8 Jesus Christ is the same now as he was previously, and he will be the same forever.

6 "I am Yahweh, and I never change. And although you deceive people like your ancestor Jacob did, I have not yet gotten rid of you.

17 The truth is that God, our heavenly Father [MTY], does only good [DOU] things for us, in order to help us become all that he intends us to be. He is not like all the things in the sky that he created to give light, because they change; that is, they do not shine the same all the time. But God never changes. He is always good.

31 You can be certain that these things that I have prophesied will happen. You can be more certain of that than you can be certain that the earth and what is in the sky will stay in place.

17 The fact is that God makes every one of us who trusts in Christ to be completely different than we were before. Our old way of conducting our lives is gone. We now have a completely new way of conducting our lives.

18 It is as though God has removed the veil from our faces [MET]. We realize how awesome Jesus is. As we realize that, we are continually being changed {the Holy Spirit is continually changing us} to become more and more like Jesus, so that people can see, more and more, how awesome Jesus is. It is the Spirit of the Lord who does this.

2 Do not let anything non-Christian determine how you should act. Instead, let God change your way of life by making your way of thinking new, in order that you may know what he wants you to do. That is, you will know what is good, and you will know what pleases God, and you will know how to be all that he wants you to be.

2 Dear friends, even though ◄at present/now► we are God’s children, he has not yet ◄made clear/revealed► to us what we will be like in the future. However, we know that when Christ comes back again, we will be like him, because we will see what he is really like.

21 By the power that enables him to put everything under his own control, he will change our weak bodies to become like his glorious body.

51 But I will tell you something that God has not revealed before: Some of us believers will not die [EUP]. However, all of us will be changed {God will change all of us}. 52 It will happen suddenly, as fast as someone can blink his eye [MET], when we hear the sound of God’s trumpet for the last time. When we hear that trumpet, all the believers who have died will come back to life and will have bodies that are changed {that God has changed}, bodies that will never decay.

8 Do what is appropriate [IDM] for people who have truly turned away from their sinful behavior before you come to me in order to be baptized {that I baptize you}.

3 I assure you, that was not so! But instead of being concerned about them, you need to remember that God will similarly punish you eternally if you do not turn away from your sinful behavior.

19 So, turn away from your sinful behavior and ask God to help you do what pleases him, in order that he may completely forgive you for your sins.

1 There is a right/correct time for everything,

a time for everything that we do in this world.

4 Each year old people die and babies are born,

but the earth never changes.

5 Each morning the sun rises, and each evening it sets,

and then it hurries around to where it started from.

6 The wind blows south,

and then it turns around to start blowing towards the north.

It goes around and around in circles.

7 All the streams flow into the sea,

but the sea is never full.

The water returns to the sky, and when it rains, the water returns to the rivers,

and it flows again to the sea.

9 Everything continues to be the same as it has always been;

things that happen have happened previously, and they will happen again.

What has been done before will be done again.

There is nothing really new in this world [MTY].

10 Sometimes people say, "Look at this! This is something new [RHQ]!"

But it has existed previously;

it existed before we were born.

19 Instead, consider the new thing that I am going to do.

I have already started to do it;

can you see it?

I am going to make a road through the desert.

And I will cause there to be streams in the wasteland/desert.

3 It is important for you to understand that in the time immediately before Christ comes back, there will be people who will ridicule the idea of his coming back. Those people will do whatever evil things they wish to do. 4 They will say, "Although it was promised that Christ will come back, ◄nothing has happened that would indicate that he is coming back./what happened to the promise that he is coming back?► [RHQ] We say that because ever since the Christian leaders who lived long ago died [EUP], everything has remained the same. Things are as they always have been since God created the world!" 5 They will say that because they ◄deliberately overlook the fact/have decided to ignore what they know► that God, by commanding long ago that it should be so, caused the heavens to exist, and he caused the earth to appear out of water and to be separate from the water. 6 And God, by commanding that it should be so, later destroyed the world that existed at that time, by causing the earth to be flooded with water {water to flood the earth}. 7 Furthermore, God, commanded that the heavens and the earth that exist now remain until the time when he will judge ◄ungodly people/people whose lives are not pleasing to him►. And at that time he will destroy the heavens and the earth by burning them.