9. “You must be careful! There are people who will arrest you and take you to be judged for being my followers. They will beat you in their synagogues. You will be forced to stand before kings and governors. You will tell them about me.
10. Before the end comes, the Good News must be told to all nations.
11. Even when you are arrested and put on trial, don’t worry about what you will say. Say whatever God tells you at the time. It will not really be you speaking. It will be the Holy Spirit.
12. “Brothers will turn against their own brothers and hand them over to be killed. Fathers will hand over their own children to be killed. Children will fight against their own parents and have them killed.
13. All people will hate you because you follow me. But those who remain faithful to the end will be saved.
14. “You will see ‘the terrible thing that causes destruction.’ You will see this thing standing in the place where it should not be.” (Reader, I trust you understand what this means.) “Everyone in Judea at that time should run away to the mountains.
15. They should run away without wasting time to stop for anything. If someone is on the roof of their house, they must not go down to take things out of the house.
16. If someone is in the field, they must not go back to get a coat.
17. “During that time it will be hard for women who are pregnant or have small babies.
18. Pray that these things will not happen in winter,
19. because those days will be full of trouble. There will be more trouble than has ever happened since the beginning, when God made the world. And nothing that bad will ever happen again.
20. But the Lord has decided to make that terrible time short. If it were not made short, no one could survive. But the Lord will make that time short to help the special people he has chosen.
21. “Someone might say to you at that time, ‘Look, there is the Messiah!’ Or another person might say, ‘There he is!’ But don’t believe them.
22. False messiahs and false prophets will come and do miracles and wonders, trying to fool the people God has chosen, if that is possible.
23. So be careful. Now I have warned you about all this before it happens.
24. “During the days following that time of trouble, ‘The sun will become dark, and the moon will not give light.