Signs of the Lord’s Return
16.1 Be on the alert for your life, do not let your lamps be extinguished and ⌊do not be unprepared⌋ 1 but be ready, for you do not know the hour in which our Lord comes. 2 2 And be assembled together frequently, seeking what is fitting for your souls. For the full time of your faith will be of no benefit to you unless you are found perfect at the final moment. 3 For in the final days false prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep will be turned into wolves and love will be turned into hate. 4 For as lawlessness increases, they will hate and they will persecute and they will betray one another. 3 And then the deceiver of the world shall appear as a son of God and he will perform signs and wonders, and the earth will be handed over into his hands and he will do incessantly vile things which have never happened before ⌊since time began⌋. 4 5 Then the creation of mankind shall come to the burning ordeal of testing. And many will be led astray and will be destroyed, but the ones enduring in their faith will be saved 5 by the accursed one 6 himself. 6 And then the signs of the truth shall appear: first, a sign of an opening in heaven; then a sign of the sound of a trumpet; and the third sign, the resurrection of the dead. 7 Now, not all of the dead but as was said, the Lord shall come and all the holy ones with him. 7 8 Then the world will see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven. 8
1 Literally “do not let your loins be ungirded”
2 Lu 12:35
3 Mt 24:10–12
4 Literally “from eternity”
5 Mt 24:10, 13
6 Here “the accursed one” is actually Christ, the one cursed by those led astray.
7 Zech 14:5
8 Some (e.g. Neiderwimmer 226) hold the original ending of the Didache is lost, positing reconstruction of the ending from related sources (the Apostolic Constitutions and the Georgian version)
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