Watch

Keep watch over your life. Do not let your lamps go out, and do not let your belts hang loose; be ready, for you do not know the hour when our Lord is coming. Meet together often, looking for what your souls need; the whole time of your faith will do you no good unless you are made perfect at the last time.

For in the last days the false prophets and the corrupters will multiply, and the sheep will be turned into wolves, and love will be turned into hate. As lawlessness increases, people will hate one another and persecute and betray one another; and then the world-deceiver will appear as the Son of God, and he will do signs and wonders, and the earth will be handed over into his hands, and he will commit outrages such as have never happened since the beginning of the age. Then the human race will come into the fire that tests, and many will be tripped up and will perish; but those who endure in their faith will be saved by the curse itself. [a]

And then the signs of the truth will appear: first, the sign of a spreading out in the sky; then the sign of a trumpet’s sound; and third, the resurrection of the dead — not of everyone, but as it was said: “The Lord will come, and all his holy ones with him.” Then the world will see the Lord coming on the clouds of heaven. [c]