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Don’t listen to people that reckon Jesus came back already
1 Now we want to tell you a bit more about how our leader, Jesus Christ, will come back to the earth, and the time when he will bring us all together to be with him. Christian friends, we are telling you this.
2 Don’t listen to people that reckon his time has already come, and Jesus has already come back. They are wrong. We don’t want you to get upset easily or frightened by those people. They might lie and say that they heard one of God’s men say that, or that somebody wrote it in a report, or they might even reckon that we wrote it in a letter.
3 Don’t listen to them. Don’t let anyone trick you like that.
A really bad man will come before Jesus comes back
You see, it will be like this. There are some things that will happen first, and after that, Jesus will come back. A lot of people will turn against God, and then a really bad man will show himself to everyone. He will never do anything that God wants. He will be the sort of man that God wants to properly finish up.
4 He will reckon that he is better than God. He will fight against God, and against everything else that people think is a god. He will fight against everything that people respect in a spiritual way. He will even go into God’s ceremony house and sit down there, and tell everyone that he is God.
Something is holding back that bad man
5 Do you remember me talking about that when I was with you there in your town?
6 You already know something about this man. You know that he wants to start doing his bad things now, but somebody is holding him back. But at the right time, God will let everyone see that bad man.
7 You know, there is a secret power already working in the world. It is trying to get people to go against God and to break his laws. But somebody is fighting against that power and stopping it from doing that, and he will keep stopping it until God takes him away.
8 Then that really bad man will come with that power, and he will show himself to everyone. That bad man never does anything that God wants. But then later, Jesus our leader will come and kill him. Jesus will just talk, and his words will kill that man. Jesus will finish him up when he comes with power.
That really bad man will trick people
9 You see, when that bad man will come, Satan, the boss over the bad spirits, will give some of his power to that bad man. So that bad man will come, and he will do really clever things with Satan’s power. Those things will give people a big shock. They will think that he has good power, and they will believe him, but they will be wrong.
10 He will trick those people. They will think, “He is doing powerful things, so he is right,” but he will really be doing very bad things with Satan’s power. You know, there are some people that don’t like the true message about Jesus. They don’t believe it. Those people will not let God save them. They are the people that this really bad man will trick. So in the end, God will finish up those people.
11 You see, they will not believe the true message, so God will let somebody properly trick them, and they will believe that bad man’s lies.
12 They are people that like to do bad things, and they will not believe the true message about Jesus. So God will judge them, and he will say they are guilty.
Keep on properly trusting Jesus
13-14 But, Christian friends, we thank God that you are not in that mob. Right from the start, God picked you to be the ones that he will save. And he put his Holy Spirit into you, to save you. We told you the true message about Jesus, and you believed it. It is like God called to you, at that time, to come and join his mob. And now God’s spirit works in you all the time to change you into God’s special people. And God will make you great, like our leader Jesus Christ.
15 So then, Christian friends, you have to keep strong and keep on properly trusting Jesus. Keep on believing the things that we taught you. You see, Jesus taught us those things, and later we taught them to you. We told you those things when we were there with you, and after that, we wrote letters to you to tell you more. Now keep on believing those things.
16 And we pray to our leader Jesus Christ himself, and we also pray to God our father. God loves us, and he is very good to us. He helps us to be strong, and to be brave, for ever. He tells us that we are his people, for sure.
17 So we ask him to help you to be strong, and brave too, so that you keep on doing good things, and keep on saying good things.