2 Thessalonians 1–2 | Day 12

2 Thessalonians 1 (NIV 1984)

¹Paul, Silas and Timothy,
To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:
²Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
³We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.
⁴Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.
⁵All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.
⁶God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you
⁷and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.
⁸He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
⁹They will be punished with eternal destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might
¹⁰on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
¹¹With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.
¹²We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Thessalonians 2 (NIV 1984)

¹Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers,
²not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come.
³Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.
⁴He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
⁵Don’t remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?
⁶And you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time.
⁷For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.
⁸And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.
⁹The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie,
¹⁰and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
¹¹For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie
¹²and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.