Book of Common Prayer

¹⁸ Children, it is the last hour. You have heard that “Antimessiah” is coming—and now many Antimessiahs have appeared! That’s how we know that it is the last hour. ¹⁹ They went out from among us, but they were not really of our number. If they had been of our number, you see, they would have remained with us. This happened so that it would be made crystal clear that none of them belonged to us. ²⁰ You, however, have the anointing from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. ²¹ I am not writing to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you do know it, and you know that no liar is of the truth.

²² Who is the liar? Is it not the one who denies that Jesus is the Messiah? Such a one is the Antimessiah—who denies the father and the son. ²³ Nobody who denies the son has the father. One who acknowledges the son has the father too. ²⁴ As for you: let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you too will abide in the son and in the father. ²⁵ And this is the promise which he himself promised us: the life of the age to come.

¹⁷ From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church, ¹⁸ and they came to him.

“You know very well,” he began, “how I have behaved with you all the time, since the first day I arrived in Asia. ¹⁹ I have served the Lord with all humility, with the tears and torments that came upon me because of the plots of the Jews. ²⁰ You know that I kept back nothing that would have been helpful to you, preaching to you and teaching you both in public and from house to house. ²¹ I bore witness both to Jews and Greeks about repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus.

²² “And now, look, I am going to Jerusalem, bound by the spirit. I have no idea what’s going to happen to me there, ²³ but only that the holy spirit testifies to me in city after city that captivity and trouble are in store for me. ²⁴ But I don’t reckon my life at any value, so long as I can finish my course, and the ministry which I have received from the Lord Jesus, to bear witness to the gospel of God’s grace.

²⁵ “So now,” he went on, “I have gone to and fro preaching the kingdom among you, but I know that none of you will ever see my face again. ²⁶ Therefore I bear witness to you this very day that I am innocent of everyone’s blood, ²⁷ since I did not shrink from declaring to you God’s entire plan.”

Watch out for yourselves, the flock and the wolves

²⁸ “Watch out for yourselves,” Paul continued, “and for the whole flock, in which the holy spirit has appointed you as guardians, to feed the church of God, which he purchased with his very own blood. ²⁹ I know that fierce wolves will come in after I am gone, and they won’t spare the flock. ³⁰ Yes, even from among yourselves people will arise, saying things which will distort the truth, and they will draw the disciples away after them. ³¹ Therefore keep watch, and remember that for three years, night and day, I didn’t stop warning each of you, with tears.

³² “So now I commit you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those whom God has sanctified. ³³ I never coveted anyone’s silver, or gold, or clothes. ³⁴ You yourselves know that these very hands worked to serve my own needs and those of the people with me. ³⁵ I showed you in all such matters that this is how we should work to help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, as he put it, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”