The Nature of Death (07/19/22-07/20/22)

The topic to which Paul now turns his attention is one that was clearly of significance to his readers, and to his body of converts more generally.  It is a topic which remains significant to us today, perhaps more so than it used to as we grow older.  It is the question of death, that event which strikes us as most unnatural, most unwelcome.  We understand, and I think at a most visceral level, that death is not part of the original plan of life.  This understanding, I should note, seems to pervade our thinking to the degree that even the most stubborn unbeliever still feels it to be the case.  Oh, we try to come to terms with it, make our claims that death is just part of the cycle of life.  We may even point to Scripture to support our attempts to soften the blow.  Remember?  Jesus spoke of the need for seed to fall to the ground and die if it is to grow to new life.  So, yes, there is an aspect to death which is in fact part of life.  But I don’t think we can go so far as to say it was part of the original design. 

Adam was not, in his pristine form, intended to die, nor were those creatures to which he gave name.  How that was to work, I don’t know.  Whether it was ever truly intended to work is something of a question, although I would account it a question readily answered by the nature of God Who created all things.  He did not err in His purposes, even in the entrance of sin into His creation.  We cannot, must not suggest that God ordains sin, or causes it to come to pass, but neither is He unaware of it or unable to deal with it.  The failure of Adam was, then, baked in from the outset.  From Adam’s perspective, sin remained a moral failure, a matter of personal choice.  But on a larger scale, I think we must accept that it was inevitable that it would be so, and God knew it.  God knew it, and God took it into account in the design of His creation, and more specially, in the redemptive nature of His work in creation.

That is going to be an unsatisfying bit of information for many.  How could a good God design such a thing?  How could He Who is Life permit the entrance of death?  If He is all-knowing, why did He not simply prevent Satan’s corrupting actions from spoiling the work?  Well, I suppose we must say that in fact those actions didn’t spoil the work, but made the outcome that much more perfectly wonderful.  This certainly wasn’t his intent, any more than the fulness of life in Christ was his intention in maneuvering to bring about His crucifixion.  The intentions of the creature and the intentions of God are two very different things, and for all that we have free will to pursue our intentions, God’s will remains much freer, and His will is done, even by our willful rebellions.  This does nothing to exonerate the sinful choices we make, but it does leave hope fully intact when we fail.

However it is that death entered into the realms of creation, it is clearly here.  We understand that death has come in response to sin, or we might say as part of the package deal that sin presents us.  The wages of sin is death (Ro 6:23).  It is what we have earned by our rebellion against God’s just and holy law.  Perhaps it is this understanding, an understanding it seems is innate to our being, whether we consciously acknowledge God or not, which gives rise to our concern about dying.  There are those, of course, who age out gracefully, and come to a place of peaceful acceptance as to their demise.  And this is not restricted to those who are known of Christ.  But it is something of a rarity, or perhaps in some cases it is simply recognition that the pain of continuing in this life has come to outweigh the sense of wrongness we have concerning death.

What is not entirely clear to me is that Adam was created with assurance of eternal life.  Yes, God created him, and breathed into him the breath of life (Ge 2:7).  Yet, there was still the question of eating from the tree of life.  If Adam had already this gift of eternality, then what need was there for the tree’s fruit in his case?  There were, after all, those two trees in the midst of the garden, though only the one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was set off limits (Ge 2:17).  Yet, it would seem that neither he nor Eve had thought to taste the fruit of the tree of life, and God’s banishing them from Eden was primarily to prevent them doing so (Ge 3:22-24).  So, it seems to me that at most, we can say that from the start, man was made to enjoy a much longer span of life, but whether or not eternity was built in remains an open question.

By the time Paul was on the scene, death was in no doubt.  There were debates still, among the Jews, as to what came about after death, and understandably so.  After all, none could return with reports on the matter, having spied out the land of the dead.  The Greeks had their myths in regard to such doings, but they were just that:  myths.  Still, if death comes in response to sin, and Christ comes to bring righteousness, there is now this expectation that at His return, He will be calling together the righteous, and finalizing the fate of the unrighteous.  So, does this mean that all who die, regardless of whether they claimed faith in Christ or not, have been judged and rejected?  What are we to make of those who were thought to have loved Christ, but yet have died?  Were they deceived?  Were we?  Is our hope cut off by the grave?

The questions are readily understandable, really, particularly in a populace so recently come to knowledge of the living God.  Wow!  This was marvelously good news, this King of kings who has dealt with our sin and its wages of death.  And He is coming again, we have learned.  But He has not yet come, and some of us have died.  What has become of them?  What becomes of us if, by accident or mere passage of time, we likewise go to our graves? 

Well, to this Scripture does indeed supply rich answer.  The first point we must establish is that there are two deaths spoken of.  There is that death of the physical body which is in view here, which we find particularly the New Testament authors referring to as sleep rather than death.  There is a reason for that, and it’s not something that was unknown to those who went before.  Even going back to Job there is awareness of this extension of life beyond the bounds of this earthly existence.  “Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:26-27).  “I myself shall behold Him, my eyes shall see Him, not the eyes of another.”  There is the thought of those in the bosom of the earth, the depths of the abyss.  There was a reason so much concern was paid to where one’s bones were left.  If the grave were the end, what possible difference could it make where the remains were left to decompose?  Or, what use seeking that your name might be remembered through the ages, if one’s own existence has been so thoroughly extinguished?  It is to no purpose, and those who have concluded that there is no god, and that this life is the sum total of our existence have noticed this to their dismay.  Life becomes pointless with such a perspective, and nihilism tends to be the result.

But Scripture points beyond that conclusion.  The author of Hebrews observes that it is appointed for men once to die, and after that comes judgment (Heb 9:27).  And already, we have this continuance.  There is an after that.  It is not the end.  John takes us the next step, in the words of Christ.  “He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death” (Rev 2:11).  Combine those two thoughts and one observes that all die once, but some must die twice, and it is the second death that we would construe as truly perishing.  Though even that perishing, I must observe, does not consist in the extinguishing of being.

We see that as there is a second death, there is likewise a first resurrection (Rev 20:6), which would seem to pertain prior to the millennial reign of Christ, however we are to perceive that.  If we open up that section a bit further, it would seem those referred to are the ones whose deaths came about specifically because of faith in Jesus, the martyrs down through the ages.  It is not all the dead, for John observes that “the rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed” (Rev 20:4-5).  But there comes a point where all have been resurrected, some to their eternal benefit, and others to their eternal doom.  Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death (Rev 20:14-15), and all whose names are not in the book of life are thrown in as well, all the unbelieving, all the abominable, murderous, immoral, idolatrous, and sorcerous go in.  Oh, and so do all liars (Rev 21:8).  It almost seemed an easy miss until we hit that last item.  But our calling is high, and the punishment that will come in regard to sin is severe.  For that lake of fire is not a moment of agony followed by cessation of being.  It is that place of which Jesus spoke, wherein ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched’ (Mk 9:48).  This second death is no temporary condition.  Neither does it come with any possibility of reprieve.  This is the second death.  We might speak of it as spiritual death, and however much we may have thought to plead ignorance at the time of our physical demise, perhaps thinking to make claim that we simply didn’t know Jesus’ offer, that excuse is stripped away at the second death.  Those who go hence, do so in full knowledge of Who God Is, and what it means that they shall never be known by Him.  Surely, this ought to suffice to turn us from our sins, if we but contemplated the full horror of it.  And yet, so perfidious is the diseased heart of man that we, even having learned of it, manage to tune it out and go our way.  Indeed, as Paul cried out, “Who will set me free from this body of death?” (Ro 7:24).  If nothing else, at least we are in good company in this foolishness of sinning in light of faith.

But we have this doctrinal truth established for us:  Physical death is not the end.  It is not permanent.  It is but a transitional stage.  It is also, we must give notice, the end of our opportunity to receive Christ.  If we have gone to the grave without having been granted the gift of faith, it must be accepted that the judgment which shall be executed on that final day has already been determined.  Mind you, it had been determined long before you breathed your first breath.  From before the first day of Creation, God already knew with exactitude precisely who and how many would constitute His elect, His bride.

And so, as we look to the risen Christ, we have come to understand that by His resurrection He has thoroughly defeated death.  He has the keys of death and Hades (Rev 1:18).  He has final say, this living One.  And to be sure, He is not going to suffer His bride to be cast into that second death.  No!  The promise is that we shall live together with Him, and that forever.  That requires a change of equipment for us, whether we have gone to the grave with our current setup worn out, or whether we remain alive and hale when He comes.  In later letters, Paul makes this clear.  In particular, there is the point made to the Corinthians on this subject.  “I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed:  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet’s sounding, the dead will arise imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1Co 15:51-52).

Now, that does raise a question for us, I think, and it’s not one I’m sure we can hope to answer.  That is the question of whether Paul expected Christ’s return to transpire in his own lifetime.  That he speaks of these things from a ‘we’ perspective suggests that perhaps he did have expectations of imminent, relatively immediate return.  But I’m not convinced that is enough evidence upon which to form a conclusion.  There is, for example, that question Peter raised with the resurrected Jesus in regard to John, for Jesus had told Peter to follow Him, and he felt this was supposed to be an exclusive invitation (Jn 21:19-23).  Jesus answered his question by saying, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?  You follow Me!”  John proceeds to clarify that while some who overheard took this to be assurance that he himself would never die, that is not the point, and no such assurance was given.  So, it would seem that among the Apostles, even from these first moments, there remained an awareness of death potentially preceding Christ’s return.  Why would Paul, with his revelatory knowledge received from Christ directly, believe any differently?

So, then, what was it about his teaching that might lead his hearers to conclude such things?  Well, I think from the very start there has always been this intentional urgency to the message.  Jesus proclaimed that we would not know the hour of His coming, that it would come at an unexpected moment.   There is reason for this, and a bit of self-awareness will make it readily understood.  Knew we the time, we would rapidly convince ourselves that we can go on with life as we knew it until just before that time, and make our repentance at the last minute.  You know, there have been those in the community of the atheists, who have jokingly (or perhaps semi-seriously) spoken of making a deathbed conversion because, in their view, better another Christian should die than an atheist.  Well, rather like Caiaphas, they are more nearly right than they know, or at least than they admit to knowing.  Of course, where such a conversion is made in mockery it has no value whatsoever.  God is not mocked.  But we can take the other perspective and observe that even at that last moment, it is not as yet too late for true faith to come.  This, to my thinking, is the hope for those who die in infancy.  And, given that nothing is impossible to God, it is also the hope for those who have died through the horrible practice of abortion.  That we are conceived in sin has proven no obstacle to God’s saving grace.  I see no reason to suppose that our failure to reach what we construe as the age of maturity in which we might proclaim a faith undertaken of our own free will presents any more obstacle to Him Whose word accomplishes all His purpose.

So, perhaps we can say that no, Paul did not expect this return, but he did recognize the need for a sense of urgency in the believer.  We may not expect it, but neither should we become complacent, thinking it obviously won’t be in our lifetime.  As has often been preached, it could be today.  It could be this very moment.  And that reality continues to hold no matter how many moments transpire.  We are not given to know when our end may come about.  We don’t get to choose our moment of expiration, as Jesus did upon the cross.  But He knows.  He knows the precise number of our days, our hours, our minutes, and nothing we may contrive to do is going to alter that.

But something in the way this message of living in readiness was delivered left room for confusion.  It left need for clarification, and that is exactly what we find Paul doing here.  His return may be so soon that we remain.  It may not be so soon.  As various of the Apostles did in fact die, this reality must have hit harder and harder.  But it wasn’t just the Apostles.  It would seem that for Thessalonica, and most likely for other churches as well, this had already been a reality that had to be dealt with.  The NIrV, seeking to present verse 16 in some degree of clarity, writes that “many who believe in Christ will have died already.”  That is certainly implied in that we shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.  Again, they have not ceased to be, nor is their grave the final estate for them.

And this, Paul says, is great comfort for us.  It should comfort us in regard to those faithful brothers we have known who have passed on.  If it be that our parents were Christians, their death has not taken them from us forever.  We shall meet again.  If our believing spouse should pass before we do, there is again that hope of reuniting when Christ has come.  Relationships will not be the same, to be clear.  Jesus made that plain when the Sadducees sought to catch him out with the question of that woman who had been wife to many brothers, as each died in turn.  No, but in these resurrection bodies, transformed and fitted out for eternity, there is no male and female.  There is no sex drive, for there is no need anymore for procreation.  Replacement rates will no longer be a concern, for there are none in need of replacing.  And this word, Paul tells us, this doctrinal teaching, he has of the Lord.  But that is a topic for tomorrow.

For now, let us rejoice in the full awareness and appreciation that whatever this present life may throw at us, whether our days be long or short, and however many generations may remain between now and Christ’s return, yet His return is certain, and our restoration to life is assured.  Indeed, it will be more than restoration.  It will be birthing into life that is fully and finally worthy to be called life, and such life as knows no end, evermore to be spent in the enjoyment of the immediate presence of our Lord and King.  Glory be to His name forever!  Amen.

The Nature of This Word (07/21/22)

We have two places in this passage where the term logos appears in some form.  It appears first as logo in verse 15, as Paul indicates that what follows is logo kuriou, word of the Lord.  It then comes up again at the end, where he tells his readers to comfort one another with tois logois toutois, these words. Now, word logos is of wide range of meaning, and we have been conditioned, I think, to find our thoughts turn to Jesus, ho Logos, whenever we see it used.  But that is a very specific usage, and one found only in John’s writings.  The term itself has much wider use, 330 appearances in total, and its significance varies quite a bit depending on the context.

All that being said, this first usage, logo kuriou, is also somewhat of a special construct, and bears with it a sense of prophetic proclamation.  We see the phrase, word of the Lord, and again, conditioning instructs us that we are looking at something more directly revelatory in nature.  Mind you, we have properly to view the whole of Scripture as revelatory, but within that generally revelatory whole we recognize that there are portions more specifically prophetic as to their substance.  When Ezekiel declares, ‘Thus says the Lord’, we know we are being moved a step nearer to a direct message from God.  Now, most often that phrase comes up in addressing somebody else, it’s the record of interactions had between the prophet and some individual or individuals in need of hearing God’s correction.

Here, there is also that note of correction, but of necessity, the communication is not face to face.  The scope of the church had already expanded to such a degree that such immediacy of address was not always possible.  Paul was still one man, and even if he’d had something of Stephen’s experience of being whisked from point to point by the Spirit, still, he could only be in one place at one time.  As a matter of personal ministry, he could only serve one local body at any point in time.  In order to be live in front of another, he must be absent from wherever he was ministering at present.  But letters could be sent, and these letters were but a step removed from that personal, face to face contact.  Yes, there is some little bit lost, in that, as is the case with our modern forms of communication, we cannot pick up on visual cues to inform us of underlying tone and feeling.  But writing had become a bit more common, and letters would be sent with close associates, those who knew Paul and Paul’s doctrine well enough to make certain the letter was understood as intended.

At any rate, it is in such a situation that Paul now says, “This we say to you by logo kuriou.”  Does this indicate that he is speaking a fresh revelation?  I don’t think so.  It may indicate that this, along with the original teaching he was striving to clarify, were of that sourcing.  Indeed, we know they were.  The whole of Paul’s doctrine and ministry came of that sourcing.  So, what’s new here?  Well, there are a few notes of detail regarding the return of our Lord, which I will explore more directly in the next part of this exercise.  But I don’t think it’s those details that are new information.  Rather, I would suggest it is the specific matter of verse 17 that he has in mind.  This was certainly the point that needed clarification.

At the same time, the imagery we find here is not something new.  In fact, one or the other of my translations observes that the imagery, and in fact the overall message, have precedent in the texts we see as extra-biblical, but occasionally find presented as the Apocrypha.  Paul is not alone in making reference to these texts, I should note.  Jude does as well, and certain aspects of 2Peter suggest familiarity with those texts, too.  Here, we have reference to 2Esdras 6:23, which speaks of the trumpet sounding, which every man shall hear, and be suddenly afraid.  But we could as readily refer this back to Jesus’ own words, which would certainly satisfy the claim of logo kuriou, wouldn’t it?  He said that at His return, the Son of Man would send forth His angels with a great trumpet, and that they would then gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other (Mt 24:30-31).  We needn’t, then, appeal to the Apocrypha for a source of this image.  Neither need we credit that source more than it is due because of the presence of that line.

What of the other?  That same reference observes that the idea of the dead being asleep, and surely to live again may find some basis in Ecclesiasticus 48:11, with its message of, “Blessed are they that saw thee, and slept in love; for we shall surely live.”  Mind you, the passage from which this is drawn is focused on Elijah the prophet, not on Messiah directly.  So, would it make sense for Paul to be applying that to the present concern, and doing so as being the word of the Lord?  I’m honestly not seeing it.  What we do have is the promise of Christ that, “Lo!  I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).  What we do have is the promise that if He is going to heaven, which He assuredly did, and that before many witnesses, then He will just as assuredly return to take us home to be with Him, having prepared a place for us (Jn 14:2-3).  Again, it is our Lord Himself delivering the news, clearly a case of logo kuriou.  So, is Paul simply making reference to those things known to have been said by Jesus?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps, in this case, it truly is an additional clarification revealed by divine declaration.  Perhaps it truly is a fresh case of the very thoughts of God being declared.  Perhaps.

But whether new or old, it seems to me we have sufficient basis to say the points being made are founded upon the teaching of Christ.  And that just might shift our sense of what is meant by logos in this instance.  See, there is also the idea in this word of preaching and instruction, of doctrine.  We might be intended to hear that here as well, that what Paul is preaching in this letter is the doctrine Christ Himself taught, and those same passages would give basis to such an understanding.  Certainly, it seems to me that the second use of the term here, when Paul tells them to comfort one another with these words gets more to the point of doctrine imparted and doctrine held.

I should have to suggest that you cannot comfort another with words you do not in fact believe to be true.  If you are not wholly convinced of this matter of resurrection, then you cannot comfort those who have been faced with the death of a loved one by suggesting such an outcome.  Frankly, the falsity of proclaiming such unbelieved notes of hope ring hollow.  False confidence will tend to be recognized for what it is.  There’s that line from the old Paul Simon song, “I would not give you false hope, on this strange and mournful day.”  This was apparently penned in regard to the loss of his dog, but the phrasing, and much else in the song, cannot help but display a certain Judeo-Christian background in its presentation.

Here, Paul is delivering no false hope.  He is delivering the very promise of Christ.  “I will be back for you.  I will take you home to be with Me in My Father’s house.”  We hear this, and one trusts, we believe it.  We must also recognize it as being of a piece with the reality that no man can see God and live, man being sinful by nature, and God being utterly perfect in Holiness.  Sin cannot survive being in His presence.  Thus, as is so often noted, the cry of Isaiah, “Woe is me!  I am undone!”  Thus, the concern of Peter.  “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a wicked man.”  These are on the one hand, a recognition of the painful, humbling truth about ourselves, and also, on the other hand, a clearer, dawning realization of just what it means that God is holy.

I bring it up here to observe that if indeed Jesus is coming to take us home to be in our Father’s house, then there shall be the need of death as concerns this body, and this fallen nature of ours.  Even Jesus, born a man, yet without sin, could not ascend in the body He took up as a man among men.  That body had to die and be replaced with a body fit for eternity in God’s heaven.  This new body may bear resemblance to the old, although that is not entirely clear to me.  There are those occasions when the risen Christ is clearly seen for Who He Is, and then, there are those occasions, such as on the Emmaus Road, when He is unrecognized.  There is Thomas, touching, or at least seeing, the holes in His hands and side, the results and clear evidence of His crucifixion on this clearly living Jesus.  But there is also Mary, mistaking the same, clearly living Jesus for the gardener.  And the original body was certainly not capable of coming through bolted doors without being bothered to open them.  Yet, the new body is capable of taking in food.  How does it all fit?  I suppose we shall find out in due course.

But the nature of that new body is not what is under consideration here.  It is the reality of death being a temporary state from which we shall arise to new life.  We have the foretaste of that life in our present condition of spiritual rebirth.  And we know that God is Spirit, so we might surmise that our future existence is to be devoid of any such physical body.  But Scripture does not permit that conclusion, I don’t think.  Indeed, by the time Paul writes his more thorough discussion of this matter of resurrection in 1Corinthians 15, all room for such a conclusion has been removed.  There is a resurrection body, a body fit for eternality, and this shall be the body we have at His coming, when we arise to be with Him in the air.  Those who have been asleep in the grave will, Paul tells us, rise first, possessed of this new body.  Thereafter, those who remain alive at His return shall be caught up, snatched away from this present order ere its destruction.  And again, referring to that more complete discussion, we shall be changed.  For it is appointed to all men once to die, and then the judgment.  We are not excused from that appointment, if in fact we are of that number extent at His return.  It will just be a particularly brief experience in that case.

Lord, help us to truly grasp this reality, to internalize it fully, and to live it fully.  We become so enamored of this life, so caught up in the day to day, that we can rapidly lose sight of eternity, and of Your eternal purposes.  Indeed, we can even become annoyed when spiritual matters take up too much of our day.  We have things to do, matters to attend to.  There’s a balance there, to be sure, but that balance cannot be such that we resent Your claim on our time.  How dare we?  Awake us to Your Holiness.  Awake me to Your sovereignty.  Remind me, for I am a forgetful man, of Your very near presence, and Your true lordship over this poor man.  Let me live for You, and grant me patience with those who seek to do likewise.  The time will come when we have all the time in the world to dwell in Your presence with clear awareness of You, and no awareness of any temptation to depart from You.  May I learn to appreciate that same nearness and dedication here and now, indwelt by You, and keenly attentive to Your voice leading, Your Spirit guiding.

The Nature of His Return (07/22/22)

If we count ourselves as Christians then we abide in this assurance:  Jesus will return.  We know not when, but we know that this shall be. These to whom Paul writes knew it as well.  We can sense quite clearly that the coming return of Christ was something central to the gospel that Paul and the others taught.  This, after all, is something that has been in the works as long as, or longer than the death and resurrection of this same Jesus.  And that resurrection is likewise central to the gospel.  It is the bit apart from which our faith is rendered pointless.

But Jesus will return, and the nature of His return, if not the detailed specifics of it, are matters developed in the pages of the New Testament.  Here, as has so often transpired in this epistle, we are handed a threefold description of how that return shall be noted.  But all of that comes as building upon this first and central point:  The Lord Himself will descend from heaven!  This, I should think, is something rather distinct in the realm of world religions.  I mean, plenty of ancient religions had their earthly impacts due to the movements of their gods, their gods, being, after all, much about explaining and perhaps managing earthly phenomena.  And then, too, there were manifold myths of gods coming down in various forms to amuse themselves amongst mankind.  If we come forward just a bit, we have a few that might suggest that a god, or one very nearly god, has been present in the leader of their religion.

But this remains, so far as I can see, unique.  God, for one thing, had already been down among men, insomuch as Jesus is God, and had taken up the life of man in a human body, pumped with human blood, developing from infancy on a human timescale.  He had not, we must remain clear, ceased in any way from being God during that brief, thirty-odd year period.  But He had, by His choice, become one of us.  He had also died, and that, in the worst possible way then known to man – perhaps still the worst way.  But He had not stayed dead.  He had risen from the grave, and more, He had risen from the earth.  This, they saw, that having spoken to them after His resurrection, ‘He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight’ (Ac 1:9).  How many besides the eleven apostles then extent had witnessed this is not clear, but we know that at some point, more than five hundred had met with Him in His resurrected state at one time (1Co 15:6).  We know this as Paul’s report, who, we might note, had his own encounter with the Lord during this period, but in glorified form.  But those to whom he writes these letters had the advantage of us.  They could seek out some of those five hundred, ask them what they had seen, confirm these extraordinary claims the apostles made in regard to Jesus.

To put it plainly, those to whom Paul writes, both here, and in that later letter, being much closer to events, could readily discover any refuting evidence as to the wild claims of a resurrected victim of crucifixion, and one who not only rose from the grave, but from the earth.  If this had been fabricated, it could not have survived those first few years.  It would have soon enough become as inconsequential a sect as those other mystery religions that proliferated in that era.  But it had that foundation in the real world to maintain it.  It had the undeniable factor of historicity.

Having established the rock-hard reality of His existence, His death, and His resurrection, there is now added the equally solid conviction as to His return.  He being Who He said He is, and He having declared that He would return to bring us back to Himself (and not just Himself, but others from long ages prior spoke of His return, as God gave them revealed knowledge of things to come), we can be assured as to His return.  Of course, those who had seen Him in His incarnate life were just as certain of His coming, in many cases.  And they were just as certain they understood rightly in seeing His arrival as that of a conquering hero come to restore Israel to her former greatness.  In this, they were half-right.  But they had glazed over all the talk of a suffering servant, come to die on behalf of the poor, misled and leaderless sheep of God’s flock.  What they had in view was His return, not His initial presence.

So, here we have it.  He will come down with a shout.  Now, it is rather lost on us in modern life, but this is not some loud greeting, as when we see an old friend on the streets of the city.  He’s not saying, “Hey!  I’m over here!”  It is the sort of shout which comes by way of being a command.  It is given loudly, so as to be heard over wind and wave, or over the tumult of battle.  It is loud.  It is also authoritative and purposeful.  Alongside this, Paul presents us with the voice of the archangel.  Here is a commander of angelic legions.  We are not told whether this is Michael or some other of that rank.  For all that, it’s not clear whether there are others of his rank, or exactly how it is the angels are organized.  But here is a commander, and a commander implies those whom he commands are likewise present.  This is, then, a military campaign.  We might go so far as to suggest it is the invasion of earth by the kingdom of heaven.

And that brings us to the third image given us by Paul.  The trumpet of God shall sound.  No, God is not coming down to blow us a tune.  And it is not in fact God who blows the trumpet at all.  We need to put ourselves into the time and place of Paul and of those who would read his letter first.  These were a people familiar with war and armies.  They were, after all, subjects of Roman occupation.  Thessalonica may have been a self-governed city, but it was so by leave of Rome.  And Philippi was just down the road, with its very present regiments of the Roman army.  War was not something one heard about happening in distant places, a matter heard about on the news or learned of from old veterans.  War was a relative constant in life.  And so too were these trumpet sounds.

Israel had known them for long ages, as they utilized the ram’s horn as a signaling device.  Here as a piercing, unmistakable sound, fit to warn, to ensure all the troops knew battle was engaged, or, with a different call, that it was time to disengage.  But there are other aspects to the sounding trumpet as well.

The images we garner from the medieval period are not entirely matters of Hollywood romanticism.  Those scenes of ranked trumpeters sounding their loud notice of the king’s entrance are drawn from history, not imagination.  And that history is far older than the European courts.  It was far older, I suspect, than Rome.  The Jewish temple had their horns of metal as well as their rams’s horns, and to much the same purpose.  This is a tool of announcement, and reserved for particular announcement.  As presented to us here, it being the trumpet of God, we may take it as very clear proclamation to one and all that God is in the house.  The Creator is on the scene.  And this time, He has come to stay.  He has come to take that which is His, and see His eternal kingdom established.

Let me also bring in one final aspect of this sounded trumpet.  There was a particular use of the trumpet in Jewish practice, which applied to certain observances of Yom Kippur.  It would not have been every observance thereof, but in those years which were years of Jubilee, then the trumpet would sound on that day, to announce the dawning of said year.  This, per Levitical law, transpired once every fifty years, and it was a time in which each would be restored to his own property and family.  It was a year of rest from the labor of food production, and by implication, from labor of all manner.  It was a time for things to be returned, slaves to be restored to liberty, everything restored to order (Lev 25:10-17).

I think we shall find that this image applies as well to the return of our Lord to His kingdom.  After all, it has always been His kingdom.  He doesn’t come to establish something new, but to take back what was always His by right.  The usurper has had his day, but that day is come to an end, and those whom he has enslaved will have their liberty.  But unlike the year of Jubilee known of old, this one has no end.  You can see it all in this passage.  Our King has come!  There is no mistaking it, no missing it.  All the world will know that its rightful Ruler is now present and very much in charge.  Those who find this news unwelcome will rapidly discover that He has come as the Victorious, conquering King.  As I have often written in these studies of mine, every knee will bow, whether it be in loving adoration or forced submission.  But for those who are His own?  If they have died, they will be restored to life, and indeed, to a life such as they had not known previously, a life fitted and equipped for eternity in the presence of this perfectly holy King.  If they remain physically alive, they shall be snatched away to be with Him.

The NASB, my usual translation, presents it as our being caught up together with these others who have risen from death.  But it is a somewhat violent term that is used.  It’s a seizing, a forceful taking.  Another way to perceive the intent here is that Christ claims His own eagerly for Himself.  And why not?  Elsewhere, we who are His own are described as His bride, one for which the bride-price was steep indeed.  Never mind that hundred foreskin dowry demanded of David (1Sa 18:25).  Here we are presented with what amounts to the spiritual foreskins of every last one of the elect of God, bought and paid for by the blood of the Lamb Who was slain.  And the period of betrothal has been long and long, at least from our perspective.  Time, it seems to me, has little meaning in heaven, if any.  Yet, Jesus, having taken upon Himself a human nature, knows something of time and of that longing which time produces in us.  He has waited long for His bride, and now, the time has come.  Nothing further needs doing.  The dwelling place is prepared, and every enemy is now beneath His feet.  Of course, He is eager to be united with His bride.  What proper bridegroom would not be?

All of this is set before us in Paul’s brief pronouncement as to Christ’s return.  The excitement of that day is evident.  The victorious outcome of that day is plain to see.  And, which is perhaps the new note in his message, the absolute assurance that whatever may transpire in this life, yet we shall see that day with our own eyes, we who are known by Christ, is made absolutely clear to us. 

Whatever this life may throw at us, here is your guarantee:  We shall always be with the Lord.  Can there be a greater comfort for us?  Oh, it’s so easy to look around and be dismayed at events.  It’s so easy to be weighed down with the circumstances of life, to be frustrated by inability to pursue the things we should like, or by the constant need of labor to maintain our sustenance.  It can be painful to cope with relationship issues, to deal with loved ones gone astray, or simply holding wildly divergent ideas.  Harmony is hard.  But we have this great advantage as we cope with the trials of life:  This life isn’t the be all end all of existence.  Indeed, it’s but the seed stage.  It’s not insignificant, by any means.  It’s not pointless.  It is a gift given us by our loving Lord, a time for growth, for coming to know Him as He truly is, not as some fearsome, implacable ogre, not as some unpredictable entity of overwhelming power, but a loving, caring, sometimes necessarily stern Father.

His love for us cannot be over-emphasized.  It must, of course, be tempered with recognition of all that God is, and in particular, His holiness.  But He loves us.  He does not leave us to stray and perish.  He does not leave us in the chains of sin, but pulls us out of our mire with great force, ensuring our liberty in Him, making certain our victory in His.  He shall come, and we shall live.  And more, we shall see this ongoing process of sanctification completed once for all, entering into an eternal era wherein sin has no entrance, to truly love, serve, and enjoy Him forever, world without end.  Amen.

Father, how much we owe You in light of this great assurance.  How much we have to thank You for, both for present provision, and for the future hope You have established for us.  Dearest Lord Jesus, how we long for Your return, even as You long to be reunited with us, Your own.  Even so, Lord, come quickly!  But as ever, Thy perfect will, not ours.  Holy Spirit, how thankful we are that You abide with us, in us, to guide and remind in each moment, correcting us when we stray, encouraging us as we grow, keeping us ever mindful of all our Savior spoke and did, that we might, through Your power and Your gracious gifts given to us, draw nearer day by day to the holy estate which is, if not our birthright, our dowry, kept for us in heaven until that glorious day when we are once for all reunited, to be with You in heaven’s perfect kingdom forevermore.  Glory be to You!  Glory to the Lamb that was slain!  Glory to our risen King of kings!  Amen, and amen.