August 30, 2022: Day 186 – I Thessalonians 1-5 and Philemon

We finally find ourselves back to the New Testament.  Paul is writing to the church in Thesallonica.  He loves this church with all of his heart and mind.  He wanted to go and visit it but was not able to so he sent Timothy instead.  In this letter to the church we find the verses that people have used over time to speak about what we would call in modern day the “rapture”.  Look at I Thessalonians 4:13-5:5 where we read that with the sound of God’s trumpet the dead in Christ will rise first and then those who are alive will be caught up in the clouds with him.  

I do believe that the rapture is more of a theological contrivance that for some reason has become in the mind of many people the Gospel truth.  If you continue in chapter 5 we read that not only do we not know when this is going to happen, like a thief in the night, we don’t even know how it is going to happen.  We do know that Jesus is coming back, but he did not give us a blueprint on what it is going to look like when he comes back.  He just tells us to be ready.  I know, this may not be a super popular approach, but I don’t see anything else in Scripture that comes even close to describing what some would call a rapture and these verses are very suspect in regards to a rapture.

Philemon is Paul writing to the owner of a slave to consider his slave as his own flesh and blood.  There is a lot of problems in Paul not condemning slavery, I wish he would have.  But Jesus’ words and the basic moral fabric of humanity  speaks not only against slavery but against any form of thinking that would elevate one race over another.  That is clear from Scripture.