Paul's Second Letter to the
THESSALONIANS

2 Thessalonians 1 From Paul, Silas, and Timothy--
To the people of the church in Thessalonica, who belong to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:
²May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

The Judgment at Christ's Coming

³Our friends, we must thank God at all times for you. It is right for us to do so, because your faith is growing so much and the love each of you has for the others is becoming greater. ⁴That is why we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God. We boast about the way you continue to endure and believe through all the persecutions and sufferings you are experiencing.
⁵All of this proves that God's judgment is just and as a result you will become worthy of his Kingdom, for which you are suffering. ⁶God will do what is right: he will bring suffering on those who make you suffer, ⁷and he will give relief to you who suffer and to us as well. He will do this when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven with his mighty angels, ⁸with a flaming fire, to punish those who reject God and who do not obey the Good News about our Lord Jesus. ⁹They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from his glorious might, ¹⁰when he comes on that Day to receive glory from all his people and honor from all who believe. You too will be among them, because you have believed the message that we told you. ¹¹That is why we always pray for you. We ask our God to make you worthy of the life he has called you to live. May he fulfill by his power all your desire for goodness and complete your work of faith. ¹²In this way the name of our Lord Jesus will receive glory from you, and you from him, by the grace of our God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A Hymn of Praise

Isaiah 25 LORD, you are my God;
I will honor you and praise your name.
You have done amazing things;
you have faithfully carried out
the plans you made long ago.
²You have turned cities into ruins
and destroyed their fortifications.
The palaces which our enemies built
are gone forever.
³The people of powerful nations will praise you;
you will be feared in the cities of cruel nations.
⁴The poor and the helpless have fled to you
and have been safe in times of trouble.
You give them shelter from storms
and shade from the burning heat.
Cruel enemies attack like a winter storm,
⁵ like drought in a dry land.
But you, LORD, have silenced our enemies;
you silence the shouts of cruel people,
as a cloud cools a hot day.

God Prepares a Banquet

⁶Here on Mount Zion the LORD Almighty will prepare a banquet for all the nations of the world--a banquet of the richest food and the finest wine. ⁷Here he will suddenly remove the cloud of sorrow that has been hanging over all the nations. ⁸The Sovereign LORD will destroy death forever! He will wipe away the tears from everyone's eyes and take away the disgrace his people have suffered throughout the world. The LORD himself has spoken.
⁹When it happens, everyone will say, "He is our God! We have put our trust in him, and he has rescued us. He is the LORD! We have put our trust in him, and now we are happy and joyful because he has saved us."

God Will Punish Moab

¹⁰The LORD will protect Mount Zion, but the people of Moab will be trampled down the way straw is trampled in manure. ¹¹They will reach out their hands as if they were trying to swim, but God will humiliate them, and their hands will sink helplessly. ¹²He will destroy the fortresses of Moab with their high walls and bring them tumbling down into the dust.

God Will Give His People Victory

Isaiah 26 A day is coming when the people will sing this song in the land of Judah:
Our city is strong!
God himself defends its walls!
²Open the city gates
and let the faithful nation enter,
the nation whose people do what is right.
³You, LORD, give perfect peace
to those who keep their purpose firm
and put their trust in you.
⁴Trust in the LORD forever;
he will always protect us.
⁵He has humbled those who were proud;
he destroyed the strong city they lived in,
and sent its walls crashing into the dust.
⁶Those who were oppressed walk over it now
and trample it under their feet.

⁷LORD, you make the path smooth for good people;
the road they travel is level.
⁸We follow your will and put our hope in you;
you are all that we desire.
⁹At night I long for you with all my heart;
when you judge the earth and its people,
they will all learn what justice is.
¹⁰Even though you are kind to the wicked,
they never learn to do what is right.
Even here in a land of righteous people
they still do wrong;
they refuse to recognize your greatness.
¹¹Your enemies do not know that you will punish them.
LORD, put them to shame and let them suffer;
let them suffer the punishment you have prepared.
Show them how much you love your people.

¹²You will give us prosperity, LORD;
everything that we achieve
is the result of what you do.
¹³LORD our God, we have been ruled by others,
but you alone are our LORD.
¹⁴Now they are dead and will not live again;
their ghosts will not rise,
for you have punished them and destroyed them.
No one remembers them any more.
¹⁵LORD, you have made our nation grow,
enlarging its territory on every side;
and this has brought you honor.
¹⁶You punished your people, LORD,
and in anguish they prayed to you.
¹⁷You, LORD, have made us cry out,
as a woman in labor cries out in pain.
¹⁸We were in pain and agony,
but we gave birth to nothing.
We have won no victory for our land;
we have accomplished nothing.

¹⁹Those of our people who have died will live again!
Their bodies will come back to life.
All those sleeping in their graves
will wake up and sing for joy.
As the sparkling dew refreshes the earth,
so the LORD will revive those who have long been dead.

Judgment and Restoration

²⁰Go into your houses, my people, and shut the door behind you. Hide yourselves for a little while until God's anger is over. ²¹The LORD is coming from his heavenly dwelling place to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The murders that were secretly committed on the earth will be revealed, and the ground will no longer hide those who have been killed.

In Praise of the LORD

Psalm 117 Praise the LORD, all nations!
Praise him, all peoples!
²His love for us is strong,
and his faithfulness is eternal.

Praise the LORD!