I Thessalonians

I Thessalonians was written by Paul to the new Christian converts in Thessalonica in 51 AD.  Paul begins by thanking God for the faith of which the Thessalonians have.  He then talks about his ministry as having a great success in the city of Thessalonica.  In this, he keeps his usual style of bashing the ritualistic purity of which the Jews lived by.  He refers to these religious Jews as those who have killed the Lord Jesus.  He is not referring to the race of the Jewish people by making this statement but rather to the Pharisees.  Paul talks about how he longed to see the Thessalonians but Satan stopped him from it.He then tells them that he sent Timothy to find out about the faith of the Thessalonians and Timothy gave him an encouraging report.  He reminds the church that he always prays for them.  He then talks about the kind of disciplined life that pleases God, a life in which the believer becomes more and more sanctified on a daily basis.  He then proceds to talk about the coming of the Lord on the clouds of heaven in which the dead in  Christ shall rise first and then those who remain shall be resurrected also.  This passage is the passage from which the word "rapture" was derived in the 19th century.  This is commonly used by Dispensational Premillenialists as their basis for the pre-trib rapture of the church in which the church is taken out of the world before the tribulation.  The problem is that if this is the rapture, then there has to be a third coming of Christ which is not mentioned anywhere in scripture.  Pre-tribbers have tried to get around this by saying that the Second Coming and the rapture are two seperate events.  However, such a noition is refuted by the fact that the word coming appears in this passage.  Chapter five also talks about the end times and is believed by some to be referring to the time of the tribulation.  Chapter five, verse 9 is often used to say that we will not go through that time for God did not appoint us to wrath.  That verse is taken way out of context however as the Thessalonians were ggoing through a time of persecution though it was not God who had appointed them to that time.  For more on this issue read my thoughts on the "Left Behind" Series.  Paul proceeds to close the letter with final iunstructions to the church encouraging them to pray without ceasing and to let God sanctify them.