Most Biblical scholars believe that 1Thessalonians 4:13-18 concerns our day or even sometime in our future. This passage is used by folks who wish to show that the coming or return of Jesus will occur with the voice of an archangel, the sound of the trumpet of God, the dead will come out of the graves with new physical bodies, and those of us who are alive and believe will be caught up to the physical clouds, together with all the righteous dead who ever lived, and there, high up in the air among the physical clouds we’ll meet Jesus who has come out of heaven.
We are involved in a study to see if this is, indeed, what Paul meant when he wrote his first epistle to the Thessalonians. In order to do that we are looking at the context of the chapters leading up to this text in chapter four and then we’ll look at what is called Paul’s second letter to the same folks. We have been noting that in chapters one, two and three Paul had been speaking of Jesus’ coming in 70 AD to judge Jerusalem. At that time he not only destroyed the Jewish nation, but he ended the Old Covenant and established the New Covenant as the only means, through which he dealt with mankind. The question is, then, does 1Thessalonians 4:13-18 also speak of 70 AD or does it point to an event far into the future, 2000 years and counting? So, if all the other passages of 1Thessalonians that mention Jesus’ coming, and all of the passages in 2Thessalonians point to 70 AD, what should we find in the text that Paul wrote 2000 years ago that would convince modern readers that Paul spoke of a different event and a different time than the other mentions of Jesus’ coming?
Notice what Paul says at the end of chapter three in his first epistle:
Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you; and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you; so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints. (1 Thessalonians 3:11-13; emphasis mine)
Now the idea of the Lord coming to the earth with all of his saints (angels) is one of the themes running through the Old Covenant text. For example, when he established the Old Covenant with Israel, it is said that he came to earth with ten thousands of his saints (Deuteronomy 33:2), but no one actually saw thousands of angels with Yahweh. In his short letter Jude wrote of a prophecy made by Enoch intended for the first century AD, and he claimed that the Lord would come with ten thousands of his saints, i.e. angels (Jude 1:14). On a number of occasions in the Gospel narratives Jesus is understood as coming in the glory of the Father with all his holy angels (Matthew 16:27; 25:31; Mark 8:38)
We meet this theme again in Zechariah where the Lord comes with all his saints (angels): “Then the LORD, my God, will come and all the holy ones with Him!” (Zechariah 14:5). But, in what context does he come with all his saints?
Behold, the day of the LORD comes, and your spoil shall be divided in your midst. For I will gather all nations to battle against Jerusalem; and the city shall be taken, and the houses plundered, and the women raped. And half of the city shall go into exile, and the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. (Zechariah 14:1-2)
Zechariah seems to be pointing to the Lord’s judgment upon Jerusalem in 70 AD. The idea of the Lord coming with all of his saints is a way of expressing his coming in great glory. When this was done in the past, Yahweh had never come physically to the earth, but had always come in the person of one nation against another nation (Isaiah 10:5-7), and in this manner the Lord judged the nations, whether Israel or the gentile. It is said that he rode on the clouds (Psalm 104:3; Isaiah 19:1), that he came with the sound of a great trumpet (Psalm 47:5) and with ten thousands of his saints (angels; cp. Psalm 68:17). No one ever saw the Lord actually coming in the clouds, no one ever heard the trumpet, and no one ever saw all those angels coming with the Lord. The question, then, is this: what is it in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians that would convince any reader that the Lord changed his established motif and actually comes physically, on a cloud, visibly with all his angels, to a physical Temple in physical Jerusalem, appearing as a 6 foot Jewish man, as he probably appeared in the first century AD?
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