A reader who wishes to remain anonymous responded to my recent blog post, Parousia Now. Carl—my fictitious name for the reader—said: The Messiah is not on earth yet. When he is here there will be no evil. Evil is rampant now. I don’t see how you can say we are…
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Commentators often make interesting interpretive adjustments when they encounter certain words and concepts in prophetic contexts; they do not allow them to keep the meaning they have elsewhere. Our present passage in 1 Thessalonians furnishes two examples important for our understanding of God’s prophetic word: (1) Paul’s desire to be…
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Christians! Let us adopt Paul’s view of the local church. Consider his words in the next section of our study of 1 Thessalonians: But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire…
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Paul uses a striking image to describe the tribulation the church of the Thessalonians was experiencing. He says the Jews were “fill(ing) up their sins” so that God’s wrath could come on them. This imagery validates inmillennialism’s view of a two-phased tribulation: the preliminary tribulations and the final “great tribulation”/“wrath” that…
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Paul had a perspective of the kingdom that differs from ours; in his day, God was calling the churches into the messianic-age kingdom. Now, the churches of Christ comprise that kingdom. The prophets had foretold both the coming of the kingdom and the saints taking possession of it (e.g., Dan…
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According to the inmillennial prophetic model, the churches in Paul’s generation were in a unique situation: they were taking part in a New Exodus, a journey to the long-promised messianic (kingdom) age. This pilgrimage was the antitype of Israel’s original Exodus under Moses (cp. 1 Cor 10:1–11). Israel left Egypt…
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One of my goals in this series of posts on Thessalonians is to show that Paul wrote from the prophetic perspective I call inmillennialism. This prophetic model arises from Jesus’ Olivet Discourse and Paul’s discussion of the kingdom of God in 1 Corinthians 15. I have documented inmillennialism in previous blog…
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In this series of posts, I am using the inmillennial prophetic model to interpret Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. My last three posts mentioned a point N. T. Wright has made: Paul’s recognition of Jesus as the Messiah forced him to adjust three key elements of his Jewish theology—election, monotheism, and eschatology. A…
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Last week’s post (here) introduced the idea that Paul had to rework his Jewish theology in three primary areas: election, monotheism, and eschatology. This re-evaluation shows up in the opening verses of 1 Thessalonians: his monotheism now has “the Lord Jesus Christ” on an equal footing with “God the Father”…
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Announcement 1 — Oops! McGahan Publishing House made my book, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days, available for purchase on August 18. Some of the first copies may have had print defects. If your copy does, and you ordered through Amazon, Books-A-Million, or Barnes&Noble, please contact Caleb Poston at info@MPHBooks.com for…