Five-year Bible reading plan for 18 August 2005

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2, verses 13-17

⁸ and a discovery of Antichrist, before the day of the Lord come, ¹⁵ and thereupon repeateth his former exhortation, and prayeth for them

¹³But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

¹⁴Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

¹⁵Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

¹⁶Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace,

¹⁷Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.

2 Thessalonians, Chapter 3, verses 1-5

¹ He craveth their prayers for himself, ³ testifieth what confidence he hath in them, ⁵ maketh request to God in their behalf

¹Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you:

²And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith.

³But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.

⁴And we have confidence in the Lord touching you, that ye both do and will do the things which we command you.

⁵And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.

Read more:2 Thessalonians, Chapter 3

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2

2:13 God hath from the beginning - Of your hearing the gospel. Chosen you to salvation - Taken you out of the world, and placed you in the way to glory.

2:14 To which - Faith and holiness. He hath called you by our gospel - That which we preached, accompanied with the power of his Spirit.

2:15 Hold - Without adding to, or diminishing from, the traditions which ye have been taught - The truths which I have delivered to you. Whether by word or by our epistle - He preached before he wrote. And he had written concerningthis in his former epistle.

3

3:1 May run - Go on swiftly, without any interruption. And be glorified - Acknowledged as divine, and bring forth much fruit.

3:2 All men have not faith - And all men who have not are more or less unreasonable and wicked men.

3:3 Who will stablish you - That cleave to him by faith.And guard you from the evil one - And all his instruments.

3:4 We trust in the Lord concerning you - Thus only should we trust in any man.

3:5 Now the Lord - The Spirit, whose proper work this is.Direct - Lead you straight forward. Into the patience of Christ - Of which he set you a pattern.

NOTES

It is not hard to guess that the most tragic page of human history was the fall. And not only because of the consequences that affected not only man, but the whole world, but first of all because of the power...

It is not hard to guess that the most tragic page of human history was the fall. And not only because of the consequences that affected not only man, but the whole world, but first of all because of the power the devil received over the human heart. In fact, if this power had not existed, the mentioned consequences would not have existed either, and if a person were able to free his heart completely from the power of the dark forces, everything else would perhaps not be easy, but it would be correctable.

Yet the trouble is precisely that the devil holds a person not by the body and not by the soul, but by the heart, by that spiritual core of the human person without which there is no person at all as the image and likeness of God. The spirit of darkness could not tear the heart out of a person completely, but he managed to hinder and poison that breath of life which God breathed into man at creation. And now, in order to keep man from destruction and the world from complete annihilation, God has to make special efforts so that everyone who would like to change at least something in his spiritual situation may be given such an opportunity.

Of course, God is stronger than the devil, for God is the creator of the world, and the devil is only a creature that rebelled against its Creator. But God needs free persons, not slaves whom He could easily obtain by taking them by force from the devil. If the fall had been exclusively an act of violence, there would be no such problem. But the whole horror of the situation is that it was the consequence of a voluntary choice. And now only the same voluntary choice in the opposite direction gives God the possibility to intervene. Until a person himself understands that he can no longer and does not want to live in diabolical captivity, God will not intervene. He will support every step a person takes toward Him, but He will not force such steps.

And in our days, in the age of the approaching Kingdom, a new dimension has been added to the old confrontation. None of us, before complete transformation, is capable of being completely freed from the power of sin. And the devil has his own hooks in each of us, about which we may or may not know, but with which for a time we can do nothing. And it becomes the special task of God and Jesus to keep the devil from knocking us off the path of the Kingdom. After all, at the beginning of this path we will inevitably have to share in the life of the Kingdom while remaining sinners, and the devil would have every opportunity to close the Kingdom to us forever by inflating our sinfulness to proportions incompatible with the Kingdom. Only God's direct intervention prevents such a development. For God wants to save us. As we are.

What is the connection between prayer and witness? The first thing that comes to mind is this: without prayer, without constant communion with God, no...

What is the connection between prayer and witness? The first thing that comes to mind is this: without prayer, without constant communion with God, no witness is possible. There can only be dry theology, theoretical reasoning about God, about Christ, about the Kingdom. One cannot say that such reasoning will necessarily be mistaken; it may be formally not only correct, but even flawless, and yet it will not become witness. And when the matter concerns church life, prayer for those who are witnessing at a given moment is something entirely natural and self-evident.

But this is only one side of the matter. The other is connected with the fact that one can truly witness to the Kingdom only from within the Kingdom itself. Until the witness begins to live by its life, all his witness will still be more a witness to someone else's experience than to his own.

But the Church is precisely nothing other than the Kingdom entering our world. The chief and, in essence, only task of the Church is witness to the Kingdom, and the chief way of such witness is the manifestation of the Kingdom in our transforming but not yet transformed world, the manifestation of its breath, its love, its power. And every witness of each member of the Church becomes, in essence, part of this whole-Church witness. In this case, of course, the matter is not formal belonging to one or another church structure and not formal sanctions. The matter is precisely what the apostle writes about in his letter: the unity of the Kingdom, which manifests itself in the single spiritual space of the Church, which, of course, almost never coincides with the social space of church structures. And since the spiritual space of the Church is one, distances cease to have decisive significance for the Church's spiritual life: the prayer of one church community can become spiritual support for another community whose members, because of circumstances, have to witness especially much.

It is precisely here, as is evident, that the spiritual specificity of the Church appears as, in the words of the same Paul, the "body of Christ": whatever size she may reach, her essential, spiritual unity does not disappear, making possible the flow of spiritual energy from one part of her to another. This process itself becomes a living witness to the reality of the Kingdom, for by the laws of the untransformed world such a thing is impossible. But what is impossible in "this world" becomes possible in the Kingdom.

The apostle Paul calls his spiritual children to faithfulness. To "stand" means not to "sit" and not to "lie down," that is, not to be relaxed, not to flee from that spiritual battle which Christian life in this world proves to be...

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