16 "Watch" over your life: do not let "your lamps" go out, and do not keep "your loins ungirded"; but "be ready," for "you do not know the hour when our Lord is coming."529  2Meet together frequently in your search for what is good for your souls, since "a lifetime of faith will be of no advantage"530 to you unless you prove perfect at the very last.  3For in the final days multitudes of false prophets and seducers will appear.  4Sheep will turn into wolves, and love into hatred. For with the increase of iniquity men will hate, persecute, and betray each other. And then the world deceiver will appear in the guise of God's Son. He will work "signs and wonders"531 and the earth will fall into his hands and he will commit outrages such as have never occurred before.  5Then mankind will come to the
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fiery trial "and many will fall away"532 and perish, "but those who persevere" in their faith "will be saved"533 by the Curse himself.534  6Then "there will appear the signs"535 of the Truth: first the sign of stretched-out [hands] in heaven,536 then the sign of "a trumpet's blast,"537 and thirdly the resurrection of the dead, though not of all the dead,  7but as it has been said: "The Lord will come and all his saints with him. Then the world will see the Lord coming on the clouds of the sky."538
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