1 Thessalonians, Chapter 4

1. For the rest, then, my brothers, we beseech you and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as you have received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more .    2. For we know what commands we gave you by the Lord Jesus.    3. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, for you to abstain from fornication,    4. each one of you to know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor    5. (not in the passion of lust, even as the nations who do not know God),    6. not to go beyond and defraud his brother in this matter (because the Lord is the avenger concerning all these, as we also have forewarned you and testified).    7. For God has not called us to uncleanness, but in sanctification.    8. Therefore he who despises does not despise man, but God, who also has given us His Holy Spirit.    9. But regarding brotherly love, you do not need that I write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.    10. And indeed you do it toward all the brothers who are in all Macedonia. But we beseech you, brothers, that you abound more and more ,    11. and that you try earnestly to be quiet and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you,    12. so that you may walk becomingly toward those outside, and that you may lack nothing.    13. But I would not have you ignorant, brothers, concerning those who are asleep, that you be not grieved, even as others who have no hope.    14. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will also bring with Him all those who have fallen asleep through Jesus.    15. For we say this to you by the Word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not go before those who are asleep.    16. For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first.    17. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall ever be with the Lord.    18. Therefore comfort one another with these words.