of them really belonged to us that they withdrew.

if they condemn us for anything, for God is greater than our consciences, and he knows all.

Dear friends, do not believe every inspired utterance, but test the utterances to see whether they come from God, for many false prophets have come out into the world.

They are children of the world; that is why they speak as the world directs, and the world listens to them.

Dear friend, it is loyal of you to do anything you can for the brothers, especially as they are strangers;

they have testified before the church to your love. Please see them off on their journey in a way appropriate to God's service.

For they have started out for the sake of the cause, and they are accepting nothing from the heathen.

But these people deride anything they do not understand, and the things they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, they use for their own destruction.

Alas for them, for they follow Cain's path, they plunge into Balaam's error for gain, and they perish in rebelliousness like Korah's.

They are stains on your religious meals, where they carouse together, boldly attending to no one but themselves; rainless clouds driven before the wind; leafless trees without fruit, doubly dead, and uprooted;

to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the godless of all the godless deeds they have done, and of all the harsh things that godless sinners have said against him."

These men are grumblers, dissatisfied with life. They go where their passions lead, their talk is arrogant and they cultivate people in the hope of gain.

for they said to you, "In the last times there will be mockers who will go where their own godless passions lead."

These are the men who create division; they are animal and devoid of the Spirit.

I know what you have done; your hard work and your endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, and that you have tested those who claimed to be apostles when they were not, and have found them to be impostors.

I know of your distress and poverty??hough you are rich!?? know how you are slandered by those who claim to be Jews when they are not so, but only a synagogue of Satan!

See! I am going to lay her on a sick bed, and to bring great distress upon those who share her immorality, unless they repent of her practices,

But to the rest of you at Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching and have not learned the "deep things" of Satan, as they call them??o you I say, I have no fresh burden to lay on you,

Yet you have a few at Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me clad in white, for they deserve to.

I will make some who belong to that synagogue of Satan and claim to be Jews when they are not so, but are lying?? will make them come and bow down at your feet, and learn that I loved you.

Out from the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder. In front of the throne seven blazing lamps were burning; they are the seven spirits of God.

The four animals have each of them six wings, and they are covered with eyes all over and underneath their wings. And day and night they never cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and is and is coming."

the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne, and worship him who lives forever and ever, and they throw down their crowns before the throne, and say,

"You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory, honor, and power, for you created all things; by your will they existed and were created."

Then they sang a new song: "You deserve to take the roll and open its seals, for you have been slaughtered, and with your blood have bought for God men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation,

and have made them a kingdom of priests for our God, and they are to reign over the earth."

Then I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, underneath the earth, and on the sea, and all that they contain, say, "Blessing, honor, glory, and power to him who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever!"

And there I saw a horse the color of ashes, and its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. They were given power over one quarter of the earth, to kill the people with sword, famine, death, and the wild animals of the earth.

They cried out in a loud voice, "Holy and true Master, how long is it to be before you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?"

Then each of them was given a white robe and they were told to be quiet a little while longer, until the number of their fellow-slaves and their brothers, who were to be killed as they had been, should be complete.

And they said to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us, and conceal us from the sight of him who is seated on the throne, and from the anger of the Lamb,

I heard that the number of those that were marked with the seal was 144,000. They were from every tribe of the children of Israel:

and they cried in a loud voice, "Our deliverance is the work of our God who is seated on the throne, and of the Lamb!"

Then one of the elders addressed me and said, "Who are these people dressed in white robes, and where do they come from?"

I said to him, "You know, my lord." He said to me, "They are the people who come through the great persecution, who have washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb.

That is why they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple, and he who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

They will never be hungry or thirsty again, and never again will the sun or any burning heat distress them,

The star is called Apsinthus, that is, Wormwood. Then one third of the waters turned to wormwood, and numbers of people died of the waters, for they had turned bitter.

They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only the men who did not have the mark of God's seal upon their foreheads.

They were not allowed to kill anyone, but only to torture them for five months, and the torture they inflicted was like that caused by a scorpion when it stings a man.

In those days men will seek death and never find it. They will want to die, but death will fly from them.

they had hair like a woman's; their teeth were like those of lions;

They had tails and stings like scorpions; it was in their tails that their power lay to harm men for five months.

They had over them as king the angel of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he is called Apollyon.

For the power of the horses lay in their mouths and their tails; their tails were like snakes, and they had heads with which they hurt people.

and they did not repent of their murders, or their magic arts, or their immorality, or their thefts.

Then they said to me, "You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages, and kings!"

but leave out the court outside the temple; do not measure that, for it has been given up to the heathen, and for forty-two months they will trample on it.

They are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.

They have the power to shut up the sky, so that no rain will fall during the days when they are prophesying, and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to smite the earth with any plague whenever they please.

When they finish their testimony, the animal that comes up out of the abyss will make war on them and conquer them and kill them,

After three days and a half, the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror seized those who saw them.

And they heard a loud voice from heaven say to them, "Come up here." And they went up to heaven in a cloud, before the eyes of their enemies.

but they were defeated, and there was no place for them any longer in heaven.

They have conquered him because of the Lamb's blood, and the message to which they bore testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.

and worshiped the dragon for having given the animal his authority, and they worshiped the animal, and said, "Who is there like the animal? Who can fight with it?"

They were singing a new song before the throne and the four animals and the elders, and no one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been ransomed from the earth.

They are the men who have not been defiled by relations with women; they are celibates. It is they who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been ransomed from among men as the first-fruits for God and the Lamb,

and they have never been known to utter a lie; they are irreproachable.

The smoke of their torture will go up forever and ever, and they will have no rest night or day??hese worshipers of the animal and its statue, and any who bear the mark of its name."

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, "Write: Blessed are the dead who from this time forth die as Christians!" "Yes!" answers the Spirit, "Let them rest from their toil, for what they have done will go with them!"

Then I saw another great, marvelous portent in heaven. There were seven angels with seven plagues which are to be the last, for they complete the expression of God's wrath.

And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and standing upon the sea of glass those who had come off victorious from the animal and its statue and the number corresponding to its name. They had harps that God had given them,

and they were singing the song of Moses, the slave of God, and the song of the Lamb: "Great and marvelous are your doings, Lord God Almighty! Upright and true are your ways, King of the Ages!

and the seven angels with the seven plagues came out of the temple. They were clothed in clean, glistening linen and had gold belts around their breasts.

The third emptied his bowl upon the rivers and the springs of water, and they turned into blood.

for they shed the blood of your people and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink, as they deserve."

and they were dreadfully scorched, but they reviled the name of God who had control of these plagues, and would not repent and give him glory.

and reviled the God of heaven for their sufferings and sores, but they would not repent of what they had done.

They are demon spirits that perform wonders, and they go out to the kings all over the world to muster them for battle on the great Day of God Almighty.

So they mustered the kings at the place called in Hebrew Armageddon.

The animal that you saw was, and is no more; it is going to come up out of the abyss, but it is to go to destruction. The inhabitants of the earth, whose names from the foundation of the world have not been written in the book of life, will be amazed when they see that the animal was, and is no more, and yet is to come.

They are also seven kings; five have fallen, one is reigning, the other has not yet come, and when he does his stay must be brief.

The ten horns that you saw are also ten kings, who have not yet begun to reign, but for a single hour they receive authority as kings along with the animal.

They have one purpose, they give their power and authority to the animal.