The One Year Bible TLB (254 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
December 3But now I will show you what the future holds. Three more Persian kings will reign, to be succeeded by a fourth,
*
far richer than the others. Using his wealth for political advantage, he will plan total war against Greece.
3
“Then a mighty king will rise in Greece, a king who will rule a vast kingdom and accomplish everything he sets out to do.
*
4
But at the zenith of his power, his kingdom will break apart and be divided into four weaker nations, not even ruled by his sons. For his empire will be torn apart and given to others.
5
One of them, the king of Egypt,
*
will increase in power, but this king’s own officials will rebel against him and take away his kingdom and make it still more powerful.
6
“Several years later an alliance will be formed between the king of Syria
*
and the king of Egypt. The daughter of the king of Egypt will be given in marriage to the king of Syria as a gesture of peace, but she will lose her influence over him, and not only will her hopes be blighted, but those of her father, the king of Egypt, and of her ambassador and child.
7
But when her brother
*
takes over as king of Egypt, he will raise an army against the king of Syria and march against him and defeat him.
8
When he returns again to Egypt, he will carry back their idols with him, along with priceless gold and silver dishes; and for many years afterward he will leave the Syrian king alone.
9
“Meanwhile, the king of Syria
*
will invade Egypt briefly but will soon return again to his own land.
10-11
However, the sons of this Syrian king will assemble a mighty army that will overflow across Israel into Egypt, to a fortress there. Then the king of Egypt,
*
in great anger, will rally against the vast forces of Syria and defeat them.
12
Filled with pride after this great victory, he will have many thousands of his enemies killed, but his success will be short-lived.
13
“A few years later the Syrian king
*
will return with a fully equipped army far greater than the one he lost,
14
and other nations will join him in a crusade against Egypt. Insurgents among your own people, the Jews, will join them, thus fulfilling prophecy,
*
but they will not succeed.
15
Then the Syrian king and his allies will come and lay siege to a fortified city of Egypt and capture it, and the proud armies of Egypt will go down to defeat.
16
“The Syrian king will march onward unopposed; none will be able to stop him. And he will also enter ‘The Glorious Land’ of Israel and pillage it.
17
This will be his plot for conquering all Egypt: he, too, will form an alliance with the Egyptian king, giving him a daughter in marriage, so that she can work for him from within. But the plan will fail.
18
“After this he will turn his attention to the coastal cities and conquer many. But a general will stop him and cause him to retreat in shame.
19
He will turn homeward again but will have trouble on the way and disappear.
20
“His successor
*
will be remembered as the king who sent a tax collector into Israel, but after a very brief reign, he will die mysteriously, though neither in battle nor in riot.
21
“Next to come to power will be an evil man not directly in line for royal succession.
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But during a crisis he will take over the kingdom by flattery and intrigue.
22
Then all opposition will be swept away before him, including a leader of the priests.
*
23
His promises will be worthless. From the first his method will be deceit; with a mere handful of followers, he will become strong.
24
He will enter the richest areas of the land without warning and do something never done before: he will take the property and wealth of the rich and scatter it out among the people. With great success he will besiege and capture powerful strongholds throughout his dominions, but this will last for only a short while.
25
Then he will stir up his courage and raise a great army against Egypt; and Egypt, too, will raise a mighty army, but to no avail, for plots against him will succeed.
26
“Those of his own household will bring his downfall; his army will desert, and many will be killed.
27
“Both these kings
*
will be plotting against each other at the conference table, attempting to deceive each other. But it will make no difference, for neither can succeed until God’s appointed time has come.
28
“The Syrian king will then return home with great riches, first marching through Israel and destroying it.
29
Then at the predestined time he will once again turn his armies southward, as he had threatened, but now it will be a very different story from those first two occasions.
30-31
For Roman warships
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will scare him off, and he will withdraw and return home. Angered by having to retreat, the Syrian king will again pillage Jerusalem and pollute the sanctuary, putting a stop to the daily sacrifices, and worshiping idols inside the Temple. He will leave godless Jews in power when he leaves—men who have abandoned their fathers’ faith.
32
He will flatter those who hate the things of God
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and win them over to his side. But the people who know their God shall be strong and do great things.
33
“Those with spiritual understanding will have a wide ministry of teaching in those days. But they will be in constant danger, many of them dying by fire and sword, or being jailed and robbed.
34
Eventually these pressures will subside, and some ungodly men will come, pretending to offer a helping hand, only to take advantage of them.
35
“And some who are most gifted in the things of God will stumble in those days and fall, but this will only refine and cleanse them and make them pure until the final end of all their trials, at God’s appointed time.”
Oh, dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: if you are constantly doing what is good, it is because you
are
good, even as he is.
8
But if you keep on sinning, it shows that you belong to Satan, who since he first began to sin has kept steadily at it. But the Son of God came to destroy these works of the devil.
9
The person who has been born into God’s family does not make a practice of sinning because now God’s life is in him; so he can’t keep on sinning, for this new life has been born into him and controls him—he has been
born again.
10
So now we can tell who is a child of God and who belongs to Satan. Whoever is living a life of sin and doesn’t love his brother shows that he is not in God’s family;
11
for the message to us from the beginning has been that we should love one another.
12
We are not to be like Cain, who belonged to Satan and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing wrong and he knew very well that his brother’s life was better than his.
13
So don’t be surprised, dear friends, if the world hates you.
14
If we love other Christians, it proves that we have been delivered from hell and given eternal life. But a person who doesn’t have love for others is headed for eternal death.
15
Anyone who hates his Christian brother is really a murderer at heart; and you know that no one wanting to murder has eternal life within.
16
We know what real love is from Christ’s example in dying for us. And so we also ought to lay down our lives for our Christian brothers.
17
But if someone who is supposed to be a Christian has money enough to live well, and sees a brother in need, and won’t help him—how can God’s love be within
him
?
18
Little children, let us stop just
saying
we love people; let us
really
love them, and
show it
by our
actions.
19
Then we will know for sure, by our actions, that we are on God’s side, and our consciences will be clear, even when we stand before the Lord.
20
But if we have bad consciences and feel that we have done wrong, the Lord will surely feel it even more,
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for he knows everything we do.
21
But, dearly loved friends, if our consciences are clear, we can come to the Lord with perfect assurance and trust,
22
and get whatever we ask for because we are obeying him and doing the things that please him.
23
And this is what God says we must do: Believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another.
24
Those who do what God says—they are living with God and he with them. We know this is true because the Holy Spirit he has given us tells us so.
I was glad for the suggestion of going to Jerusalem, to the Temple of the Lord.
2-3
Now we are standing here inside the crowded city.
4
All Israel—Jehovah’s people—have come to worship as the law requires, to thank and praise the Lord.
5
Look! There are the judges holding court beside the city gates, deciding all the people’s arguments.
6
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May all who love this city prosper.
7
O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls and prosperity in your palaces.
8
This I ask for the sake of all my brothers and my friends who live here;
9
and may there be peace as a protection to the Temple of the Lord.
The man who is often reproved but refuses to accept criticism will suddenly be broken and never have another chance.
December 4“The king will do exactly as he pleases, claiming to be greater than every god there is, even blaspheming the God of gods, and prospering—until his time is up. For God’s plans are unshakable.
37
He will have no regard for the gods of his fathers, nor for the god beloved of women,
*
nor any other god, for he will boast that he is greater than them all.
38
Instead of these, he will worship the Fortress god
*
—a god his fathers never knew—and lavish on him costly gifts!
39
Claiming this god’s help, he will have great success against the strongest fortresses. He will honor those who submit to him, appointing them to positions of authority and dividing the land to them as their reward.
40
“Then at the time of the end,
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the king of the south will attack him again, and the northern king will react with the strength and fury of a whirlwind; his vast army and navy will rush out to bury him with their might.
41
He will invade various lands on the way, including Israel, the Pleasant Land, and overthrow the governments of many nations. Moab, Edom, and most of Ammon will escape,
42
but Egypt and many other lands will be occupied.
43
He will capture all the treasures of Egypt, and the Libyans and Ethiopians shall be his servants.
44
“But then news from the east and north will alarm him, and he will return in great anger to destroy as he goes.
45
He will halt between Jerusalem and the sea and there pitch his royal tents, but while he is there his time will suddenly run out, and there will be no one to help him.
12:
1
“At that time Michael, the mighty angelic prince who stands guard over your nation, will stand up and fight for you in heaven against satanic forces,
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and there will be a time of anguish for the Jews greater than any previous suffering in Jewish history. And yet every one of your people whose names are written in the Book will endure it.
2
“And many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
3
“And those who are wise—the people of God—shall shine as brightly as the sun’s brilliance, and those who turn many to righteousness will glitter like stars forever.
4
“But Daniel, keep this prophecy a secret; seal it up so that it will not be understood until the end times, when travel and education shall be vastly increased!”
5
Then I, Daniel, looked and saw two men
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on each bank of a river.
6
And one of them asked the man in linen robes who was standing now above the river, “How long will it be until all these terrors end?”
7
He replied, with both hands lifted to heaven, taking oath by him who lives forever and ever, that they will not end until three and a half years after the power of God’s people has been crushed.
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8
I heard what he said, but I didn’t understand what he meant. So I said, “Sir, how will all this finally end?”
9
But he said, “Go now, Daniel, for what I have said is not to be understood until the time of the end.
10
Many shall be purified by great trials and persecutions. But the wicked shall continue in their wickedness, and none of them will understand. Only those who are willing to learn will know what it means.
11
“From the time the daily sacrifice is taken away and the Horrible Thing is set up to be worshiped, there will be 1,290 days.
*
12
And blessed are those who wait and remain until the 1,335th day!
13
“But go on now to the end of your life and your rest; for you will rise again and have your full share of those last days.”
*
Dearly loved friends, don’t always believe everything you hear just because someone says it is a message from God: test it first to see if it really is. For there are many false teachers around,
2
and the way to find out if their message is from the Holy Spirit is to ask: Does it really agree that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, actually became man with a human body? If so, then the message is from God.
3
If not, the message is not from God but from one who is against Christ, like the “Antichrist” you have heard about who is going to come, and his attitude of enmity against Christ is already abroad in the world.
4
Dear young friends, you belong to God and have already won your fight with those who are against Christ because there is someone in your hearts who is stronger than any evil teacher in this wicked world.
5
These men belong to this world, so, quite naturally, they are concerned about worldly affairs and the world pays attention to them.
6
But we are children of God; that is why only those who have walked and talked with God will listen to us. Others won’t. That is another way to know whether a message is really from God; for if it is, the world won’t listen to it.
7
Dear friends, let us practice loving each other, for love comes from God and those who are loving and kind show that they are the children of God, and that they are getting to know him better.
8
But if a person isn’t loving and kind, it shows that he doesn’t know God—for God is love.
9
God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into this wicked world to bring to us eternal life through his death.
10
In this act we see what real love is: it is not our love for God but his love for us when he sent his Son to satisfy God’s anger against our sins.
11
Dear friends, since God loved us as much as that, we surely ought to love each other too.
12
For though we have never yet seen God, when we love each other God lives in us, and his love within us grows ever stronger.
13
And he has put his own Holy Spirit into our hearts as a proof to us that we are living with him and he with us.
14
And furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now tell all the world that God sent his Son to be their Savior.
15
Anyone who believes and says that Jesus is the Son of God has God living in him, and he is living with God.
16
We know how much God loves us because we have felt his love and because we believe him when he tells us that he loves us dearly. God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.
17
And as we live with Christ, our love grows more perfect and complete; so we will not be ashamed and embarrassed at the day of judgment, but can face him with confidence and joy because he loves us and we love him too.
18
We need have no fear of someone who loves us perfectly; his perfect love for us eliminates all dread of what he might do to us. If we are afraid, it is for fear of what he might do to us and shows that we are not fully convinced that he really loves us.
19
So you see, our love for him comes as a result of his loving us first.
20
If anyone says “I love God,” but keeps on hating his brother, he is a liar; for if he doesn’t love his brother who is right there in front of him, how can he love God whom he has never seen?
21
And God himself has said that one must love not only God but his brother too.
O God enthroned in heaven, I lift my eyes to you.
2
We look to Jehovah our God for his mercy and kindness just as a servant keeps his eyes upon his master or a slave girl watches her mistress for the slightest signal.
3-4
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy. For we have had our fill of contempt and of the scoffing of the rich and proud.
With good men in authority, the people rejoice; but with the wicked in power, they groan.
3
A wise son makes his father happy, but a lad who hangs around with prostitutes disgraces him.
4
A just king gives stability to his nation, but one who demands bribes destroys it.