Paul and the Rapture — Part 2

Current prophetic models imply Paul made mistakes about the “the day of the Lord.” They say that, on that day, deceased Christian will rise to leave their graves empty. Living Christians will receive glorified bodies and fly to join them. Paul thought he and/or his contemporaries would live to see these events (1 Thess 4:15, 17). He was wrong.

These models also say the apostle was naive. He thought a letter could persuade the Thessalonians such things had already happened. Did he think they would believe such an obvious error?

And, according to these prophetic models, Paul was inconsistent. By the time he wrote to the Corinthians, he had changed his teaching. He told that church the resurrection would not occur until the end of the messianic age. Christ would reign until he defeated all his enemies. Then, he would overcome his last enemy—death—in the resurrection (1 Cor 15:23–25). This differs from the perspective he taught the Thessalonians.

We discussed these assaults on apostolic inspiration in our last post (here). Now, we will explore inmillennialism’s interpretation of the “rapture passage” (1 Thess 4:13–5:11). This prophetic model does not implicate Paul in error.

The saints at Thessalonica worried about their fellow-Christians who had died. Paul does not state the precise nature of their unease. It had something to do with the resurrection. We will discuss this in our next post.

Here, we wish to make one important observation. Paul’s response to this resurrection problem depends on the Olivet Discourse (Matt 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21:5–38). So, we must interpret the “rapture passage” considering the events Jesus said would happen in his generation (Matt 24:34).

Paul Appeals to the “Word of the Lord”

Paul uses a previous revelation as the basis for his response. He says, “This we say unto you by the word of the Lord” (1 Thess 4:15).¹

The apostle often uses this reasoning. In almost all cases, the “word of the Lord” to which he appeals appears in the gospel records. We can read these authoritative “words” in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

An interesting example comes from 1 Cor 7. There, Paul taught the Corinthians about various marital situations. He noted circumstances not addressed by the Lord during his ministry. In these cases, Paul gave his own inspired commands. He prefaced such instructions with “I say therefore” or something similar (1 Cor 7:8, 12, 25, 40).

Paul was careful to show situations Jesus had addressed. For example, he says, “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord” (1 Cor 7:10; emphasis added). He wants his readers to distinguish between his teaching and that given by the Lord Jesus. The “word of the Lord” to which he appeals appears in the gospels as Matt 19:1-12.

We have two other examples. One involves ministerial support. Paul says, “In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor 9:14, ESV; emphasis added). The other encompasses the Lord’s Supper. The apostle says, “For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you” (1 Cor. 11:23; emphasis added). In both cases, “definite references in the Gospels are identifiable”²—in Matt 10:10 and Matt 26:26-28 (with parallels), respectively.

Paul mentions one saying of Jesus not recorded the gospels. He told the Ephesian elders “to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). “The words themselves do not appear in any of the Gospels. But they can be approximately paralleled by Luke 6:38, and the spirit they express certainly permeates the portrayals of Jesus in all four Gospels.”³

This pattern suggests “the word of the Lord” does not require an exact quotation. It also suggests the gospels contain Jesus’s teaching from which Paul reasons in 1 Thess 4:13–5:11. That teaching is easy to find.

The “Word of the Lord” is the Olivet Discourse

The apostles based their prophetic teaching on the Olivet Discourse. Henry Alford agreed with Isaac Williams. He called the Olivet Discourse “the anchor of apocalyptic interpretation.” It is “the touchstone of apocalyptic systems.”⁴ 

Many writers say the Olivet Discourse is the basis of Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. For example, D. A. Carson says, “The discourse itself is undoubtedly a source for the Thessalonian Epistles and Revelation. If so, then we may say that Jesus himself sets the pattern for the church’s eschatology.”⁵ Donald A. Hagner agrees: “in 2 Thess 2:4 Paul depends on the prophecy of Jesus.”⁶

Paul’s dependence on the Olivet Discourse in the “rapture passage” is clear. Milton Terry says the apostle speaks here “as if referring to the words of the Lord himself in Matt. 24.”⁷ G. K. Beale says this passage forms “one continuous depiction of the same narrative in Matthew 24.”⁸

The following chart⁹ shows the basis for such assertions. It contains more than a dozen similarities between 1 Thess 4:13–5:11 and the Olivet Discourse:

A detailed study of these elements makes this list even more impressive. Consider, for example, item 11 where Paul uses the same imagery Jesus used in the Olivet Discourse. “In 1 Thess 5:2–3 Paul used the same Greek word (ōdin, ‘birth pangs’) to describe the future day of the Lord. It is doubtful that the word would be used two different ways in similar eschatological contexts.”¹⁰ Other comparisons of the two passages yield similar results. 

This similarity shows Paul based this passage on the Olivet Discourse. We can imagine him reviewing notes about this “word of the Lord” as he wrote First Thessalonians.

Some Implications of this “Word of the Lord”

Some writers reject this conclusion. They say the Olivet Discourse is not “the word of the Lord” to which Paul refers. Leon Morris, for example, says Paul’s utterance “is a saying of Jesus unrecorded in the Gospels.”¹¹ 

This is true in one sense. Jesus nowhere used the exact words of 1 Thess 4:15. But one suspects these writers reject our thesis because it does not fit the existing prophetic models. 

The above evidence is convincing: the Olivet Discourse is the “word of the Lord” to which Paul appeals. We should allow it to explain the enigmatic statements in 1 Thess 4:13–5:11. It provides the reason Paul expected to see “the day of the Lord.”

If it be held that the apostles were mistaken in expecting the parousia in their own day, it may be maintained with equal and indeed greater show of reason that our Lord himself was responsible for their error. No words of theirs are more specific or emphatic than the assuring declarations of Jesus that some of those who heard him speak should not taste of death till they beheld the Son of man coming in his kingdom (Matt 16:28), and that generation should not pass away till all these things were fulfilled (Matt 24:34). We reject, therefore, the idea that the apostles were in error on a subject on which their Lord had been so explicit in his teachings.¹²

Paul taught that he and/or his contemporaries would live until “the day of the Lord.” The apostles “rank themselves with those who [would] live to see the Parousia. . . .”¹³ Paul “believed that he and many of his contemporaries would still be alive at the time of the Lord’s coming, as the phrase ‘we who are living, who remain until the coming of the Lord’ demonstrates.”¹⁴

“Parousia is a word that has no plural.”¹⁵ There is only one parousia of Christ. In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus linked it to the Temple’s fall in his generation (Matt 24:3, 27, 34, 37, 39). Paul believed his Lord. In his “rapture passage,” he stated his expectation of living to see it. Later, he connected the parousia to the resurrection at the end of the messianic age (1 Cor 15:23).

Conclusion

We need a prophetic model that accounts for these facts. Inmillennialism is such a model. It will shed light on the comfort Paul offered the Thessalonians.

We must not set the “rapture passage” in opposition to the Olivet Discourse. How can we say “the day of the Lord” is in our future when Jesus and Paul said it would occur before their generation ended?

If the Lord wills, our next post will show Paul’s reasoning. He used the Olivet Discourse to comfort the Thessalonians about their dead.

1. The image in this post is The Apostle Paul by Jan Lievens (1607–1674). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
2. Charles A. Wanamaker, The Epistles to the Thessalonians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary, eds. I. Howard Marshall and W. Ward Gasque (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 170.
3. Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 514.
4. Henry Alford, The Epistle to the Hebrews, the Catholic Epistles, and the Revelation, vol. 2, part 2 of The New Testament for English Readers (London: Rivingtons, 1866), 352.
5. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 489. For continuity, Carson’s citations of other literature have been omitted.
6. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 14–28, Word Biblical Commentary 33b, ed. Bruce M. Metzger (Dallas: Word, 1995), 700.
7. Milton S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics: A Treatise on the Interpretation of the Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, n.d.), 457.
8. G. K. Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 136.
9. Based on material by Donald Hochner, Does the Bible Teach the Rapture?, viewed June 15, 2009, from http://www.angelfire.com/ca/DeafPreterist/rapture.html. See an almost-identical chart in Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 137.
10. John F. Hart, “Should Pretribulationists Reconsider the Rapture in Matthew 24:36–44? Part 1 of 3,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society 20 (Autumn 2007), 56.
11. Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. F. F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 141.
12. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics, 457–58.
13. F. F. Bruce, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Word Biblical Commentary 45, eds. David A. Hubbard and Glenn W. Barker (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1982), 99.
14. Wanamaker, Thessalonians, 171. This quotation omits the Greek phrase.
15. John A. T. Robinson, Jesus and His Coming (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979), 185.