1 Thessalonians 4

1 Finally therefore, brothers, we ask you, and summon in the Lord Jesus, that just as ye received from us how ye ought to walk and to please God, that ye may abound more.

2 For ye know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification, for you to abstain from fornication,

4 for each of you to know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and reverence,

5 not in passion of lust, as also the Gentiles who have not known God,

6 not to transgress and to cheat his brother in the affair, because the Lord is vengeful about all these things, as also we forewarned you and solemnly testified.

7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in sanctification.

8 Therefore he who disregards, disregards not man, but God, who also gave his Holy Spirit to you.

9 But about brotherly love ye have no need to write to you, for ye yourselves are taught by God in order to love each other.

10 For ye are also doing it toward all the brothers in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brothers, to abound more,

11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to do your own things, and to work with your own hands, just as we commanded you,

12 so that ye may walk properly toward those outside, and may have nothing lacking.

13 But we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about those who are asleep, so that ye may not grieve, as also the others who have no hope.

14 For if we believe that Jesus died and arose, so also those who became asleep through Jesus, God will bring with him.

15 For this we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who remain for the coming of the Lord, will no, not precede those who became asleep.

16 Because the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of the arch-agent, and with a trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first,

17 then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up simultaneously with them in clouds to the Lord's gathering in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

18 Therefore encourage each other with these words.