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1 THESS. 2: 7.

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES.

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Christ's Apostles we might have had both authority and influence. But, instead of that, we lived

among you with childlike simplicity. Yes, we were just like a nursing mother tenderly caring for her own children. For, in our strong affection for you, that seemed the best way of sharing with you, not only God's Good News, but our own lives as well, so dear had you become to us. For you remember, brothers, how very hard and wearisome our work was. Night and day we kept working at our trades so that we might in no way be a burden to you while we proclaimed to you the Good News of God. Yes, you yourselves are witnesses and so is God, how devoted and upright and beyond reproach we were in our intercourse with you believers. And you know that as a father deals with his own children so we used to encourage each one of you, and console you, and solemnly plead with you, to live worthily of God who keeps calling you into his kingdom and to a share in his own glory.

For this reason we also never fail to thank God that when you received the words of God's message from us, you took them, not as the words of men, but, just as they really are, the words of God, who is even now working in you believers. For you, brothers, became imitators of the Churches of God in Judea which are in Christ Jesus. For you yourselves also suffered at the hands of your country

men the same things as they did at the hands of the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and drove us out. They keep displeasing God and are against everybody. For they keep hindering us from carrying the message of life to the heathen, and so they are always filling up the measure of their sins. But wrath has burst suddenly on them to its utmost.

But we, brothers, having been torn from you for a short time, though in body only, and not in spirit, were all the more eager to see your faces again, and we had a strong desire to see you. For this reason, we determined to visit you, that is, I, Paul did, more than once, but Satan hindered us. For what hope or happiness will be ours, or crown of which we can boast before our Lord Jesus at his coming, if it is not you? Yes, you are our pride and our delight.

So, when we could bear it no longer, we thought it best to be left behind at Athens, alone, and sent Timothy, our brother, and God's servant in the Good News of the Christ to strengthen you, and to encourage you in your faith, so that none of you. might be shaken by the troubles through which you are now passing. For you, yourselves, know that we are subject to such things. For when we were

1 THESS.

3: 4.

EAGERNESS TO SEE THEM.

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with you we warned you that we were going to be troubled, just as you know it happened. For this reason, when I, for my part, could no longer bear it, I sent to get information about your faith, so that the Tempter might in no way have tempted you and our work become fruitless.

But now that Timothy has come to us from you and brought us the good news of your faith and love, and how kindly you are thinking about us, always longing to see us just as we are longing to see you, we have been very much encouraged, brothers, about you, because of your faith, in spite of all our difficulty and trouble. For it is new life to us if you are standing fast in the Lord. For how can we thank God enough for all the happiness which you are causing us in the sight of our God? Night and day we are praying most earnestly to see you face to face and to complete what is lacking in your faith.

May our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus, make the way plain for us to come to you. And, as for you, may the Lord fill your hearts to overflowing with love for each other, just as ours are for you. And may he do this, so that your hearts may be strengthened, and your devotion be devoid of blame before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his devoted

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Further than this, brothers, we beg and urge you and

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in the Lord Jesus that just as you have received
from us how you must live, if you would please ay
God,--just as you are now living,—so you would d
still further excel. For you know what directions
we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

For this is God's will,-your complete devotion to him. This requires you to keep yourselves from all immorality, and each one of you to know how to procure his own wife with devotion and honor, and not for the mere gratification of his passions, like the heathen who know nothing about God. And let no one overreach and take advantage of his brother in such a matter. For the Lord is the avenger in all these things as we have already warned you and told you. For God did not call as to an impure life. On the contrary, he demands entire devotion to himself. Consequently he who rejects this warning is rejecting, not man, but God, who is giving you his Holy Spirit.

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But about the question of loving our brothers there is no need of my writing you. For you, yourselves, are taught by God to love each other. And, indeed, you are continually doing this in your intercourse with all our brothers in the whole of. Macedonia.

But we urge you, brothers, to excel in this respect, and to make it your ambition to live quietly,

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THE COMING OF THE LORD.

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e you and to attend to your own affairs, and to work with eive your own hands, just as we told you, so that you leas may bear yourself becomingly towards outsiders, oul and be in need of nothing.

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We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of tio: the condition of those who are sleeping the sleep ro which is commonly called death. For we do not

ho want you to grieve for them as everybody else does or who has no hope. For if we believe that Jesus ons died and rose again, so also will God bring with od Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. For ed this is what we have to tell you in accord with a the declaration received directly from the Lord: We, d who are alive and are left on the earth till the comalling of the Lord, will in no way have the advantage over those who have fallen asleep.

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d with the trumpet call of God, will come down from heaven. the dead who are in Christ will rise. After that, we, who are then alive, will, at the same time in company with them, be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we always

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So, then, encourage each other with these words. Now about the times and seasons, brothers, there is no need of my writing to you. For you, your

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