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“Eschatology” is the fancy word for the study of what the Bible teaches about last things, like death, what happens after death, and the end of the world—things that people are wondering about and asking about and obsessing over constantly.

There are many different theories of biblical eschatology out there, with new ones appearing all the time. I think that last year the number officially passed one bazillion different theories. [[ ]]

You know that bazillion is not a real number. That was a joke. But there really are hundreds of interpretations of Bible prophecy in the world today, even and especially among people who consider themselves Bible believing Christians.

Still, there are four points of eschatology on which the Bible is completely clear, and about which faithful Christians simply agree: call them the 4 “R”s:

• the return
• the resurrection
• the reckoning
• the rest

Let me give you an example.

The Baptist Faith and Message addresses the issue beautifully. Article 10 says, God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth (that’s the return); the dead will be raised (that’s the resurrection); and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward (that’s the reckoning) and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord (that’s the rest). That’s the way a doctrinal statement should be: clear and specific where the Bible is clear and specific, but broad and generic where the Bible is not quite so clear. There is wide latitude for disagreement and discussion and further dissection of the details of eschatology. But there is virtually unanimous agreement about those four “R”s: the return, the resurrection, the reckoning, and the rest.

That’s exactly the way we approach it in this church:  those 4 “R”s are settled, and not up for discussion or debate. But we’re going to give each other a lot of grace and space to question and grow and discover and sometimes even disagree about the specifics of eschatology.

The reason that matters for us today is that we are in the middle of a study of Paul’s two letters to the Thessalonian church. And those two letters are more packed with passages that truly touch on eschatological debates than any other literature in the Bible, even the prophets, even Revelation. The passage that we are in today is one of the most obvious. So open your copy of God’s word to the first letter to the Thessalonians, chapter four.

While you’re turning there, I’ll read you a little bit of an e-mail I received this week. Every week in the bulletin there is announcement and an invitation. The announcement is

the title of the following week’s sermon, along with the Bible passage that it will be explaining and applying. The invitation is for any of you who wants to hear specific questions related to that passage answered in the sermon to contact me early in the week as I am beginning to put the sermon together. Hardly anyone ever takes me up on that invitation, but this week someone did. Here is his question (and I asked his permission to share it with you):

We know that God’s Children will receive glorified bodies at the resurrection, and that we will be made perfect before God so as not to offend Him in any way. We also know that we will know Him even as we also are known, and we will finally see all things clearly.

What I wonder about is what we cannot see now — will we be able to see the throne of God in heaven up close or will we be far, far away. Will we be able to see the principalities, etc. of Eph 6:12.  Will we be able to see what is happening down on earth?  We are so blind to so many things now. I wonder what it will be like when our blindness is removed. Just a few light- duty questions…

I won’t be able to say much about them right now except to commend our dear brother for his accurate understanding of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. For his questions, I have some speculations that I’d love to share, but not as part of this sermon. We’ll take some time together at 5:00 in room 101 to think about some of these things. We’ll also pray together or sing together or whatever else the Father has for us.

For now, let’s take some time and think together about one of the most well-known but poorly-understood passages in the Bible about the coming of the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. ¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁵ For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.

This really is one of the most well-known but poorly-understood passages in the Bible about the coming of the Lord. Let’s make five straightforward observations about these famous lines.

1st This is a word of hope and courage for fearful and sorrowful Christians

I don’t remember the first time I heard this passage. I grew up in Southern Baptist churches, and these words have always been familiar. Throughout my life, I have associated them with feelings of excitement, anxiety, curiosity, fear, and hope. This is the classic rapture passage. This is Ground Zero for arguments and hypotheses about that 7-year Great Tribulation and the Antichrist and the revived Roman Empire and the Man of Sin. This was where it all seemed to start. But what if all of these guesses and speculations are really just missing the point? Listen:

¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. •  •  •  ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.

The Thessalonian Christians were sorrowful and fearful because some of them had died in the few weeks and months since Paul first taught them about the Christ and his Cross and his Resurrection and his Ascension and his Reign and his Return. One thing he had apparently not had a chance to instruct them about was the fate of believers who die before the coming of Christ to destroy his enemies and vindicate his people. Were they going to miss the great event of the End of the Old Covenant Age? Those grieving, battered believers were distressed about the brothers and sisters they loved and lost. When you consider that it is entirely likely that some of them had died at the hands of the same persecutors who had chased Paul out of Thessalonica nefore he was finished fully training them, you begin to understand the true urgency that drove Paul to take up his pen and write this letter.

8Before it is anything else, this letter is a word of hope and courage for fearful and sorrowful Christians. That’s what it was two thousand years ago when Paul wrote it, and that’s what it remains to the end of this New Covenant Age we’re now living in. That’s the most basic thing to know about this passage. It’s not written first and foremost to satisfy our curiosity about the future. It’s written to heal grieving and worrying Christian hearts who are thinking about dead and buried members of their faith family. We will keep on asking questions about all the weird, wild stuff Paul is saying, because, well, how could we NOT? But we’d better remember that Paul wrote this letter for pastoral reasons—to speak a word of hope and courage for fearful and sorrowful Christians like the Thessalonians, and us. Let’s not let the spectacular crowd out the truly significant. In fact, let that warning seve as a refrain or a chant to focus your mind as we study this stuff: do not let the spectacular crowd out the truly significant. Some of this is genuinely a spectacle. It is spectacular in the proper sense of the term. But do not let the spectacular crowd out the truly significant. Don’t let what is loud and flashy grab all the attention from what is truly most important: being with Jesus forever. Say it with me: do not let the spectacular crowd out the truly significant. This is a word of hope and courage for fearful and sorrowful Christians. We’ll definitely come back to this before we’re done today.

2nd The coming of Christ and the rising of the Christian are not minor doctrinal details

We just heard  that our first order of business in understanding and applying this passage, after asking the Holy Spirit for help, is to distinguish between the truly significant and the merely spectacular, the most important versus the most shocking. Let’s keep walking down that path, the way of rightly dividing the Word of Truth.

Notice what’s right in the center of the passage: verse 15.

¹⁵ For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

And do you see that the actual bulls-eye for the whole passage is right at the center of that verse? The event Paul is talking about is the Coming of the Lord. Do you see that? It’s right there, in the middle of the verse. It’s one of those Greek words that’s so important that even many of us who have no Greek have heard it before: παρουσία. The word literally means “presence” or “arrival.” It is used 24 times in the New Testament with at least three distinct connotations. Sometimes it just means something like the arrival of a friend after a long trip. Often it refers to the coming or arrival of the Lord Jesus, and when that happens, it’s clearly patterned after the way the Old Testament talks about the coming of Yahweh to destroy his enemies and vindicate his people. The word παρουσία Is so important that we will take our entire preaching time next week to expound and exult in the meaning and meanings of that word. For now, it’s enough to say that what Paul has in mind here is the big show itself: the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to put an end to the New Covenant age and all the ages, to render final judgment upon his enemies, to consummate his Kingdom, and to welcome his people into their eternal salvation rest. This is the Second Coming that Jesus promised just before he ascended back to heaven from the Mount of Olives, forty days after he rose from the dead. This is the Event that will end history and begin eternity.

I’m certainly aware that there are lots of questions and plenty of confusion about how and when this Great Event will transpire. Let’s answer and settle what we can as we study the Thessalonian letters. First, let’s settle our minds to accept what our Lord says when he says that no one knows the day or the hour, not even the angels in heaven. When he was here in his weakness and humiliation, even our Lord himself did not know. Stop trying to figure it out, and stop listening to the boneheads who tell you that they have figured it out. They haven’t. Almost nobody does more injury to the cause of Christ then the wackadoodles who set dates for the return of Christ. Then, let’s settle our minds to accept what Paul says here when he says he’s talking about the coming of the Lord with all of his holy ones. This is not a sideshow. This is the Show.

It’s important to make that observation because when many of us first heard this passage preached or taught, we were told that this is not the Second Coming of Christ. We were told that this is the secret rapture of the church. We learned extremely complicated ways of understanding the books of Revelation and Daniel and who knows what else so as to be able to slide this event into a secret, prophetically unseen crack—lasting at least 2000 years—between the thoroughly Jewish Kingdom of Jesus’ day, replete with temple and priests and sacrifices, and another thoroughly Jewish Kingdom, at Jesus return replete with another temple and more priests and more sacrifices. Plenty of American Christians are still reading the prophecies that way. Perhaps you are among them. So maybe you too see this passage as the secret rapture, not the second coming of Christ. I am simply saying that that is not correct. When Paul says in verse 15 that this is the coming of Christ, when he explains in verses 14 and 16 that this is the coming of Christ that will be attended by the resurrection of the dead, he means plainly and simply that this is the Second Coming of Christ. Full stop.

Plenty of Christians in this modern world are a little skittish or embarrassed about the idea of the Second Coming of Christ. This is partly because of the date setters we just mentioned, and partly because there really is a breadth of meaning to the various prophecies of Christ’s coming that makes the subject challenging to figure out. And then there’s simply plain old-fashioned unbelief. The kinds of things that we just read about in this passage sound silly and superstitious to our materialistic, naturalistic, atheistic, secular, Enlightenment-trained minds. Even those of us who grew up Bible believing Baptist kids have a bent away from believing the supernatural and the miraculous. We’re squeamish about it because we’re actually way more modern and secular than we think. So let’s just confess that sin and ask God to set us free from that nonsense. God can and will and does do whatever he wants. He doesn’t give a flying rip about our supposed laws of nature. All the laws of nature are anyway is just descriptions of the way we can normally see God’s providence acting in every little detail of his creation. Our Lord Jesus says his Father is present and active in the fall of every bird, even every hair. So let’s just believe him.

During the few weeks Paul was with the Thessalonian disciples when he first preached the gospel of Christ to them and gathered them together as a church, he taught them that their Lord Jesus was coming to judge his enemies, especially among the Jews who rejected him, and rescue and vindicate his people—especially his followers in Thessalonica. He reinforces that teaching repeatedly in this letter. Do you remember?

1 Thessalonians 1:9-10  … how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 2:19  For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you?

1 Thessalonians 3:13 so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.

In this passage, he is adding to that teaching.

He is letting them know that the righteous dead. including the friends they were worried about, would rise from the dead to great the Lord at his return. Not only that, but all true disciples of the Lord who were still alive at his return would also rise, not out of a grave, but off of the ground, to greet the Lord in the air. In a parallel passage, Paul also lets us know that our bodies, whether dissolving to dust in the grave or just slowly falling apart as we live out our lives, will be transformed into new and glorious and everlasting bodies at the same moment.

Alright. There is a lot to talk about here.

• The first thing we must do is remind ourselves that we are believers, not unbelievers. [[ ]] I freely confess that this is weird, wild, outlandish stuff, hard for modern minds like ours, so full of self-congratulation about our supposed sophistication and scientific acumen, to take at face value. I just understand that that’s worldly, fleshly, and devilish. I invite you to join me in seeing it that way.
• The second thing is we have to discern what’s more important and what is less important. It’s all important, but it’s not all equally important. So what’s more important: the prospect of rising through the air or the promise of rising from the grave? Here’s a hint: the promise of the resurrection of God’s people at the coming of the messiah had been the hope and anticipation of Israel for hundreds of years before Jesus ever came. It remained the central hope of God’s people as the Old Covenant gave way to the New. The resurrection of the body is everywhere the hope and expectation of the believers. On the other hand, this is the only place where the rapture, the rising through the air of living saints who are being transformed into glory as they rise, is described. It is not that the rapture will not be a real miracle. It absolutely will. I can and I do believe that thousands or millions of billions of people will fly through the air. But the big deal is that thousands or millions or billions of dead people will live.

1. Third, You want to take note that Paul learned something by a word from the Lord. He did not learn this from Scripture. Paul seems to have heard it direct from Jesus’ mouth to his ear. What did he hear? Apparently, that the dead in Christ will rise first, before the Christians who are still alive. I heard one old preacher say that was probably because they had six feet further to go. [[ ]]

Well, whatever is the case about that, we will rise and we will live with transformed, glorified, everlasting, ever-living bodies. But even that is not really the big deal. Being in the air is not the hajor marvel. Meeting the Lord is. More about that in a minute.

The coming of the Christ and the rising of the Christian may embarrass or confuse many of us today, so perhaps not many of us are real excited to talk about them, but they are not minor doctrinal details. Paul taught them to the Thessalonian Christians as part of their basic discipleship training, and when he didn’t get to finish that training we wrote the rest of it down in a letter. That’s the letter we’re studying. These truths are a big deal today. They are not minor doctrinal details.

3rd The action of the passage follows Jesus from heaven to earth, not from earth to heaven

As I grew up, I always envisioned this passage as being about my starting off on earth and ending up in heaven. Now that I’m older and I’m able to look at the passage a little bit more objectively, I have to honestly say that first of all it’s not about me; it’s about Jesus. And it’s not primarily about anyone going up; it’s about Jesus coming down from heaven to earth, and bringing his people with him. Just listen:

¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁵ For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. Did you hear that? It’s about Jesus coming down, just as he promised and just as his people have been waiting for him to do for two millennia now. Of course, there is something about our going up to meet him ^16b And the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

It’s understandable that you might think that this means that, since we’ll all meet him in the air, we’ll stay in the sky with him forever. However that actually doesn’t follow at all, for three reasons.

• It doesn’t say we’ll stay in the air or in heaven with him. It just says we’ll stay with him. Since he was on his way down when we went up to meet him, why wouldn’t he continue on his way down to earth?
• The word that is translated as “meet” is the verb form of the 8word ἀπάντησις, usually translated as “meeting” or “greeting” or “welcome party.” It often carried this sense in the ancient Greek world. It’s a reference to the ancient custom of citizens’ going out to meet a returning king and then escort him back to his city. So when Paul uses it here, he is seeing all of Christ’s people rising to greet him in the air and then escorting him back to earth, where he will institute his final and consummate Kingdom.

1. Even if we accept the standard Dispensational theory, where the secret rapture of the Christians happens before a seven-year Tribulation, the raptured, resurrected believers still turn around and come back to earth with Jesus—only seven years later. Or 1007 years later, depending on who you ask. Any way you slice it, no matter who’s right, we believers end up back on earth, reigning with Christ the King. I’m just suggesting it all happens at pretty much the same time.

At any rate, what is clear with just a simple reding oi the passage is that the action of the passage follows Jesus from heaven to earth.

4th This sounds like it’s going to be a remarkably loud event, not a secret one

Just listen:

¹⁶ For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.

That doesn’t sound like a very secret rapture to me. It’s remarkable how similar this description is to the one in the parallel passage we mentioned before.

1 Corinthians 15 ⁵⁰ I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹ Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

The trumpet is announcing the End.

This event described in 1 Thessalonians 4 is not a secret, silent rapture, invisible and unknown to the prophets of old, discernible only to those who know the arcane procedure for finding this secret hidden in the Scriptures. This is the End, inspiring hope and terror throughout the ages. This is the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

5th Paul calls his readers to believe these outlandish promises together

Let’s go back to the beginning. We started off by reading the beginning and the end of this passage:

¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. •  •  •   ^17b …and so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Do you hear that? Paul wants them—and us—to help each other to find solace and courage and comfort and strength in God.

I almost didn’t want to get into the deep weeds in the middle of the passage, because too often people get lost in those weeds. They get all tangled up in possible eschatology quiz show questions, and they forget why Paul even wrote this in the firdt place.

The Christian life was never meant to be lived alone. We are not independent automata, each connected to the Father individually and separately. Each of us needs the rest of us. Do you remember what Hebrews says?

10 ²⁴ And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another….

Let’s be honest. These promises are way outsized and frankly pretty hard to believe. The only way we’re going to be able to use them to encourage each other is if we’re helping each other and urging each other to believe them. I other words, if we try to do this on our own, we’re almost sure to fail. We need a church family, until our Lord comes.

Hebrews 10 ²⁴ And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

This is a word of hope and courage for fearful and sorrowful Christians

The coming of Christ and the resurrection of the Christian are not minor doctrinal details

The action of this passage follows Jesus from heaven to earth, not from earth to heaven

This sounds like it’s going to be a remarkably loud event, not a secret one

Paul calls his readers to believe these outlandish promises together

a look back

• this chapter:

(vv1-8) tight sexual morality, not loose morals

• because Jesus said so

(vv 9-12) diligent, self-sustaining work, not indolent dependency

• because Paul told us to and showed us how and why

(vv 13-18) hope and courage, not grief and fear

• because Jesus is going to come down from heaven with a shout…

= radically, profoundly countercultural Christianity

• “if the Lord tarries”… we are the ones who are tarrying

what God wants them to do

• occupy till I come

Eternal Father, in this very moment, we turn again from our sin and ourselves to you and your glory,

Trusting only in your Son’s sacrifice for our sins to make us right with you.

We want to shelter ourselves in the shadow of his cross,

Bathe ourselves in the blood that he shed there for us,

Rest ourselves on his redemption

Robe ourselves in his righteousness,

Renew ourselves in his resurrection,

Lose ourselves in his Lordship,

And find ourselves in his friendship.

We want him to become for us, for today and forever, wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and salvation.

For he is the One who suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to you, our Father.