If any do not remain in me, they are like a branch that is thrown away and then dies. People pick up dead branches, throw them into the fire, and burn them.
But you are thrown out of your grave, like an unwanted branch. You are covered by bodies that died in battle, by bodies to be buried in a rocky pit. You are like a dead body other soldiers walk on.
At that time the strong, walled city will be empty like a desert. Calves will eat grass there. They will lie down there and eat leaves from the branches.
“Say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says: The vine will not continue to grow. The first eagle will pull up the vine’s roots and strip off its fruit. Then the vine and all its new leaves will dry up and die. It will not take a strong arm or many people to pull the vine up by its roots.
He cuts off every branch of mine that does not produce fruit. And he trims and cleans every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even more fruit.
They were made free from the evil in the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But if they return to evil things and those things control them, then it is worse for them than it was before.
These enemies of Christ were in our fellowship, but they left us. They never really belonged to us; if they had been a part of us, they would have stayed with us. But they left, and this shows that none of them really belonged to us.
But cowards, those who refuse to believe, who do evil things, who kill, who sin sexually, who do evil magic, who worship idols, and who tell lies—all these will have a place in the lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”