1 Thessalonians 4
1FURTHERMORE then, brethren, we beseech you, and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as ye received from us how ye ought to walk and to please God, as also ye are walking, ye would abound yet more.
2For ye know what commands we gave you, through the Lord Jesus.
3For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication;
4that each one of you know how to possess[4:4] his vessel in sanctification and honor;
5not in lustful passion, as also the Gentiles who know not God.
6That no one go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter[4:6]; because the Lord is the avenger for all these things, as we also told you before, and testified.
7For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in sanctification.
8Therefore he that rejects, rejects not man, but God, who also gave to you his Holy Spirit.
9But concerning brotherly love ye need not that I write to you; for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.
10For indeed ye do it, toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we beseech you, brethren, to abound yet more;
11and to study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;
12that ye may walk becomingly toward those without, and may have need of nothing.
13But we desire that you should not be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are sleeping, that ye sorrow not, as others who have no hope.
14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also those who fell asleep through Jesus will God bring with him.
15For this we say to you, in the word of the Lord, that we the living, who remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who fell asleep.
16Because the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ will first rise.
17Then we the living, who remain, will be caught up together with them in clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
18Wherefore, encourage one another with these words.