Facing a Future Without Fear

Big Idea of the Message: Paul wanted the church in Thessalonica to be thoroughly educated about the Second Coming of Jesus so they wouldn’t be afraid or confused.

Application Point: We can live with confidence in the present when we are biblically informed about the future.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–15 KJV 1900

13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

Paul has now arrived at the central truth of this great epistle, a thrilling and comprehensive revelation of the pretribulation rapture of the church

The second coming of Christ is an an important truth. It is mentioned some 318 times in the 260 chapters of the New Testament, an average of one reference in every twenty-five verses.

The inspired writers regarded the second coming of Christ as an important truth.

It is mentioned some 318 times in the 260 chapters of the New Testament, an average of one reference in every twenty-five verses.

In the Old Testament, the majority of prophecies relating to the Messiah have to do with His second coming.

Charles E. Fuller used to say of this great passage that it is Paul’s exposition of .

John 14:1–3 KJV 1900

1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

The Lord’s words “I will come again” are matched by Paul’s explanation “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven.”

The Lord’s promise “I will receive you unto myself” is matched by Paul’s explanation

“Then we … shall be caught up together … to meet the Lord in the air.”

The Lord’s statement “That where I am, there ye may be also” is matched by Paul’s statement “so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

And the Lord’s announcement “Let not your heart be troubled” is matched by Paul’s “Wherefore comfort ye one another with these words.”

1. The second coming of Christ is a positive truth. Underline the repeated use of the words shall (4:15–17; 5:3) and shall not (4:15; 5:3).

2. It is a personal truth. Underline (preferably in a different color) the words we, ye, us, I, and you (4:13–15, 17; 5:1, 4–6, 8–10).

3. It is a pivotal truth. Underline the word but four times (4:13; 5:1, 4, 8).

4. It is a progressive truth. Underline the word for (4:14–16; 5:2–3, 7).

5. It is a practical truth. Also, underline the words wherefore and therefore (4:18; 5:6, 11).

The Thessalonians had welcomed Paul’s teaching on the second coming of Christ.

They had been intrigued by it. They wished that Paul had been able to stay longer and teach them more about it.

With the passing of time, however, doubts and questions had begun to arise in their minds—especially about those who had died since Paul had left.

Had these loved ones missed the Rapture?

We have here an incidental sidelight on the wisdom of God in allowing Paul to be chased out of Macedonia so soon. If Paul had stayed in Macedonia as long as he would have liked, he undoubtedly would have answered all of these kinds of questions as they arose. And we should have been infinitely poorer by our lack of the two Thessalonian epistles. As it turned out, instead of answering their questions verbally, he answered them by mail. His divinely inspired letters were carefully preserved and ultimately incorporated into the New Testament. Thus, we have available to us the apostolic answers to these basic questions in exactly the same way they were available to the Thessalonians.

What, then, does happen to those who put their faith in Christ but who die before the Lord returns?

Paul reviews three things in answer to that question.

I Those Who Are Asleep (4:13–15)

First, our feelings are reviewed: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (4:13).

Death is indeed a hopeless tragedy for those who were outside of Christ, regarding both those who die and those who are left behind to mourn.

We have all attended funerals. As we stand before the casket and gaze into the cold, calm face of the corpse, we confront the terrible finality of death. We are confronted, too, with the utter insolvency of the human race.

The philosopher comes.

He expounds his thoughts and theories concerning death. He quotes from the sages of the past, none of whom could speak with authority as to the reason for death or say with authority what lies beyond.

The scientist comes.

He says, “I’m sorry, my friend. I did my best. I trained your doctor and equipped your hospital. I provided you with the best of medicines. But I have failed. Nor can any scientist tell me how to bring you back to life, despite all that we know about cells, genes, chromosomes, and DNA. We have removed your name from our list of patients. We have failed you at the last.”

The family comes.

There stands the weeping mother and the brokenhearted father. He cries like David, “Oh, my son, my son! Would God that I had died for you, my son, my son!”

For those who are outside of Christ, death is final, cold, cruel, callous, and utterly uncaring. It is ugly, menacing, and inescapable. Paul calls it “the last enemy.” When he arrives, it’s all over.

The only consolation we have is in the Word of God. We have God’s Word for it, that for the believer all is well. “Ye sorrow not,” Paul says, “even as others which have no hope.” Indeed, he deliberately describes death as sleep. We actually court sleep.

We sorrow! But we have God’s Word for it, that our loved ones are only asleep—a reference to the state of the body. The soul does not sleep; the body does. The soul is made of the same stuff as eternity. It never gets tired, never gets old, never gets ill, and never sleeps. The body of the departed believer is asleep.

Jesus said the same thing of Lazarus and declared His intention of going to Bethany to awaken him ().

Beecher rose slowly to his feet. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you will forgive me if I appear somewhat preoccupied. But this evening I witnessed something shocking. Let me tell you about it. I saw a blind man groping at the curbside. I saw a young fellow offer to help him across the street. But, just as he took the blind man’s arm, a great hulk of a fellow came along. He boxed the young man’s ears and chased him off down the road. Then he came back and seized the blind man’s stick and beat him with it. Then he pushed him headlong in the mud and went on his way laughing.”

A silence followed the telling of this tale. Then Ingersoll jumped to his feet. “The bully!” he exclaimed. “The bully! Do you know who he was, Beecher? The unspeakable bully!”

“Yes,” said Beecher quietly, “as a matter of fact, I do know who he was.”

“Who was it?” demanded Ingersoll “It was you!” responded Beecher. “You are the man! Listen to me. Man is poor and blind and wretched. He has little enough to lean on as he gropes his way through life. Few will help him. So what do you do, Ingersoll? You come along and pull all of his props from under him. You rob him of his faith. You push him in the mud. You bully those who would help him. And then you go laughing on your way. Oh yes! I know who the man is. It is you.”

Well, we can take Ingersoll’s word for it—that there is no God, no heaven, no hell, no truth to Christianity. Or we can take Paul’s word for it, the word of an anointed apostle of God. Indeed, Paul was speaking under direct revelation and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Christianity is not a crutch. It is something real and solid upon which to lean when death comes in and when all around our soul gives way. “We sorrow,” says Paul. He would not rob the Thessalonians of their tears. We do not pretend that death does not bring loss and tears. We sorrow, yes indeed, “but not as those who have no hope.”

Our faith is reviewed: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (4:14).

“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (4:14).

The if here is not the if of doubt. It actually means “since.” The hypothesis is assumed to be an actual fact.

Then comes that grand and glorious certainty, the bedrock of all of our hope: “Jesus died and rose again.”

Indeed, no fact in all of history is greater. More evidence exists for the resurrection of Christ than for the conquest of Britain by Julius Caesar!

“This thing was not done in a corner,” Paul declared to Festus and King Agrippa ().

The facts concerning Jesus were public knowledge. It is the one apologetic of the faith that no unbeliever has ever been able to assail. Paul himself had seen the risen Christ.

“Jesus died and rose again.” When I was a boy in Britain, I once heard a refugee pastor from Nazi Germany give his testimony. He had been a well-known figure in Germany and was personally known to many of the Nazi leaders. He told how once he attended a giant rally at which the speaker launched into the usual tirade against the Jews. Then he spotted this pastor in the audience. He picked him out for special mention. “Pastor Schutez,” he said, “you are a fool! Imagine anyone believing in a crucified, dead Jew!”

The pastor jumped to his feet. “I should indeed be a fool,” he cried in ringing tones, “if I believed in a crucified, dead Jew. But I believe in the risen, living Son of God!”

Yes, indeed! There is all the difference in the world between the two. “Jesus died and rose again!” It is the central truth of the gospel.

Having indicated the parallel between Christ’s resurrection, now past, and our resurrection, still pending, Paul now points us to “them also which sleep in Jesus.” Some authorities render that phrase “Them that are put to sleep by Jesus will God bring with Him.” Everyone knows what that means! As the shadows lengthen and bedtime comes, we gather our little ones around us. We give them a bath and a cookie, tell them a goodnight story, and listen to their childish prayers—then we tuck them into bed and turn out the light. Nothing is strange or scary about that. Here is another parallel: for the Christian, dying is not to be feared any more than is sleeping.

No believer ever dies alone. Why? God attends even the funeral of a sparrow; Jesus said so ().

Matthew 10:29 KJV 1900

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

matt

When the time comes to die, we shall be safe in the arms of Jesus. He will tuck us in until the morning comes. Then, when He comes, He will bring us with Him.

Now our future is reviewed: “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [phthanō, ‘precede’] them which are asleep” (4:15).

The teaching now to be given is new. Paul received it by direct, personal revelation of the Lord Himself. He calls it “the word of the Lord.” It is absolutely reliable.

It is remarkable how much faith we put in words. We begin when we are very young. The physicist tells us that E = MC2. We take that as true.

Most of us have no way of proving it, and most of us have but the haziest conception of what it means—energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared! We do know that Einstein’s equation gave birth to the nuclear age, so we simply accept the equation as true.

We are told that a large dose of arsenic is fatal. We believe it—we’d better believe it—although not many people want to put it to the test.

Most of the things that we say we “know” we have accepted by faith. We have taken someone’s word for it.

John says, “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater” ().

The Spirit says, “It [is] impossible for God to lie” ().

Paul says, “God, that cannot lie” ().

We accept human guarantees, although they often turn out to be worthless. Here we have a guarantee backed by God’s own Word—“the dead in Christ shall rise.”

The resurrection of the Christ unconditionally guarantees the resurrection of the Christian.

The truth of the Rapture is confirmed to us by the resurrection of Christ. His resurrection demonstrates that our resurrection is not only entirely possible, an absolute certainty, but also is confirmed to us by the reliability of God.

2. Those Who Will Arise (4:16)

II Those Who Will Arise (4:16)

1 Thessalonians 4:16 KJV 1900

16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

The shout means the rapture for the church. It summons the saints to glory.

One of the great mysteries of the past two thousand years has been the total and lasting silence of God.

The world has been wracked by terrible wars, and God has remained silent.

Fearful injustices plague society, and God is silent.

Domestic tragedies occur, and God is silent.

Famines wipe out whole populations. Pestilence, plagues, earthquakes, tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions occur, and God is silent. Persecutions, holocausts, crimes, and atrocities are committed, and God is silent.

Wicked men grow rich on the misery of others, trading in alcohol, drugs, and sex, and empires are built and sustained on syndicated crime, and God is silent. Regimes have flourished on the systematic enslavement and exploitation of millions, and God is silent. False religions hold other millions in soul-damning spiritual darkness, and God is silent.

The great cry of humanity is, “Why? Why is God silent? Why does He not act? Why doesn’t He speak?”

The answer is simple. He has! He has spoken.

He has displayed might and miracle on an unprecedented scale on this planet. He has intervened. He did so two thousand years ago. What the world is witnessing, in this mysterious silence, is the infinite patience of God.

When God breaks this silence, it will be with a shout!

He has spoke once in grace by sending His Son to this planet. And they murdered Him. He sent His Spirit, and the world ignores Him.

The next time, He will speak in wrath. The whole creation today is holding its breath, waiting for that shout ().

Romans 8:19–22 KJV 1900

19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

romans 8

Jesus is waiting for the moment when He can descend the stellar spaces, burst through the clouds of the sky, and give that shout.

What a mighty shout that will be! His is the voice that wakes the dead.

We hear this shout three times in Scripture—and, each time, the gates of death are breached.

The first time was at the tomb of Lazarus: “When he thus had spoken,” John says, “he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth …” ().

The second time the shout was heard was from the cross. Matthew tells what happened: “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, … the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many” ().

The first time one man was raised; the second time many were raised.

The third time that the shout occurs.

There will follow a wholesale exodus from the tomb. This mighty shout will ring out across the five continents and the seven seas. Its vibrant echoes will comb the mountain peaks, the arctic poles, the desert wastes, the ocean caves, the pampas and the prairies, the crowded urban graveyards, and the world’s great battlefields. And the dead in Christ will rise!

Forth from their tombs, they will come! Martyrs of the faith will rise.

Missionary pioneers will rise.

Forth they will come, a countless host, ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands. There they are: men and women, boys and girls, all washed in the blood of the Lamb!

For the first time in history, the whole church—universal, militant, and triumphant—will be seen.

Every member will be present. As Moses said to Pharaoh when he was defining who should participate in the Exodus, “there shall not an hoof be left behind” ().

The same principle applies in the Rapture. It is to be a raptured church, not a ruptured church, with some of its members left behind to face the horrors of the Great Tribulation.

When, at the marriage supper of the Lamb, the angel hosts proclaim, “Here comes the Bride,” we can be sure of this: she will not come in on a crutch or blind in one eye and with a leg and an arm missing! Nonsense! The church will be complete, the most beautiful, eye-catching sight in the universe.

The voice of the archangel means ruin for the world. That voice sends the angels forth to war. The Rapture means that the amnesty is over, that God has broken off diplomatic relations with the world that murdered His Son. For long centuries now, the warrior angels have been straining over the battlements of heaven, so to speak, eager to avenge the terrible wrongs that the wicked children of Adam’s race inflicted on their Beloved on planet Earth. But the angels have been held back by sovereign grace.

Now, however, the archangel comes to the fore. So do the angels. During this age, ministering spirits () are here to serve the Lord’s people. Now come the martial angels, led by Michael, the high archangel of glory. We are told of at least one of his activities in the post-Rapture age: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” ().

The trump of God means repatriation for Israel. It sounds the alarm for the Jews. Once the church age is complete, the focus of God’s dealings reverts to the nation of Israel. The church age is a parenthesis in God’s dealings with mankind. The church was injected supernaturally into history on the Day of Pentecost and is to be supernaturally ejected back out of history at the Rapture. At that point, God will resume His Old Testament dealings with the nation of Israel and will fulfill the many prophecies concerning Israel, which is still awaiting their time.

The nation of Israel has been reborn in our own day, a sure sign that we are approaching the end times. Only a trickle of Jews has so far returned; the flood tide has not yet begun. The trumpet will summon them back. Trumpets were used throughout Israel’s Old Testament history. When the law was given at Sinai, it was accompanied by the sound of a supernatural trumpet. Two silver trumpets were used to direct Israel’s activities in the wilderness. They were used in connection with warning, worship, war, and Israel’s walk. The fall of Jericho was in response to the sounding of trumpets. The Jews kept an annual Feast of Trumpets. It followed Pentecost after the lapse of a period of time. It was preceded by the fast of atonement and the millennium-picturing Feast of Tabernacles.

Trumpets are primarily connected with the nation of Israel; they are secondarily connected with the rapture of the church. Paul shows here that the rapture of the church is the catalyst to precipitate other end-times events. Paul now reaffirms that the resurrection is expected: “the dead in Christ shall rise first,” he says (4:16). That should be sufficient answer to the concern of the Christians at Thessalonica about their deceased loved ones. They had not missed the Rapture! On the contrary, they would have priority; they would actually rise first!

Note here especially that reassuring word shall, which predominates in the theology of the Rapture. We do not know how God reassembles the scattered dust of the dead. We only know that He does. It is not hard for Him. After all, He is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Indeed, to a God who lives in the eternal present tense, the future is already the past. We humans are locked into a space-matter-time dimension. We have to wait until a prophesied event happens, but God transcends all time.

My wife used to have a music box. Every time the lid was opened, it played a little tune: “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head!” When someone opened the box, a small brass cylinder was exposed to view. It had a lot of little spikes sticking up all over it. Also, prongs produced the different notes when the revolving spikes hit them.

Now, in a sense, when someone opened that music box, they saw the whole tune. It was all pegged out. However, to experience the tune, they had to wait for the cylinder to complete its full cycle in its appointed time. As the cylinder turned, each spike hit the appropriate prong and was released, producing each successive note—ping! ping! ping-a-ping-a-ping!

It is rather like that with God. He sees the whole story. The whole of future time is all pegged out in glory. But we creatures of time must wait for the slow process, whereby the timeless, eternal purpose of God is worked out by us, in us, and through us in terms of human experience. But it is all pegged out in heaven by an omniscient God who—“calleth those things which be not as though they were” ().

So throughout this paragraph, Paul says, “Shall! Shall! Shall!” There is no doubt about it. One of these days, the graves all over the world will burst open, and “the dead in Christ shall rise first.” That is God’s compensation for those who are like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of whom the Holy Spirit says, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country … a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city” ().

III Those Who Are Alive (4:17–18)

1 Thessalonians 4:17 KJV 1900

17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

The Rapture is always presented to us thus, as being imminent, something that could happen at any time.

People take many positions regarding this event. We have amillennialists, postmillennialists, and premillennialists. We have those who believe in a midtribulation Rapture, those who preach a post-tribulation Rapture, and those who herald a pretribulation Rapture. Some people have even embraced “a prewrath Rapture,” which seems to be a loudly heralded version of the midtribulation Rapture.

Many able expositors (e.g., Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, and Charles Ryrie) have taken in hand the defense of the pretribulation Rapture.

Any position on the second coming of Christ that takes the edge off our expectancy and intrudes all kinds of prior events between the believer and the Rapture is a wrong position.

The element of surprise is a key element in all New Testament teaching regarding the Rapture; hence, the repeated exhortations that we be watchful.

“Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” ().

“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (). “Ye know not when the time [season] is” ().

“If [he] had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up” ().

“Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning” ().

“Watch ye therefore, and pray always [at all seasons], that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass” ().

So then, in contrast with the actual return of the Lord to set up His kingdom on earth, which is a dated event (seven years after the signing of the Antichrist’s treaty with Israel and 1,260 days after the breaking of the treaty, (; ), the rapture of the church is a secret event.

We do not know its—“hour,” its “day,” its “year,” its “season,” or its “watch.”

The Lord elaborated on our ignorance of the actual watch that would witness His return: “And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so [i.e., watching], blessed are those servants” ().

“We which are alive and remain,” says Paul, “shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” He draws our attention to our promised rapture (4:17).

Caught up! The word is harpazō. It means literally “to snatch away.” The word is used to describe Philip’s sudden disappearance after he baptized the Ethiopian eunuch ().

Acts 8:39 KJV 1900

39 And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.

It is used to describe Paul’s rapturous experience of things untranslatable (, ). The meaning of the word includes the idea of the event’s being accomplished suddenly and by force.

In like manner, we are going to be snatched away before the end-times judgments fall upon this planet.

We shall be “caught up together” with the resurrected saints. In a later revelation, Paul elaborates on the changes that will take place to our natural bodies.

We shall receive a body that is engineered for eternity and capable of virtually annihilating the restrictions of time and space. It will be incorruptible, a body of power, triumphant over all of its current weaknesses and limitations.

It will be a heavenly body, immortal and spiritual (). Paul adds that it will be like Christ’s resurrection body (). John agrees: “We shall be like him,” he says ().

Suddenly, the pull of glory will exert its power, and the church will be gone. We shall assemble in the Lord’s presence in the clouds of the air, and the parousia will have begun.

Nature provides us with two illustrations. Think, for instance, of the lowly caterpillar. It lives out its life on earth as a grub, earthbound and rooted to the dust. It lifts its little head and stares at the vast expanse of the sky. It thinks, I wish I could fly! If only I had wings! I would catch the rising air currents and wing my way from tree to tree! But I’m only a wretched grub with a lot of legs crawling up and down the trunks of trees.

Then comes a change. The caterpillar knows that the change is coming and prepares for it. It makes itself a little coffin, a chrysalis, attaches it to a twig, and crawls inside. Then it dies to the only life it has ever known. Time comes and goes, and still that silken coffin holds its contents. Then comes a call that we can’t hear. Suddenly, that caterpillar bursts out of its tomb. And, wonder of wonders, it has been changed! It entered that silken coffin as a caterpillar; it emerges as a butterfly.

It is the same creature that comes out of that chrysalis that goes into it, but it is so radically changed that we hardly recognize the two as being one.

The transformed creature spreads its wings and soars upward to the sky in a blaze of beauty. It was “sown in dishonor,” to borrow Paul’s words, and it has been “raised in glory.” The same kind of thing is going to happen to us. The God who keeps faith with the caterpillar will keep faith with us.

Just so at the Rapture! The Lord will draw to Himself only those who have the same nature as Himself. It matters not whether we are rich or poor, clever or ignorant, wise or foolish, black or white, prince or pauper, alive or dead. All that matters is that we have become “partakers of the divine nature” ().

That is why Jesus said to the cultured, successful, religious Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again” (). For it is by means of the new birth that we are regenerated, that we are “born from above,” that we receive the Holy Spirit and the very nature of Christ.

“So shall we ever be with the Lord,” Paul says. And so we shall! It will take all eternity to enter into the joy and wonder of that fact.

Now Paul draws our attention to our present rest: “Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (4:18).

What comforting words they are! We read them at every funeral. None of the world’s religions has their like.

The word for “comfort” here has a variety of meanings. It is akin to John’s favorite word for the Holy Spirit—the Comforter (). That suggests an interesting thought. One of the symbols of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is a dove. When I was a boy, for the magnificent sum of one English penny, one could purchase a platform ticket and go onto the platform of the local railway station. Those were the days of steam engines, and because our town was on the main line from the city of London to the country of Wales, it was a very busy station. It was a favorite pastime to purchase a platform ticket and spend an enjoyable morning, in the summer holidays, watching the trains. They would come roaring in to the accompaniment of clouds of steam, blowing of whistles, banging of doors, and the rush of passengers. Then, off it went again with loud huffs and puffs of the mighty engine up front.

One day, I was idling away such a morning when I found myself down the far end of the main platform. There I came across some wicker baskets filled with doves and pigeons. A friendly porter saw me eyeing them.

“Those are homing doves and pigeons, son,” he said. “We are loading them on trains going to different parts of the country. Sometime next week, they will all have arrived at their different destinations. At precisely the same time, they will all be released, and no matter where they are, they will head straight for home. It’s a kind of race, you see. The one that gets home first will be the winner.”

That’s it, of course! The Holy Spirit is the dove of God. He has a strong homing instinct. When He is received into a human heart, He brings that homing instinct with Him. He heads us toward Home! At the time of the Rapture, He will simply pick us all up, living or dead, and take us there to the accompanying shout, trump, and voice.[1]

[1] Phillips, J. (2009). Exploring 1 & 2 Thessalonians: An Expository Commentary (). Kregel Publications; WORDsearch Corp.

Facing a Future Without Fear

Big Idea of the Series: In a world filled with death, war, and evil, how are we to face what feels like an unknowable future? What do we do with our anxiety regarding the days ahead? This 6-week series guide is based on the books of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and provides comfort and reassurance to those living in uncertain times. These letters discuss the future of Christ’s Second Coming, and what believers should do while awaiting his return. Paul encourages believers to be prepared, to cling to the truth of what they have been taught, and to live responsibly in light of the future. How can we take these words to heart, and face the future without fear?

Text:

Topic: Jesus’s Return, Death

Big Idea of the Message: Paul wanted the church in Thessalonica to be thoroughly educated about the Second Coming of Jesus so they wouldn’t be afraid or confused.

Application Point: We can live with confidence in the present when we are biblically informed about the future.

1. The following is a movie trailer from Disney’s Tomorrowland (2015): https://youtu.be/lNzukD8pS_s. This film is about humanity’s tendency to obsess over the future, while holding onto hope despite the obstacles that come one’s way. You might play this clip as an introduction to talk about our culture’s fascination with the unknown future, and how as Christians, we can trust what the Bible says about the world’s future and our present responsibility in it.

2. Paul’s recipients were “concerned that those who had died would be at a disadvantage not being alive when…the coming of the Lord would be realized” (Spiros Zodhiates, The Key Word Study Bible [AMG International: 1990], 1585). In response, Paul writes to educate the believers in Thessalonica because he doesn’t want them “to be uninformed” about death, life after death, and Jesus’s return (v. 13). His purpose is not only to inform, but to “comfort” them with the knowledge of the truth (v. 18). We too can seek comfort and truth from the Bible concerning all our fears about the future.

3. “‘Those who sleep’ (ton koimomenon) is an expression chosen in lieu of the ‘the dead’ (v. 15) because of death's temporary nature for Christians (cf. ; ; , , , ; cf. also ). Though the pagans used ‘sleep’ as a metaphor for ‘death,’ it is especially appropriate for Christians because of their assured bodily resurrection. Paul had previously taught the Thessalonians about the resurrection. On the basis of the resurrection our Christian "hope" has objective reality. That this sleep refers to the physical body and not to man's spirit is clear” (Robert L. Thomas, “1 Thessalonians,” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 11, 276).

4. These believers might have needed education regarding life and death, but they were ahead of many in our society because they were taking the time to meditate on such matters. Often, in our affluent culture, we distract ourselves so we don’t have to think about God, heaven, and hell. Encourage your congregation to take quiet time to reflect on how they live their life, as well as their walk with God. Don’t be distracted to death, because examining life’s big questions requires sacrifice and selflessness.

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