³ Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy^[a] comes first and the man of lawlessness^[b] is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.

⁴ He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god^(A) or object of worship,^(B) so that he sits^[a] in God’s temple, proclaiming that he himself is God.

¹⁶ Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s temple^(A) and that the Spirit of God lives in you?^(B)

¹⁷ If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him;^(A) for God’s temple is holy,^(B) and that is what you are.

The Fifth Trumpet

9 The fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth.^(A) The key for the shaft to the abyss^(B) was given to him. ² He opened the shaft to the abyss, and smoke came up out of the shaft like smoke from a great^[a] furnace^(C) so that the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft.^{(D) 3} Then locusts came out of the smoke on to the earth,^(E) and power^[b] was given to them^(F) like the power that scorpions have on the earth.^{(G) 4} They were told not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green plant, or any tree,^(H) but only those people who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads.^{(I) 5} They were not permitted to kill them but were to torment them for five months; their torment is like the torment caused by a scorpion when it stings someone. ⁶ In those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.^(J)

The Two Witnesses

11 Then I was given a measuring reed^(A) like a rod,^[a] with these words: “Go^[b] and measure the temple of God and the altar, and count those who worship there. ² But exclude the courtyard outside the temple.^(B) Don’t measure it, because it is given to the nations,^[c](C) and they will trample the holy city^(D) for forty-two months.^{(E) 3} I will grant^[d] my two witnesses authority to prophesy for 1,260 days, dressed in sackcloth.”^(F)