but in your hearts consecrate Christ as Lord, being always ready to make your defence to any one who asks from you a reason for the hope which you cherish.

You are to be envied, if you are being reproached for bearing the name of Christ; for in that case the Spirit of glory-- even the Spirit of God--is resting upon you.

If, however, any one suffers because he is a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God for being permitted to bear that name.

If these things exist in you, and continually increase, they prevent your being either idle or unfruitful in advancing towards a full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

and especially those who are abandoned to sensuality--craving, as they do, for polluted things, and scorning control. Fool-hardy and self-willed, they do not tremble when speaking evil of glorious beings;

being doomed to receive a requital for their guilt. They reckon it pleasure to feast daintily in broad daylight. They are spots and blemishes, while feeding luxuriously at their love-feasts, and banqueting with you.

Their very eyes are full of adultery--being eyes which never cease from sin. These men set traps to catch unstedfast souls, their own hearts being well trained in greed. They are fore-doomed to God's curse!

The Lord is not slow in fulfilling His promise, in the sense in which some men speak of slowness. But He bears patiently with you, His desire being that no one should perish but that all should come to repentance.

The stars in the sky also fell to the earth, as when a fig-tree, upon being shaken by a gale of wind, casts its unripe figs to the ground.

The sky too passed away, as if a scroll were being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

And they were forbidden to injure the herbage of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree. They were only to injure human beings--those who have not the seal of God on their foreheads.

For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; their tails being like serpents, and having heads, and it is with them that they inflict injury.

He also works great miracles, so as even to make fire come down from Heaven to earth in the presence of human beings.

And she was permitted to array herself in fine linen, shining and spotless; the fine linen being the righteous actions of God's people.

Then I saw a door open in Heaven, and a white horse appeared. Its rider was named "Faithful and True" --being One who in righteousness acts as Judge, and makes war.

The plan of the city is a square, the length being the same as the breadth; and he measured the city furlong by furlong, with his measuring rod--it is twelve hundred miles long, and the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.