Thessalonians 4:13-18
“We wish you not to remain in ignorance, brothers, about those who sleep in death; you should not grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again; and so it will be for those who died as Christians; God will bring them to life with Jesus.”
[footnote]: Or will bring them in company with Jesus.
“For this we tell you as the Lord’s word; we who are left alive until the command, at the sound of the archangel’s voice and God’s trumpet-call, the Lord himself will descend from heaven; first the Christian dead will rise, then we who are left alive shall join them, caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Console one another, then, with these words.”
What an amazing contrast to the King James Version Blasphemy!
“Those who died as Christians”
This must be one of very few Religious instances requiring proper death for salvation! The opposite of Jihad, a self-sacrifice so that others may live. It sounds much more tolkienesque, right? Somehow more resonant and poetic. Something actual American heroes actually used to do all the time.
You may be thinking the meaning is to have lived a life full of Christianity until the end. However, in this place, at this time, the end, your death matters more than the beginning or middle. Isn’t that right? I’ve been through hell, no one is skating out of here into a thousand year life like that, just doing what everyone told you to do. Apes are naturally decent. Dying in your sleep like an old woman. That is a total failure grade.
Maybe for each Christian a certain precise amount of “Death to Tyrants is Obedience to God” if for them to understand.
“Those who sleep in death”
Such a powerful phrase it would be commonplace all over the word to say that phrase except for the King and his 1611 version eh? Or the Pope and his version with “Elias the Prophet”, the 1609 Douay-Rheims?
The 1961 New English Bible was Partly translated, produced, and published by the Irish Council of Churches.