Thessalonians confirms that believers remain forever with the Lord. But the location and circumstances of that blessed condition are assumed rather than articulated. Recalling the “tenses” of salvation, we see that salvation is completed only when God’s final favorable judgment is rendered. Douglas Moo’s summary of Pauline theology observes that “salvation covers the entirety of Christian experience.” He reminds us that salvation language is used of God’s past, present, and future work in our salvific journey, and he calculates that the Pauline writings most frequently address God’s rescue in the final steps of our course.
Biblical Eschatology
What happens at Jesus’s return? The writers to the Thessalonians give only some of the puzzle pieces. Thessalonians does not present a complete picture. Neither do other parts of Scripture. What do these letters contribute to a fuller biblical eschatology?
An Unmissable Return
One of the theological shortcomings of popular dispensationalist eschatology is an extra coming of Jesus. His first advent at Christmas is followed by two second comings! Coming 2a is alleged to be a secret arrival to rapture believers, while 2b involves the more public parousia, the day of the Lord, final judgment, and so on.
Jesus’s return will not pass unnoticed. The first letter gives three descriptions of loud audio accompaniment: “a cry of command,” “the voice of an archangel,” and “the sound of the trumpet of God” (1 Thess. 4:16; cf. Matt. 24:31; 1 Cor. 15:52). And the second letter assures the Thessalonians that the day of the Lord won’t pass unawares (e.g., 2 Thess. 2:1–4). Gordon Fee notes how “ ‘the manifestation of his coming’ [in 2 Thess. 2:8] . . . is intended to emphasize not just the fact of his coming, but especially its unmistakable and evidential character. . . . Christ’s Parousia will be openly manifest to all.”1 Thessalonians says nothing of a secret second coming.
A Rapture Unlikely
Despite its popularity in the last century, there is no evidence of a rapture either, certainly not in the sense of believers being whisked into heaven before a period of intense tribulation suffered by those left behind. This is significant because 1 Thessalonians 4:17 is the only verse in the New Testament to hint at the idea and because it’s the verse that dispensationalists identify as central to the doctrine. English Bibles talk here about being “caught up” (for which the old Latin translation used the verb rapio). The passage tells us nothing about which direction believers travel after meeting Jesus in the air—and that its sense more likely is that the august gathering returns to earth rather than to heaven.
The pastoral thrust of the passage is that believers who die before Jesus returns will not miss out. They will have a distinguished position in his vanguard. The apostles are equally clear that all believers will thus be with the Lord forever (1 Thess. 4:17; 5:10; 2 Thess. 2:1). These ideas are far more prominent—in 1 Thessalonians 4, in the two Thessalonian letters, and throughout the Bible—than any alleged exempting of living believers from universal difficulties.2
Judgment and the End of Evil
Rather than being exempted from tribulation, the Thessalonian letters remind believers that they do face difficulties—and regularly—especially for joining the Christian journey. Along with the church planters, the Thessalonians have been oppressed since their conversion (1 Thess. 1:6; 1 Thess. 2:2, 13–16).