For how ¹  were you treated worse than the other churches, except that I myself was not a burden to you? Forgive me this injustice!

so that your hearts are strengthened in holiness to be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. ¹ 

Therefore he had ¹  to be made like his brothers and sisters ²  in every respect, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in things relating to God, to make atonement ³  for the sins of the people.

So God ¹  again ordains a certain day, “Today,” speaking through David ²  after so long a time, as in the words quoted before, ³  “O, that today you would listen as he speaks! ⁴  Do not harden your hearts.”

“This is the covenant that I will establish with them after those days, says the Lord. I will put ¹  my laws on their hearts and I will inscribe them on their minds,” ² 

These all died in faith without receiving the things promised, ¹  but they saw them in the distance and welcomed them and acknowledged that they were strangers and foreigners ²  on the earth.

Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will be a witness against you. It will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have hoarded treasure! ¹ 

Look, the pay you have held back from the workers who mowed your fields cries out against you, and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues ¹  of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

He ¹  himself bore our sins ²  in his body on the tree, that we may cease from sinning ³  and live for righteousness. By his ⁴  wounds ⁵  you were healed. ⁶ 

Husbands, in the same way, treat your wives with consideration as the weaker partners ¹  and show them honor as fellow heirs of the grace of life. In this way nothing will hinder your prayers. ² 

speaking of these things in all his letters. ¹  Some things in these letters ²  are hard to understand, things ³  the ignorant and unstable twist ⁴  to their own destruction, as they also do to the rest of the scriptures. ⁵ 

And the person who keeps his commandments resides ¹  in God, ²  and God ³  in him. Now by this ⁴  we know that God ⁵  resides in us: by the Spirit he has given us.

(Now this is love: that we walk ¹  according to his commandments.) This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning; thus ²  you should walk in it. ³ 

and the one who lives! I ¹  was dead, but look, now I am alive – forever and ever – and I hold the keys of death and of Hades! ² 

In ¹  a circle around the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on those thrones were twenty-four elders. They were ²  dressed in white clothing and had golden crowns ³  on their heads.

Then ¹  one of the elders said ²  to me, “Stop weeping! ³  Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered; ⁴  thus he can open ⁵  the scroll and its seven seals.”

Now ¹  when the Lamb opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been violently killed ²  because of the word of God and because of the testimony they had given.

Then ¹  the kings of the earth, the ²  very important people, the generals, ³  the rich, the powerful, and everyone, slave ⁴  and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains.

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so no wind could blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree.