Book of Common Prayer
18 This song of David was written at a time when the Lord had delivered him from his many enemies, including Saul.
Lord, how I love you! For you have done such tremendous things for me.
2 The Lord is my fort where I can enter and be safe; no one can follow me in and slay me. He is a rugged mountain where I hide; he is my Savior, a rock where none can reach me, and a tower of safety. He is my shield. He is like the strong horn of a mighty fighting bull. 3 All I need to do is cry to him—oh, praise the Lord—and I am saved from all my enemies!
4 Death bound me with chains, and the floods of ungodliness mounted a massive attack against me. 5 Trapped and helpless, I struggled against the ropes that drew me on to death.
6 In my distress I screamed to the Lord for his help. And he heard me from heaven;[a] my cry reached his ears. 7 Then the earth rocked and reeled, and mountains shook and trembled. How they quaked! For he was angry. 8 Fierce flames leaped from his mouth, setting fire to the earth;[b] smoke blew from his nostrils. 9 He bent the heavens down and came to my defense;[c] thick darkness was beneath his feet. 10 Mounted on a mighty angel,[d] he sped swiftly to my aid with wings of wind. 11 He enshrouded himself with darkness, veiling his approach with dense clouds dark as murky waters. 12 Suddenly the brilliance of his presence broke through the clouds with lightning[e] and a mighty storm of hail.
13 The Lord thundered in the heavens; the God above all gods has spoken—oh, the hailstones; oh, the fire! 14 He flashed his fearful arrows of lightning and routed all my enemies. See how they run! 15 Then at your command, O Lord, the sea receded from the shore. At the blast of your breath the depths were laid bare.
16 He reached down from heaven and took me and drew me out of my great trials. He rescued me from deep waters. 17 He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me—I who was helpless in their hands.
18 On the day when I was weakest, they attacked. But the Lord held me steady. 19 He led me to a place of safety, for he delights in me.
20 The Lord rewarded me for doing right and being pure. 21 For I have followed his commands and have not sinned by turning back from following him. 22 I kept close watch on all his laws; I did not refuse a single one. 23 I did my best to keep them all, holding myself back from doing wrong. 24 And so the Lord has paid me with his blessings, for I have done what is right, and I am pure of heart. This he knows, for he watches my every step.
25 Lord, how merciful you are to those who are merciful. And you do not punish those who run from evil.[f] 26 You give blessings to the pure but pain to those who leave your paths. 27 You deliver the humble but condemn the proud and haughty ones. 28 You have turned on my light! The Lord my God has made my darkness turn to light. 29 Now in your strength I can scale any wall, attack any troop.
30 What a God he is! How perfect in every way! All his promises prove true. He is a shield for everyone who hides behind him. 31 For who is God except our Lord? Who but he is as a rock?
32 He fills me with strength and protects me wherever I go. 33 He gives me the surefootedness of a mountain goat upon the crags. He leads me safely along the top of the cliffs. 34 He prepares me for battle and gives me strength to draw an iron bow![g]
35 You have given me your salvation as my shield. Your right hand, O Lord, supports me; your gentleness has made me great. 36 You have made wide steps beneath my feet so that I need never slip. 37 I chased my enemies; I caught up with them and did not turn back until all were conquered. 38 I pinned them to the ground; all were helpless before me. I placed my feet upon their necks. 39 For you have armed me with strong armor for the battle. My enemies quail before me and fall defeated at my feet. 40 You made them turn and run; I destroyed all who hated me. 41 They shouted for help, but no one dared to rescue them; they cried to the Lord, but he refused to answer them. 42 So I crushed them fine as dust and cast them to the wind. I threw them away like sweepings from the floor. 43-45 You gave me victory in every battle. The nations came and served me. Even those I didn’t know before come now and bow before me. Foreigners who have never seen me submit instantly. They come trembling from their strongholds.
46 God is alive! Praise him who is the great rock of protection. 47 He is the God who pays back those who harm me and subdues the nations before me.
48 He rescues me from my enemies; he holds me safely out of their reach and saves me from these powerful opponents. 49 For this, O Lord, I will praise you among the nations. 50 Many times you have miraculously rescued me, the king you appointed. You have been loving and kind to me and will be to my descendants.
31 “O king, you saw a huge and powerful statue of a man, shining brilliantly, frightening and terrible. 32 The head of the statue was made of purest gold, its chest and arms were of silver, its belly and thighs of brass, 33 its legs of iron, its feet part iron and part clay. 34 But as you watched, a Rock was cut from the mountainside[a] by supernatural means. It came hurtling toward the statue and crushed the feet of iron and clay, smashing them to bits. 35 Then the whole statue collapsed into a heap of iron, clay, brass, silver, and gold; its pieces were crushed as small as chaff, and the wind blew them all away. But the Rock that knocked the statue down became a great mountain that covered the whole earth.
36 “That was the dream; now for its meaning:
37 “Your Majesty, you are a king over many kings, for the God of heaven has given you your kingdom, power, strength, and glory. 38 You rule the farthest provinces, and even animals and birds are under your control, as God decreed. You are that head of gold.
39 “But after your kingdom has come to an end, another world power[b] will arise to take your place. This empire will be inferior to yours. And after that kingdom has fallen, yet a third great power—represented by the bronze belly of the statue—will rise to rule the world. 40 Following it, the fourth kingdom[c] will be strong as iron—smashing, bruising, and conquering. 41-42 The feet and toes you saw—part iron and part clay—show that later on, this kingdom will be divided. Some parts of it will be as strong as iron, and some as weak as clay. 43 This mixture of iron with clay also shows that these kingdoms will try to strengthen themselves by forming alliances with each other through intermarriage of their rulers; but this will not succeed, for iron and clay don’t mix.
44 “During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed; no one will ever conquer it. It will shatter all these kingdoms into nothingness, but it shall stand forever, indestructible. 45 That is the meaning of the Rock cut from the mountain without human hands—the Rock that crushed to powder all the iron and brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold.
“Thus the great God has shown what will happen in the future, and this interpretation of your dream is as sure and certain as my description of it.”
46 Then Nebuchadnezzar fell to the ground before Daniel and worshiped him and commanded his people to offer sacrifices and burn sweet incense before him.
47 “Truly, O Daniel,” the king said, “your God is the God of gods, Ruler of kings, the Revealer of mysteries, because he has told you this secret.”
48 Then the king made Daniel very great; he gave him many valuable gifts and appointed him to be ruler over the whole province of Babylon, as well as chief over all his wise men.
49 Then, at Daniel’s request, the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as Daniel’s assistants, to be in charge of all the affairs of the province of Babylon; Daniel served as chief magistrate in the king’s court.
18 Dear children, this world’s last hour has come. You have heard about the Antichrist who is coming—the one who is against Christ—and already many such persons have appeared. This makes us all the more certain that the end of the world is near. 19 These “against-Christ” people used to be members of our churches, but they never really belonged with us or else they would have stayed. When they left us it proved that they were not of us at all.
20 But you are not like that, for the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you know the truth. 21 So I am not writing to you as to those who need to know the truth, but I warn you as those who can discern the difference between true and false.
22 And who is the greatest liar? The one who says that Jesus is not Christ. Such a person is antichrist, for he does not believe in God the Father and in his Son. 23 For a person who doesn’t believe in Christ, God’s Son, can’t have God the Father either. But he who has Christ, God’s Son, has God the Father also.
24 So keep on believing what you have been taught from the beginning. If you do, you will always be in close fellowship with both God the Father and his Son. 25 And he himself has promised us this: eternal life.
26 These remarks of mine about the Antichrist are pointed at those who would dearly love to blindfold you and lead you astray. 27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, in your hearts, so that you don’t need anyone to teach you what is right. For he teaches you all things, and he is the Truth, and no liar; and so, just as he has said, you must live in Christ, never to depart from him.
28 And now, my little children, stay in happy fellowship with the Lord so that when he comes you will be sure that all is well and will not have to be ashamed and shrink back from meeting him. 29 Since we know that God is always good and does only right, we may rightly assume that all those who do right are his children.
3 1-2 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius Caesar, a message came from God to John (the son of Zacharias), as he was living out in the deserts. (Pilate was governor over Judea at that time; Herod, over Galilee; his brother Philip, over Iturea and Trachonitis; Lysanias, over Abilene; and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests.) 3 Then John went from place to place on both sides of the Jordan River, preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had turned to God and away from their sins, in order to be forgiven.[a]
4 In the words of Isaiah the prophet, John was “a voice shouting from the barren wilderness, ‘Prepare a road for the Lord to travel on! Widen the pathway before him! 5 Level the mountains! Fill up the valleys! Straighten the curves! Smooth out the ruts! 6 And then all mankind shall see the Savior sent from God.’”
7 Here is a sample of John’s preaching to the crowds that came for baptism: “You brood of snakes! You are trying to escape hell without truly turning to God! That is why you want to be baptized! 8 First go and prove by the way you live that you really have repented. And don’t think you are safe because you are descendants of Abraham. That isn’t enough. God can produce children of Abraham from these desert stones! 9 The ax of his judgment is poised over you, ready to sever your roots and cut you down. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.”
10 The crowd replied, “What do you want us to do?”
11 “If you have two coats,” he replied, “give one to the poor. If you have extra food, give it away to those who are hungry.”
12 Even tax collectors—notorious for their corruption—came to be baptized and asked, “How shall we prove to you that we have abandoned our sins?”
13 “By your honesty,” he replied. “Make sure you collect no more taxes than the Roman[b] government requires you to.”
14 “And us,” asked some soldiers, “what about us?”
John replied, “Don’t extort money by threats and violence; don’t accuse anyone of what you know he didn’t do; and be content with your pay!”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.