For now we are alive again, ¹  if you stand firm in the Lord.

For you know quite well that the day of the Lord ¹  will come in the same way as a thief in the night. ² 

For you yourselves know, brothers and sisters, ¹  about our coming to you – it has not proven to be purposeless. ² 

so that no one would be shaken by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this.

For in fact when we were with you, we were telling you in advance that we would suffer affliction, and so it has happened, as you well know. ¹ 

For God did not destine us for wrath ¹  but for gaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that ¹  God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. ² 

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, ¹  and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

in that ¹  our gospel did not come to you merely in words, ²  but in power and in the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction (surely you recall the character we displayed when we came among you to help you). ³ 

For you became imitators, brothers and sisters, ¹  of God’s churches in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, because you too suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they in fact did from the Jews,

But now Timothy has come ¹  to us from you and given us the good news of your faith and love and that you always think of us with affection ²  and long to see us just as we also long to see you! ³ 

For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, ¹  that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep.

And so ¹  we too constantly thank God that when you received God’s message that you heard from us, ²  you accepted it not as a human message, ³  but as it truly is, God’s message, which is at work among you who believe.