Instead, you will rejoice, celebrate, slaughter cattle, and butcher sheep. You will eat meat, drink wine, and say, “Let’s eat and drink because tomorrow we’re going to die.”
Go, sit in the dirt, virgin princess of Babylon! Sit on the ground, not on a throne, princess of the Babylonians! You will no longer be called soft and delicate.
“After a few days, the younger son gathered his possessions and left for a country far away from home. There he wasted everything he had on a wild lifestyle.
But we have something to celebrate, something to be happy about. This brother of yours was dead but has come back to life. He was lost but has been found.’ ”
The most tender and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and tender that she wouldn’t even step on an ant—will become stingy toward the husband she loves or toward her own son or daughter.
You were once dead because of your failures and your uncircumcised corrupt nature. But God made you alive with Christ when he forgave all our failures.
She gave herself glory and luxury. Now give her just as much torture and misery. She says to herself, ‘I’m a queen on a throne, not a widow. I’ll never be miserable.’
“To the messenger of the church in Sardis, write: The one who has God’s seven spirits and the seven stars says: I know what you have done. You are known for being alive, but you are dead.