This little letter of 1 Thessalonians that we have been reading is probably one of the lesser-known parts of the New Testament. But you might have heard that it has something in it about the ‘end times’ which, in combination with parts of Revelation, tell us what will happen when Jesus returns.
We’ve now come to that part of 1 Thessalonians – 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18. As with Revelation, it helps to remember the context of the original writing and to understand that it uses pictures and metaphor in its descriptions.
Here, the context is that Paul is writing to a very young church not very long after Jesus had lived and ultimately returned to heaven at the Ascension. The Christians had been taught that Jesus would return and his followers would live in eternity with him. But now some of those followers had died and so there were questions about what would happen to them when Jesus returned.
Paul had to respond pastorally to these questions, and that is what he does in this section. But the only way he has to speak of such things is to draw on picture language, especially that in books such as Daniel in the Old Testament.
Paul writes first about Jesus, reminding his readers of a fundamental truth that is at the heart of everything: Jesus died and rose again (v.14). Not only this, but Jesus, to great acclamation, will ‘descend from heaven’. This language of descent reflects the language of the ‘Ascension’ but it does not mean that heaven is ‘up in the sky somewhere’. Heaven is another dimension from the 3-D space that we know, and we don’t have language to describe accurately Jesus moving from heaven to earth. Here Paul describes this as descending, elsewhere he uses the language of appearing. However it is described, Jesus, who died and rose again, will bodily arrive on earth.
Turning to those who have died, Paul emphasises that, because Jesus rose from the dead, these people also will rise to live in eternity with Jesus. The people in Thessalonica need not worry about those who have died because God will raise them too.
This puts those people on an equal footing with those who are still alive when Jesus returns, which Paul seems to assume will include himself! They also will meet Jesus on his return and will be with the Lord forever. Again, the language of being ‘caught up in the clouds’ is picture language; there is no implication of actual upwards or downwards movement.
So this is pastoral encouragement from Paul, who expects his readers also to encourage one another (v.18). Paul encourages us that we can be sure that those who have died ‘in Christ’ will be raised to new life ‘in Christ’ and so there is no difference for those who are dead or alive at the time that Jesus returns.
As I said, some writers have taken this short passage and others, and combined them with some of the imagery in Revelation to create detailed and fanciful predictions for the future and the ‘end times’ of the earth. I think this is misreading these Bible passages.
This passage in Thessalonians is a pastoral passage in which Paul uses imagery of a kind which would have been familiar to his readers to make a pastoral point. We can also be encouraged that it doesn’t matter whether anyone dies before Jesus returns – all those who are in Christ will live in eternity with him.
Revelation, on the other hand, is the result of a great vision given to John, which again uses metaphorical imagery, but this time to tell a story of the cosmic battle between God and Babylon, good and evil. Revelation tells us about the battle that is going on now and how we can join in with resisting and defeating the ‘Babylon’ in our world now.
I’m reading an interesting book about Revelation at the moment, which unpacks this understanding. If Revelation has always baffled, bored, or alarmed you, why not read it with me? The book is Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophetic Call to Follow Jesus as a Dissident Disciple by Scot McKnight, and you can get it from Eden or other book suppliers.