The Kingdom of Promise and Prophecy

by Robertson L. Whiteside

PAUL TO THE THESSALONIANS ON THE LORD’S RETURN

These Thessalonians had “turned unto God from idols, to serve a living God, and to wait for his Son from heaven.” To wait for the coming of the Lord does not mean that we are to remain in idleness till he comes. To wait on the Lord in any matter is to remain steadfast in the hope that he will fulfill that which he promised. It is a forward-looking attitude of mind and heart, with confidence that God will fulfill his word, whether soon or late.

In reading the Bible, we frequently allow the chapter divisions to influence our conclusions. We forget for the time that writers of the Bible made no division into chapters and verses. In our study we should absolutely disregard the chapter divisions, for the discussion of a point begun in one chapter frequently runs into the next. In the first Thessalonian letter Paul’s discussion of the events connected with the Lord’s return begins with the thirteenth verse of the fourth chapter and ends with the eleventh verse of the fifth chapter. If we ignore this fact, we deal unfairly with Paul.

When Paul planted the church at Thessalonica, he did not have time to fully instruct the new converts, for he was soon driven away by fierce persecution. Before he wrote his first letter to them, some of their number had died. They did not know what would become of these at the Lord’s coming. Concerning them, they had no hope; for they had no information upon which to base any hope. Paul’s purpose in writing the section under consideration was to teach them that they would “sorrow not, even as the rest, who have no hope.” Through or by Jesus, God would bring these dead saints to heaven; for the dead saints would be raised from the dead, and, together with the living saints, would be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. “Wherefore comfort ye one another with these words.”

Then Paul says that it is not necessary to say anything to them about the times and seasons. “The times and the seasons” of what? Of that concerning which he had just told them about—namely, the coming of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead saints, and the ascension of all saints to meet him in the air. But that day would come as a thief in the night; then what? “When they are saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall in no wise escape.” So, then, in that day in which the Lord comes to gather to himself his saints, sudden destruction will come upon the rest of mankind. “But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” What day? The day of which he was speaking, the day in which the saints shall be taken up and the wicked shall suddenly be destroyed. Some would have us believe that the saints will be secure in the day when sudden destruction is visited upon the wicked, because they shall have already been taken up to meet the Lord in the air some years before that day of destruction of the ungodly. But Paul tells us that that day of destruction will not come upon them as a thief, for they are all sons of light—they are ready and watching. To fit the theory, Paul should have said that that day would not overtake them, because they would not be there, having already been caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

Some people look at this Scripture so carelessly that they actually think that Paul says the dead saints will be raised before the wicked are raised. One good brother, a friend of mine, quoted Scripture, to me as follows: “The dead in Christ shall rise first, and the rest of the dead lived not again till the thousand years are passed.” But Paul was not contrasting the resurrection of the saints and the wicked, but was speaking of the dead saints and those living when Christ comes. Will the living saints leave the dead in their graves? No, the dead saints will be raised first—that is, before the living ascend; and then all shall be caught up to meet the Lord. Whether the wicked were to be raised then, or were never to be raised, was not so much as hinted at. But the passage does teach this: When the Lord comes, the saints will be caught up to meet him in the air, and the wicked will be destroyed in that day. And that agrees with what Paul says in his second letter to the Thessalonians.

In Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians he gives some additional information concerning the coming of the Lord and our gathering together unto him. From the first verse of the second chapter we learn that the coming of the Lord referred to is that coming in which the saints are gathered together unto him. Paul would not have them troubled by thinking that that day was “just at hand.” One writer, well known to the Gospel Advocate readers, makes this comment on the phrase, “at hand”: “In every translation known to me, except the Douay, the King James, and the American Revised Version, this reads ‘the day of the Lord is now present.’ Some one had made those Thessalonians believe that the day of the Lord had already broken in upon them.” I know that some translations have “present” instead of “at hand”, but they are not so numerous as the foregoing quotation would have us believe. The following translations have “at hand”: Latin Vulgate, Bible Union, Living Oracles, Sharpe, George R. Noyes (Harvard University teacher), Anderson, Syriac, Sawyer, and James MacKnight. So far as scholarship goes, it is very likely that the scholarship back of the American Standard Version outweighs the scholarship of all the translations referred to in the foregoing quotation, with the exception of the English Revision.

But it matters little to us what those Thessalonian brethren thought about the matter; it does not affect Paul’s teaching on the subject. Paul tells us that a falling away must come first and the man of sin be revealed. This must be, he tells us, before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him. But the theory that is now so attractive to some people has this man of sin developed after the saints are taken up to meet the Lord in the air; the man of sin is then to be destroyed at what is termed the second stage of his coming. But Paul plainly says that the coming he is here talking about is the coming in which the saints are gathered together unto the Lord. It is strange that a theory will so blind people that they cannot see a plain statement in the very passages from which they claim to deduce their teaching.