What the Bible Says - Part 5

Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians contain key passages about the end times. He wrote the second letter because many had accepted the idea that the Day of the Lord had come and that they had somehow missed the rapture. Why did they think this?
 
They correctly understood that the purpose of Christ’s second coming was to gather His Body, the Church, to Him. They correctly understood from Scripture that the second coming occurs at the same time as the coming of the Day of the Lord. That Day dawns with the rapture.
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So what happened to throw them off from their assurance in Christ?

• Some say it was because they saw the lawlessness around them.
• Some say it was because they experienced persecution and tribulation.
• Some say it was because they had spiritualized the literal interpretation of that Day.

 
Sound familiar? If so, we can take heart from Paul’s answer.

• While we see that the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, that Day begins with the invasion of Israel by the Antichrist’s coalition of armies. In his first letter Paul tells us: “For when they say, ‘Peace and safety!’ then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.”
• The tribulation that the Body of Christ was experiencing is one of the signs Jesus told His disciples about in the Olivet Discourse. The tribulation of those Days was the beginning of sorrows that would continue throughout the two great Days of the Church Age—what Jesus called Today and Tomorrow.  The Church has always operated in the Tribulation.
• The Day of the Lord is a literal thousand-year Day that we commonly call Jesus’ millennial reign over the earth. After the Body of Christ is gathered to Him in Heaven, the wrath of that Day is unleashed. This vengeance of God against evil only lasts for the first 31/2 years of that Day, when the counterfeit, lawless one-world government is crushed under His feet.

 
When we know the chronos times and the kairos signs, we understand what is happening around us and we know what our focus must be. We can take Paul’s words in 2 Thess. 2:16-17 to heart:
"Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work."

​Our good word and work is sharing the good news of Christ’s finished work as lights in the darkness.

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