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A Call to Repentance and Prayer

¹³ Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests;
   wail, you ministers of the altar.
Come, pass the night in sackcloth,
   you ministers of my God!
Grain-offering and drink-offering
   are withheld from the house of your God.

¹⁴ Sanctify a fast,
   call a solemn assembly.
Gather the elders
   and all the inhabitants of the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
   and cry out to the Lord.

¹⁵ Alas for the day!
For the day of the Lord is near,
   and as destruction from the Almighty^* it comes.

2Blow the trumpet in Zion;
   sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
   for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—
² a day of darkness and gloom,
   a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
   a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
   nor will be again after them
   in ages to come.

² I will be glad and exult in you;
   I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

³ When my enemies turned back,
   they stumbled and perished before you.
⁶ The enemies have vanished in everlasting ruins;
   their cities you have rooted out;
   the very memory of them has perished.

⁸ I keep the Lord always before me;
   because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

⁹ Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
   my body also rests secure.

¹⁵But some of them said, ‘He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.’ ¹⁶Others, to test him, kept demanding from him a sign from heaven. ¹⁷But he knew what they were thinking and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself becomes a desert, and house falls on house. ¹⁸If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? —for you say that I cast out the demons by Beelzebul. ¹⁹Now if I cast out the demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists^* cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. ²⁰But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. ²¹When a strong man, fully armed, guards his castle, his property is safe. ²²But when one stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away his armour in which he trusted and divides his plunder. ²³Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

The Return of the Unclean Spirit

24 ‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting-place, but not finding any, it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” ²⁵When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. ²⁶Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.’