Believers who have died

¹³ Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about people who have died^[a] so that you won’t mourn like others who don’t have any hope. ¹⁴ Since we believe that Jesus died and rose, so we also believe that God will bring with him those who have died in Jesus. ¹⁵ What we are saying is a message from the Lord: we who are alive and still around at the Lord’s coming definitely won’t go ahead of those who have died. ¹⁶ This is because the Lord himself will come down from heaven with the signal of a shout by the head angel and a blast on God’s trumpet. First, those who are dead in Christ will rise. ¹⁷ Then, we who are living and still around will be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet with the Lord in the air. That way we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ So encourage each other with these words.

Psalm 96

¹⁶ Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been raised. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did and stood up to read. ¹⁷ The synagogue assistant gave him the scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

²⁰ He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the synagogue assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him. ²¹ He began to explain to them, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled just as you heard it.”

²² Everyone was raving about Jesus, so impressed were they by the gracious words flowing from his lips. They said, “This is Joseph’s son, isn’t it?”

²³ Then Jesus said to them, “Undoubtedly, you will quote this saying to me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we’ve heard you did in Capernaum.’” ²⁴ He said, “I assure you that no prophet is welcome in the prophet’s hometown. ²⁵ And I can assure you that there were many widows in Israel during Elijah’s time, when it didn’t rain for three and a half years and there was a great food shortage in the land. ²⁶ Yet Elijah was sent to none of them but only to a widow in the city of Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷ There were also many persons with skin diseases in Israel during the time of the prophet Elisha, but none of them were cleansed. Instead, Naaman the Syrian was cleansed.”

²⁸ When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was filled with anger. ²⁹ They rose up and ran him out of town. They led him to the crest of the hill on which their town had been built so that they could throw him off the cliff. ³⁰ But he passed through the crowd and went on his way.