Book of Common Prayer
Look! He is coming!
1 Revelation of Jesus the Messiah! God gave it to him to show his servants what must soon take place. He signified it by sending a message through his angel to his servant John, 2 who, by reporting all he saw, bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus the Messiah. 3 God’s blessing on the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and on those who hear them and keep what is written in it—for the time is near!
4 John, to the seven churches in Asia: grace to you and peace from He Who Is and Who Was and Who Is To Come, and from the seven spirits that are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus the Messiah, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Glory to the one who loved us, and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and father—glory and power be to him forever and ever. Amen.
7 Look! He is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see him; yes, even those who pierced him. All the tribes of the earth shall mourn because of him. Yes! Amen.
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, Who Is and Who Was and Who Is To Come, the Almighty.
The question of the resurrection
23 The same day some Sadducees came to him. (The Sadducees deny the resurrection.) Their question was this.
24 “Teacher,” they began, “Moses said, ‘If a man dies without children, his brother should marry his widow and raise up seed for his brother.’ 25 Well now, there were seven brothers living among us. The first got married, and then died, and since he didn’t have children he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened with the second and the third, and so on with all seven. 27 Last of all the woman died. 28 So: in the resurrection, whose wife will she be, of all the seven? All of them had married her, after all.”
29 This was Jesus’ answer to them: “You are quite mistaken,” he said, “because you don’t know your Bibles or God’s power. 30 In the resurrection, you see, people don’t marry or get married off; they are like angels in heaven. 31 But as for the resurrection of the dead, did you never read what was said to you by God, in these words: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He isn’t God of the dead, but of the living.”
33 The crowds heard this, and they were astonished at his teaching.
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.