Three-year Bible reading plan for 14 October 2006

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

1 Thessalonians, Chapter 4, verses 13-18

¹³ and last of all to sorrow moderately for the dead, ¹⁵ And unto this last exhortation is annexed a brief description of the resurrection, and second coming of Christ to judgment

¹³But 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.

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

¹⁵For 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.

¹⁶For 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:

¹⁷Then 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.

¹⁸Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

Read more:1 Thessalonians, Chapter 5

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4

4:13 Now - Herein the efficacy of Christianity greatly appears, - that it neither takes away nor embitters, but sweetly tempers, that most refined of all affections, our desire of or love to the dead.

4:14 So - As God raised him. With him - With their living head.

4:15 By the word of the Lord - By a particular revelation.We who are left - This intimates the fewness of those who will be then alive, compared to the multitude of the dead.Believers of all ages and nations make up, as it were, one body; in consideration of which, the believers of that age might put themselves in the place, and speak in the person, of them who were to live till the coming of the Lord. Not that St. Paul hereby asserted (though some seem to have imagined so) that the day of the Lord was at hand.

4:16 With a shout - Properly, a proclamation made to a great multitude. Above this is, the voice of the archangel; above both, the trumpet of God; the voice of God, somewhat analogous to the sound of a trumpet.

4:17 Together - In the same moment. In the air - The wicked will remain beneath, while the righteous, being absolved, shall be assessors with their Lord in the judgment. With the Lord - In heaven.

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End of the World

NOTES

Speaking about the Kingdom and Christian life, Paul also touches in passing on the question of those who have died, which, as is clear...

Speaking about the Kingdom and Christian life, Paul also touches in passing on the question of those who have died, which, as is clear, puzzled the Thessalonian Christians, and perhaps not only them. This was apparently connected with the fact that the first generation of Christians expected the Savior's return literally from day to day. So when some of its members began to die without having waited for the second coming, their death threw those who remained into confusion: they had been sure that death had been conquered by the risen Christ, so that the faithful would never again have to meet it, especially since this was not the death of witnesses of Christ, but a natural death, ordinary for our still untransformed world. Paul points his readers to the obvious fact that victory over death does not mean that death can be avoided. Christ Himself did not avoid death; He conquered it. And from the faithful He clearly expects the same victory, which will become possible for them with His help (vv. 13-14).

But this victory is inseparable from the history of the Kingdom, which is being revealed in our still untransformed world, bringing it ever closer to the fullness of transformation. Every faithful person will receive the fullness of life regardless of when God has judged that he should pass through his earthly path. The Kingdom is always greater than history and higher than time; that is why those who have to live in the days of the Savior's return will not precede those who by that time have already completed their earthly path. When it is revealed in all its fullness, time, which determines the sequence of events in our still untransformed world, will simply cease to be relevant, and with it such concepts as past, present, and future will cease to be relevant, at least in the form in which we know them now. And then in the fullness of the Kingdom, where there is no place for death, those whose earthly path, by the measure of the departing world, ended long ago in the past, and those who are destined to live in its last days, will stand together before God (vv. 15-17). Thus the triumph of the Kingdom becomes the triumph and victory over death for all who share in it.

Once again we must speak about trust. How can Paul know what he writes about the resurrection of the dead? No one has seen it! And his argument may not seem entirely convincing...

The question of the fate of those who had already completed their earthly journey was quite acute in the Thessalonian church, so that Paul considered it necessary to address this question separately...

The question of the fate of those who had already completed their earthly journey was quite acute in the Thessalonian church, so that Paul considered it necessary to address this question separately. Its sharpness may have been connected with the fact that the first generation of Christians, or at least some of its representatives, began to leave this life without having awaited the Savior's return, and those who remained naturally asked: what, then, will happen to them next? The question was connected with traditional pre-Christian ideas about death and the afterlife that had not been outlived, ideas that amounted to this: after death a person, as people thought, goes to Sheol, to the world of shadows, and remains there as such a shadow until the day of Judgment and therefore of the general resurrection.

However, the day of Judgment and resurrection was also linked in the minds of believers with the day of the Messiah's coming. The Messiah, as Christians knew with complete certainty, had already come, and therefore death, at least for those who accepted the Messiah who had come, should no longer exist at all. Put simply, according to this logic Christians should not die at all: they should wait for the Messiah's imminent return and finally receive from Him that fullness of life which excludes death in principle. But reality appeared to contradict this logic: Christians died just like all other people. Paul, however, sees reality quite differently.

His vision differs from that of the recipients of his letter by greater fullness and, accordingly, greater scope. For the apostle, the life of a Christian is not reduced to the limits of its earthly stage. It continues after that stage ends, and the Christian's path as a whole will be completed only on the day of Christ's return and the triumph of the Kingdom. And then everyone will meet: the paths of all Christians, whenever in earthly time they began, converge at this point. There the question of first and last, of "earlier" or "later," will no longer have any meaning.

No one will have to wait for anyone: everyone comes to the meeting place when his own path brings him there, and when a person reaches the end of his path, it turns out that in some mysterious way he has arrived on time, just like everyone else. And then something new begins: the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. With the participation of everyone who has arrived.

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