Daytime People

Day of the Lord

We are continuing our look at Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians as we get a glimpse of talk about the Day of the Lord. Last week we saw concern about what would happen in the future. What would happen to the dead when Christ returns. It was a complex question with a simple answer they will be raised. Now seemingly the conversation on the topic of the future return of Jesus continues. However Paul shifts the focus from the future to the present as he talks about the Day of the Lord coming like a a thief in the night.

As of Monday when I started writing this it seems like, at the very least, the nightmare of Corona-virus/COVID-19 has come to the beginning of the end with the announcement of a 90% effective vaccine. But this was a strange an worrisome time. It had and maybe still has many Christians convinced the return of Jesus is imminent and maybe it is.

Yet it was Jesus himself who said Jesus said, “‘Take care that nobody deceives you,’ Jesus began to say to them. ‘Plenty of people will come in my name, saying “I’m the one!”, and they will lead plenty astray. But whenever you hear about wars, and rumours about wars, don’t be disturbed. These things have to happen, but it doesn’t mean the end is here. One nation will rise up against another; one kingdom will rise up against another. There will be earthquakes from place to place, and famines too. These are the first pains of childbirth.” And as we see even in Paul’s passage he refers to something Jesus said many times that the Lord will come like a thief in the night. People will not expect it, things may actually be going quite well ‘What will it be like in the days of the son of man? It will be like the days of Noah. People were eating and drinking, they were getting married and giving wedding parties, until the day when Noah went into the ark—and that day the flood came and swept them all away. And it will be like the days of Lot. They were eating and drinking, they were buying and selling, they were planting and building. But on the day when Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulphur from the sky and they were all destroyed. That’s what it will be like on the day when the son of man is revealed.’ Life will be normal. Does that mean Jesus will not come soon? Of course not. It is a time known only to the Father, not even Jesus himself knew.

And yet the topic still has the ability to fascinate us. Maybe it is part of our very fallen nature that not knowing something never seems to sit well with us so we find the need to find the answer.