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The 2 letters Paul wrote
to the Christians at
SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH VERSION
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Contents
The 1st letter that Paul wrote
to the Christians at Thessalonica . . . . . . page 2
The 2nd letter that Paul wrote
to the Christians at Thessalonica . . . . . page 16
Simplified English Version for Indigenous Australians
Published by The Bible League Inc.
© 2015
PO Box 714 Penrith NSW 2751
Freecall: 1800 800 937
[email protected]
www.bl.org.auPrinted with the support of the GFM Foundation
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The 2 letters that Paul wrote
to the Christians at
1 & 2 THESSALONIANS
from the Holy Bible
SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH VERSION
EPHESIANS from the Holy Bible
SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH VERSION
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This page tells a bit more
about Paul’s 1st letter to the
Christians at Thessalonica.
Thessalonica was a big town in the country that we
now call Greece. It is still a big town today. Sometimes
people now call that town Salonica.
About 2,000 years ago Paul went to Thessalonica to
tell the people there about Jesus Christ, and 2 other
men went there with him. Their names were Silas and
Timothy (see Acts 17:1-15.) They couldn’t stay there
very long, maybe only a few weeks.
Paul was sorry that he didn’t have enough time at
Thessalonica, so later on he sent Timothy back to them.
Paul wanted to teach the new Christians there a lot
more about Jesus Christ. After Timothy came back and
told Paul about them, Paul wrote them this letter. Silas
and Timothy helped him write it. This happened about
20 years after Jesus went back to heaven.
In this letter Paul told about Jesus coming back from
heaven, and he said other good things too. So today we
have to take notice of what he wrote a long time ago to
the Christians at Thessalonica.
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The 1st letter that Paul wrote
to the Christians at Thessalonica
Chapter 1
1
This letter is from us, Paul, Silas and Timothy. We are
writing this letter to the people at Thessalonica that belong
to God. He is the Father of our Leader, Jesus Christ.
We pray that God will be very good to you and help you
to be calm and settled inside yourselves.
People at Thessalonica properly believed in Jesus
2
We pray for you mob all the time and we always thank
God for you. 3 Whenever we talk about you to God, our
Father, we remember the good things that you do. You
properly believe in Jesus Christ and you love him very
much, so you do those good things. And you love other
people too, so you work hard to help them. You are really
sure that our Leader, Jesus Christ, will come back for you,
so you keep on following him no matter what other people
do to you.
4
Dear friends, we know that God loves you and he
picked you to be his own people. 5 Do you remember the
time when we told you the good news about Jesus? We told
you the message with our words but the Holy Spirit also
showed you his power at that time, and he made us sure that
we were telling you the story properly. And do you
remember the kind of people we were, with you there? We
showed you the good way to live. 6 So you started to live the
same way that we lived, just like we tried to live the same
way as our Leader Jesus lived. You believed the message
about Jesus and the Holy Spirit made you real happy. Other
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people gave you a lot of trouble but you were happy
anyway. 7 You showed all the other Christians there the right
way to live. Those Christians live in Macedonia country,
where your town is, and also in the country to the south of
you called Achaia.
8-9
And now people in many places have heard about
Jesus. You see, other people told them about you. They told
them that you listened to us when we came to your town
and you turned away from the gods that are not true, and
now you only work for the true God, the one that is
properly alive. And it is not only the people in Macedonia
and Achaia that have heard this story. Everywhere we go we
find people that tell us about you so we know that story has
gone around to lots of places. We don’t have to tell anyone
about you. They have already heard the story. 10 And they
say that you are waiting for God’s son to come back from
heaven. His son is Jesus. He died, but God made him alive
again. Later on God will judge everybody, and he will be
angry with people that do bad things. But Jesus will save us,
and you too, so that God will not be angry with us.
Chapter 2
Paul got the Christians at Thessalonica to remember
the time he visited them
1
Friends, do you remember the good things that
happened when we came to your town? We did not go there
for nothing. 2 But before we came to you we told God’s
message to the people in Philippi. Some of those Philippi
people got really cheeky to us and beat us up. After that we
came to your town, and God made us brave so we told
God’s message to you too. We didn’t get frightened of
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cheeky people that tried to stop us. 3 You see, we only told
you true things. We told you the good news so that you can
believe God. We were not trying to trick you or get you to
believe things that are not true. 4 No way. You see, it was
God that checked us out and sent us to tell people this
message, so we only say what he wants us to say. We don’t
try to make people happy. We only try to make God happy.
5
And you remember how we talked to you. We didn’t say
nice things about you to get you to like us. We never had
any secret plan to get you to give us things. God knows this.
6
We didn’t try to get you to say good things about us; not
you and not anyone else.
7
Jesus made us his special workers and he sent us to you.
But we didn’t say, “We come from Jesus Christ so we are
your bosses and you’ve got to do what we say.” No, we
didn’t talk like that. We were like little kids with you. We
talked easy to you. We were good to you, like a mother
taking care of her kids. 8 We loved you so much that we had
to tell you the good news about Jesus. And more than that,
we were willing to do anything to help you.
9
Friends, do you remember when we were there with
you? We worked to get money and at the same time we told
you the good news from God. We worked long hours, not
only in the day time but also at night time. We worked hard
to get enough money to look after ourselves. So you didn’t
have to give us anything. 10 While we were with you
Christians we only did things that make God happy. We did
things that are good and right. You know this, and God
knows it too. 11 And you know that we treated each one of
you the way a father treats his own children. 12 We taught
you and we helped you to be brave and strong. And we told
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you very strongly to do things that make God happy. You
see, God picks you to be in his own family, and you will be
really great with him.
People at Thessalonica believed God’s message
13
And we always thank God too for the way you listened
to us. We told you God’s message and you knew that it was
not only a message from us humans. You believed that we
told you words from God, and that it was God’s message.
And you were right. It is God’s word. And if you believe in
Jesus, God uses his word to help you.
14
And friends, do you know what happened to the people
in the churches in Judea country? They believed in Jesus
and their Jewish countrymen gave them a lot of trouble.
And it is the same for you now. You believe in Jesus and
your countrymen give you a lot of trouble. That Jewish mob
that didn’t want to believe God, and they made trouble for
Jesus too. 15 A long time ago it was the Jewish mob that
killed the men that told God’s messages, and it was the
Jewish mob that killed our Leader Jesus too. And wherever
we told people about Jesus, the Jewish mob chased us out of
those places. They make God angry and they are everyone’s
enemies. 16 They try to stop us telling everyone that God can
save other people that are not Jewish. That Jewish mob did
a lot of bad things in the past and they are also doing these
bad things now, so they make God angry and he is going to
punish them.
Paul wanted to go back and visit the Christians at
Thessalonica
17
Look, friends, we never wanted to leave you mob but
we had to. But it was only for a little while, and we kept
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thinking about you, and we really wanted to go back to you.
18
I, Paul, tried to go back many times but the devil boss
called Satan stopped me every time. 19-20 Listen. One day our
Leader, Jesus, will come back and he will ask us, “What
people did you help?” Then we will tell him about you mob,
and we will be so proud of you. We know for sure that you
are trusting him and you make us really happy. You know
about athletes that run in races, don’t you? After a race the
winner gets a prize. Well, just like that, after Jesus comes
back he will tell us we did a good job with you, and this
will be like a prize for us.
Chapter 3
Paul sent Timothy to the Christians at Thessalonica
1-2
But at first, soon after we left you, we worried about
you. We didn’t know if you kept on trusting Jesus or not.
We tried to go back to find out about you but we couldn’t
do it. And we couldn’t wait to get some news about you. So
we reckoned, “Let’s send Timothy by himself, and we will
stay here in this city called Athens and wait for him to come
back.” Timothy is like our brother. He works with us for
God, telling people the good news about Jesus Christ.
We sent Timothy to you so that he could help you to be
strong and to trust Jesus better. 3 We knew that people would
give you trouble, but we didn’t want any of you to stop
following Jesus. You yourselves know that people will give
us trouble if we follow Jesus. 4 This is what we told you
when we were still with you, we said, “Soon some people
will give you trouble.” And they soon did that, just like we
said. 5 And I really worried about you. I thought, “You
Christians in Thessalonica are very new Christians. Maybe
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the devil gave you too much trouble and maybe he tricked
you. Maybe you don’t trust Jesus any more. Maybe we
worked for nothing there in Thessalonica.” That’s what I
was thinking, but I didn’t really know the true story. And I
couldn’t wait any longer, I had to send Timothy to find out
the true story about you.
Timothy came back with good news
6
And now Timothy has come back to us and he has
brought us good news about you. He tells us that you still
believe in Jesus Christ, and you still love God, and you still
love other people. He says that every time you remember us
it makes you happy, and you want to see us again just as
much as we want to see you again. This is the story Timothy
tells us. 7 And we are very happy to hear this news about
you. After we heard it we got braver and stronger for God.
It does not matter to us if people give us trouble and hit us.
You still trust Jesus so we are happy. 8 We heard that you
strongly believe in our Leader, Jesus, and now we feel
properly alive again. 9 You make us so happy that we pray to
God and thank him for you. We can’t thank him enough!
10
We pray to God both in the day time and at night time,
and we ask him to let us visit you again. There are still
some things we need to tell you about Jesus so that you can
trust him more.
Paul wanted something good for the Christians at
Thessalonica
11
Yes, we want God, our Father, and Jesus our Leader, to
show us the way to come to you. 12 And we want God to get
you to love each other and to love everybody even more
than you do. We want you to love people just as much as we
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love you, 13 so that you will be spiritually strong. You see,
our Leader Jesus will come back one day with all his special
people, and then we will all meet God, our Father. I want
you to be there with us in that mob. I want you to be
properly good, so that God will be happy with you and not
blame you for doing anything wrong.
Chapter 4
God wants Christians to live the right way
1
There is one more thing we want to tell you. Do you
remember what we taught you about the right way to live,
so as to make God happy? Yes, and you have been living
that way. But we want you to live like that even more.
2
You know the things that we told you to do. Our Leader,
Jesus, got us to tell you those things. 3 This is what God
wants. He wants you to be properly good and to keep away
from everything that is wrong. Don’t sleep with anyone who
is not your own wife or husband. 4 Every one of you has to
learn how to control his own body in a way that is clean and
that everyone will say is good. 5 Don’t be like people that do
not know God. They are always wanting very much to sleep
with somebody. They don’t try to stop themselves. Don’t
you be like that. 6 None of you men can ever sleep with a
woman who is not his own wife. If you do this you are
taking something that belongs to another man. So, you are
doing a wrong thing to that man, who is like your brother.
God will punish you if you do things like that. We told you
this when we were with you, and we mean it. 7 God did not
pick us to be people that do bad and dirty things. He picked
us to be people that keep away from everything that is bad.
8
So anyone who does not listen to this rule is not turning his
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back to a human person, he is turning his back to God. He is
not doing what God says. And remember, God is the one
that gives you his Holy Spirit, and his Spirit is properly
good.
9
I do not need to write to you about how you have to
love other Christians. God himself taught you to love each
other. 10 Yes, you do love all the Christians in every place in
Macedonia country. But we ask you strongly, friends, to
love each other more and more. 11 Try hard to live in a quiet
way and not make any trouble for anyone. Look after your
own things, don’t mess around with other people’s things.
And don’t be lazy but work to get enough money to buy
whatever you need. We told you to do these things when we
were with you. 12 If you live like this then you will have
whatever you need, and you won’t have to ask other people
for anything. And the people that don’t know God will see
that you are good, and they will respect you.
All Christians will go up to meet Jesus as he comes back
13
Friends, we are going to tell you now about people that
have already died. We don’t want you to be sad when you
think about them. Other people, that don’t believe in Jesus,
they don’t know what will happen to them after they die, so
when their friends die they get real sad. But we Christians
don’t have to be sad like them when our Christian friends
die. Listen, we want you to understand this properly. 14 You
see, we believe that Jesus died and after that God made him
alive again. So we believe too that when Jesus comes back
to this earth, all the Christians that already died will come
back with him. Jesus will bring them all back with him.
15
This is the message that our Leader Jesus told us, and we
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tell this same message to you. Those of us that are still alive
when Jesus comes back, we can’t go first to meet him, but
those people that already died will get up and go ahead of
us. 16 It will happen like this. Our Leader Jesus himself will
come down from heaven, and while he is coming everyone
will hear him call out, and they will hear the voice of the
boss of God’s angels, and they will hear the sound of God’s
trumpet. Then, first of all, those people that belonged to
Jesus Christ when they died, they will get up alive again,
and they will go up to meet Jesus. 17 After that, those of us
who are still alive at that time will go up with them to meet
Jesus. God will take us all up into the clouds to meet our
Leader Jesus, way up in the air. And so, after that, we will
be with him all the time forever. 18 So think about this
message, and talk to each other about it, so you won’t be
sad when your Christian friend dies.
Chapter 5
Christians have to be ready for Jesus to come back
1
Friends, we do not need to write to you about times and
dates. 2 You know already about that day when our Leader,
Jesus, will come back. You know that day will come
suddenly and everybody will get a big shock. They won’t be
ready for it, like nobody is ready for a robber to come in the
night to steal things. 3 It will be like this. People will be
saying, “We are safe and we have no trouble.” But then,
suddenly, that big trouble will come and they won’t be
ready for it. God will give them big trouble and wreck them.
You know about a pregnant woman, she suddenly gets pain
and her baby starts to come. Well, just like that, people will
suddenly get big trouble. No one will get away from it.
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4
But friends, you are not like other people that do bad
things all the time. It is like they are living in the dark all
the time. When that trouble day comes you won’t get a
shock, like when a robber comes to steal things at night.
5
You belong to our Leader, Jesus, and you do good things,
so you belong to the light and to the day time. You are not
people that belong to the night time or the dark. 6 So don’t
be like other people that aren’t ready, like they are asleep.
Instead, you can think clearly about what is happening, like
people that are awake. 7 You know, night time is the time
when people go to sleep, or maybe they get drunk. 8 But we
belong to the day time, so we have to think clearly. We have
to keep on loving God and trusting him to save us. When
we do these things we will be like soldiers that put on
special clothes made out of steel to stop the enemy from
hitting them.
9-10
You see, God did not plan to get angry with us. No.
He planned to save us. Our Leader Jesus Christ died for us
so now God can save us. After Jesus comes back we will
live with him forever. It won’t matter if we are alive or dead
when he comes, we will all live with him forever. 11 So then,
tell these things to each other and help each other to become
stronger, not sad and weak. And yes, we know you are
doing this already.
Some things to do and some things not to do
12
Now friends, here are a few more things we really want
you to do. Respect those people among you that work hard
for God. They lead you, his people, and teach you how to
live the right way. 13 They work for God, so respect them
and love them very much.
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And another thing, don’t argue with each other.
14
And the next thing, tell lazy people that they have to
work.
And if someone is frightened, talk to them in a way that
helps them to be brave.
And help anybody that is weak.
And wait for other people, and try to stay friends with
them.
15
If someone does something bad to you, don’t try to do
payback to them, but always try to be good to each other
and to everyone else too.
16
Always be happy.
17
Be ready to pray to God at any time.
18
Always thank God, no matter what happens to you.
You see, you belong to Jesus Christ, so God wants you to
do these things.
19
Now this is about people that give you messages from
God. Don’t stop God’s Spirit working in you. 20 Listen
carefully when anyone tells you a message that they say
comes from God. Don’t rubbish God’s messages, 21 but think
carefully about everything they say, and find out if it really
comes from God. Then, if it is right, be careful to remember
it and to do those good things. 22 But if it is wrong, or if it
tells you to do a bad thing, don’t do it. Keep away from
every kind of bad thing, and don’t listen to messages that
don’t come from God.
The end of this letter
23
God is the one that helps people to be calm and settled
inside themselves. I want this for you, and I ask God
himself to clean you properly inside so that you are his
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special people. I ask him to look after every part of you;
your spirits, your souls and your bodies, so that you will be
properly good and clean when our Leader Jesus Christ
comes back. 24 God will do this for you. He picked you to be
his people, and he always does what he promised to do.
25
Friends, pray for us.
26
And whenever you meet other Christians say “hello” to
them and show them that you love them.
27
Now listen. I want you to promise me that you will
read this letter to all the Christians there, and our Leader
Jesus will be listening to you promise this.
28
And now I ask our Leader, Jesus Christ, to be with you
and to be very good to you.
Yours truly,
Paul
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This page tells a bit more
about Paul’s 2nd letter to the
Christians at Thessalonica.
Thessalonica was a big town in the country that we
now call Greece. It is still a big city today. Sometimes
people now call that town Salonica.
About 2,000 years ago Paul went to Thessalonica to
tell the people about Jesus Christ. Silas and Timothy
went there with him, but after a few weeks they had to
leave and go to another place (see Acts 17:1-15). A few
months later, Paul wrote his first letter to those people
in Thessalonica that believed in Jesus.
Soon after that, Paul heard that some other people
were making bad trouble for the Christians at
Thessalonica, and some people reckoned that Jesus
already came back from heaven. So he wrote this
second letter to them to tell them the true story about
these things.
In this letter Paul wrote about what will happen on
the earth before Jesus comes back, and he said other
good things too. So today we have to take notice of
what he wrote a long time ago to the Christians at
Thessalonica.
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The 2nd letter that Paul wrote
to the Christians at Thessalonica
Chapter 1
1
This letter is from us, Paul, Silas and Timothy. We are
writing this letter to the people that belong to God, that live
in the town called Thessalonica. God is the father of our
Leader, Jesus Christ. 2 I pray to God, our Father, and to
Jesus Christ our Leader, that they will be good to you and
help you to be calm and settled inside yourselves.
Paul thanked God for the Christians at Thessalonica
3
Our Christian friends, we know you are learning to trust
God more and more, and you are loving each other more
and more. So we have to thank God for you all the time.
4
And whenever we visit God’s people in the churches in
other places, we tell them all about you. We tell them that
you keep on believing in Jesus, no matter how much trouble
people give you or how much they hit you.
Jesus will come back and God will judge people properly
5
All this shows us that God always judges people the
right way. You see, you let God be your Boss and you are in
his family now, so other people don’t like you and they give
you trouble. God lets them do that now so that you will be
better people, and you will join his family. 6 God is a good
and fair judge, and in the end he will do payback to them
and give them trouble, just like they gave you trouble.
7
And he will let you rest and be happy, without any trouble.
He will do this for you, and for us too, when Jesus, our
Leader, comes back. Everyone will see him come from
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heaven with a big mob of his strong angel messengers,
8
and with a lot of fire. They will punish all those people that
don’t want to know God. Those people won’t listen to the
good story about Jesus, or do what he says. 9 God will go on
punishing them forever. He will properly ruin them. He will
shut them out so they can never come near the Lord Jesus.
They will never see how really great and powerful he is.
10
All this will happen on the day when Jesus will come
back to the earth. Jesus’ own people will show what great
things he has done for them, and they will really respect
him. And you will be there too in this mob. You believed
what we told you about Jesus, so you will be with his
people when he comes back to earth.
God can work powerfully in Christians
11
So we always pray for you. God picked you to be his
own people, so we ask God to keep making you better
people so that he will be happy to have you in his mob.
You believe in Jesus and you want to do good things, so we
pray that God will work powerfully in you, and that he will
give you the power to do all those good things that you
want to do. 12 We ask God to do this so that people will see
how he works in you and they will really respect our Leader
Jesus, and say good things about him. And we want you to
be so good that Jesus will be happy with you too. We are
asking those 2, God and our Leader Jesus Christ, to be
really good to you.
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Chapter 2
Don’t listen to people that reckon Jesus came back already
1
Now, friends, we want to tell you a bit more about the
way our Leader Jesus Christ will come back to the earth,
and the time when he will bring us all together to be with
him. 2 We ask you not to listen to people that reckon he
came back already. We don’t want you to get upset easily or
frightened by those people. They might lie and say that they
heard one of God’s men say this, or that someone wrote it in
a report, or they might even reckon that we wrote it in a letter.
3
Don’t listen to them. Don’t let anyone trick you like that.
A really bad man will come before Jesus comes back
You see, it will be like this. There are some things that
will happen first, and after that Jesus will come back. A lot
of people will turn against God, and then a really bad man
will get up and show himself to everyone. He will never do
anything that God wants. He will be the kind of man that
God wants to properly finish up. 4 He will reckon he is
better than God. He will fight against God and against
everything else that people think is a god. He will fight
against everything that people respect in a spiritual way. He
will even go into God’s house and sit down there, and tell
everyone that he is God.
Something is holding back that bad man
5
Do you remember me talking about this when I was
with you there at your town? 6 You already know something
about this man. You know that he wants to start doing his
bad things now but someone is holding him back. But at the
right time God will let everyone see this bad man. 7 You
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know, there is secret power already working in the world,
stopping people from doing what God wants. But someone
is fighting against that power and stopping it from winning.
And he will keep doing that till God takes him away. 8 Then
that really bad man will come and show himself to
everyone. That man never does anything that God wants.
But our Leader Jesus will come and kill him. Jesus will talk,
and it is like Jesus’ breath will kill that man. Jesus will
finish him up with the very bright, powerful light that shines
from Jesus himself.
That really bad man will trick people
9
You know, the devil, called Satan, will give some of his
power to that bad man. So that bad man will come and he
will do really clever things with Satan’s power. Those things
will shock people very much. They will think that he has
good power and they will believe him, but they will be
wrong. 10 He will trick those people. They will think, “He is
doing powerful things, so he is right,” but he will really be
doing very bad things with Satan’s power. You know, there
are some people that don’t like the true message about
Jesus. They don’t believe it. They will not let God save
them. These are the people that this really bad man will
trick. So in the end God will finish those people up.
11
You see, they will not believe the true message, so God
will let someone properly trick them and they will believe
that bad man’s lies. 12 These are people that like to do bad
things and won’t believe the true message about Jesus. So
God will judge them and say they are guilty.
Keep on properly trusting Jesus
13-14
20
But friends, we thank God that you are not in that
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mob. Right from the start God picked you to be the ones
that he will save. And he put his Holy Spirit into you to
save you. We told you the true message about Jesus and you
believed it. It is like God called to you at that time to come
and join his mob. And now God’s Spirit works in you all the
time to change you into God’s special people. And in
heaven you will be really great, along with our Leader Jesus
Christ.
15
So then, friends, you have to keep strong and keep on
properly trusting Jesus. Keep on believing the things that we
taught to you. You see, Jesus taught us those things and later
we taught them to you. We told you those things when we
were there with you, and after that we wrote letters to you
to tell you more. Keep on believing those things.
16
And now we pray to our Leader himself, Jesus Christ,
and we pray to our Father, God. He loves us and he is very
good to us. He helps us to be strong and brave for ever. He
tells us that we are his people, for sure. 17 So we ask him to
help you to be spiritually strong and brave too, so that you
keep on doing good things and saying good things.
Chapter 3
Paul asked the Christians at Thessalonica to pray for him
1
And friends, there is one more thing we want to say.
Pray for us. Ask God to help us to tell a lot more people
about Jesus. We want them to hear that message soon, and
we want them to believe it just like you did. 2 You know,
there are some people that never believe the good news
about Jesus, and some very bad people that want to give us
trouble. Ask God to keep us safe from them.
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Jesus will keep you safe
3
But as for you, friends, remember that Jesus, our
Leader, always does what he promised to do. He will help
you to keep on trusting him strongly. He will keep you safe
from that really bad devil, so that he can’t touch you. 4 You
see, God helps us know for sure about you. We reckon you
are doing the things that we told you to do and we reckon
you will keep on doing them. 5 We want our Leader Jesus
Christ to lead you so that you understand more about God,
and about how much he loves you. And we want him to
help you keep going strong, just like Jesus Christ kept going
strong when he was here on the earth.
Don’t be lazy
6-7
Listen, friends, our Leader Jesus Christ wants us to tell
you this. If anyone says they are a Christian, but they sit
down and never want to do any work, you have to keep
away from that person. Do you remember that time when
we were with you? Do you remember what we were like?
We didn’t sit around doing nothing. And we told you,
“Don’t be lazy.” We want you to copy us, and live the way
we lived when we were with you. 8 We worked very hard,
not only in the day time but at night time too, so that we
could get enough money to look after ourselves. We always
paid for the food you gave us. You didn’t have to find extra
money to look after us.
No work, no food
9
You know, God says that if a man tells people the good
news about Jesus it is alright for him to ask them for the
things he needs. But we didn’t do this to you. You see, we
22
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wanted to show you the right way for a Christian to live.
10
Remember what we told you about people that don’t want
to work. We told you not to feed them. We said, “If they
won’t do any work, don’t feed them anything either.”
Get a job so you can buy your own food
11
You see, somebody told us that there are some lazy
people there with you that never want to do any work. But
instead, they go around to other people and mess them up.
12
So we write this to those lazy people. Our Leader, Jesus
Christ, wants us to strongly tell them this. They have to
change the way they live. They have to be quiet and get a
job, so that they can buy their own food to eat.
13
But to you other Christian friends we say this, keep
going strong and don’t give up doing good things.
Try to straighten out those people that go wrong
14
We are writing this letter to tell you the right way to
live. If some people won’t do what we say in this letter, tell
everyone about them and don’t be their close friends. Then
they will feel ashamed. 15 But don’t be their enemies.
Instead, talk to them like they are your brothers or sisters
and try to straighten them out.
The end of the letter
16
We will finish this letter now. You know, our Leader,
Jesus, is the one that can settle everyone down and help
them feel good inside. And we pray that he will do this for
you all the time and that he will be with you all the time.
Paul signed this letter
17
This is me, Paul, writing this bit now. I am saying
23
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“hello” to you, and I am writing it with my own hand, so
everyone can be sure that this letter really is from me. I do
this at the end of all my letters. 18 I pray that our Leader
Jesus Christ will keep on being real good to all of you.
Yours truly,
Paul
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Translation Background
The aim of this Simplified English Version of Scripture is to make it easily
understood by Indigenous Australians whose mother tongue is an
indigenous Australian language. In this translation we modified the English
in the direction of the features that are common to almost all Australian
languages. This has affected the vocabulary, grammar and rhetorical devices
that we have used. We have also followed the principles of meaning based
translation wherein we have sought to convey to the readers of this version
the same meaning as the original authors conveyed to the original readers,
not just in terms of the words used but also of the message contained in
those words.
The following are some of the more common modifications we have
made:
• Where the grammar of the original has used the passive voice we have
used the active voice, since the grammars of most indigenous Australian
languages do not have passive voice.
• Where the original text has used an abstract noun to express a concept
that is fundamentally an action or a quality we have used a verb or
adjective to translate that concept, since abstract nouns are
comparatively rare in Australian languages.
• Where the grammar of the original has used long and complicated
sentences we have conformed to the grammars of Australian languages
by using shorter sentences, making other adjustments as necessary to
retain the meaning carried by the grammar of the original.
• Where the original text has implicit information that would not be
obvious to our target audience we have made that information explicit.
• Where the original text has used a word or phrase, the literal translation
of which would not be understood by our target audience, we have
used an explanatory rendering to convey the same meaning, whether or
not it involved more words.
• Where the original text has used figurative language that would be
taken as literal by our target audience we have stated the meaning of
the figure rather than its literal form.
At any one place in our translation we may have used any combination of
the above. We have tried to keep the wording and style of this version as
close as possible to that used by Indigenous Australians who know English
only as a learned language.
Dave Glasgow
Translation Team Coordinator
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