Chapter 4 – One God Translation

1 Thessalonians

   4 Finally then, brothers and sisters, we request and exhort you in the lord Jesus that as you received from us instruction about how to behave and please God — just as you do behave — that you excel even more. 2 For you know the commands we gave you through the lord Jesus. 3 This is the will of God: that you become holy, that you abstain from sexual immorality, 4 that each of you knows how to control your own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God. 6 No one should take advantage of or wrong his brother or sister in these matters, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, as we told you before and warned solemnly. 7 For God has not called us to impurity, but in holiness. 8 So anyone who rejects this is not rejecting human beings but God, who gives His holy spirit to you.
    9 About brotherly love, you do not need anyone to write to you, because you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. 10 And you are showing this love to all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so even more, 11 aiming to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business, working with your own hands, as we commanded you. 12 In this way you will behave properly before outsiders and not be in need.
    13 We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep,[1301] so that you will not grieve like others who have no hope. 14 Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, in the same way God will bring with Jesus, escorting him,[1302] those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 For we tell you this by the word of the lord: We who are alive, who remain until the coming of the lord, will not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, accompanied by the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God, and the dead in Messiah will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up[1303] together with them in the clouds to meet the lord in the air.[1304] In this way we will be with the lord always. 18 So comfort one another with these words.

1 Thessalonians

[1301]

Death is called “the sleep of death” in Ps. 13:3. It is a state of complete unconsciousness which will end only when the dead are “woken up” from the sleep of death at the future resurrection when Jesus comes back. Dan. 12:2 and John 11:11, 14 are simple and decisive verses on this important topic.

[1302]

How this happens is explained in the next sentence. The dead in Christ will be raised from death and the believers who survive, without dying, until the return of Jesus will be caught up in one company to meet Jesus as he descends in order that all may escort the royal personage to the earth to which he is returning to rule in Jerusalem. “To be brought with Jesus presupposes rising from the dead as part of the process, v. 16” (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, p. 276).

[1303]

The Greek verb here, harpazo, means to snatch away, catch up. It has been misused to promote a so-called pre-Tribulation “rapture,” an illusory event 7 years before the Second Coming of Jesus in power. There is only one Second Coming and not two. There is no noun “rapture” in the NT. The snatching up here is part of the complex of events which will occur at the one single, visible return of Jesus to establish his Kingdom on earth. Jesus is coming back to the earth in order to rule on the earth (Rev. 5:10; Dan. 7:27). He is not going away again. His coming is not a “drive through.” He has a “one-way” ticket to the earth. The seventh trumpet of Rev. 11:15-18 is of course the same event as the last trumpet of 1 Cor. 15:52.

[1304]

This is of course a catching up of the Christians to meet the royal personage who is on his way back to the earth. “Hence the lord will meet his church. She will not need to wait until he sets foot on earth; but those who are ready, ‘looking for their lord when he shall return’ (Lk. 22:35-40) will hear his trumpet call and ‘go forth to meet the bridegroom’ (Mt. 25: 1, 6)” (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, p. 106).