Entering the Kingdom

¹³ “Enter through the narrow gate.^(A) For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction,^(B) and there are many who go through it.

¹² While I was with them, I was protecting them by your name that you have given me. I guarded^(A) them and not one of them is lost, except the son of destruction,^[a] so that the Scripture^(B) may be fulfilled.^(C)

²² And what if God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience^(A) objects of wrath prepared for destruction?^(B)

¹⁹ Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory^(A) is in their shame; and they are focused on earthly things.

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.

⁷ By the same word,^(A) the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire, being kept for the day of judgment^(B) and destruction of the ungodly.

¹⁸ and the Living One.^(A) I was dead, but look—I am alive forever and ever,^(B) and I hold the keys^(C) of death and Hades.

The Letter to Smyrna

⁸ “Write to the angel of the church in Smyrna: Thus says the First and the Last,^(A) the one who was dead and came to life: