Incidental evidence can provide satisfying confirmation of an assertion. Such is the case as I conclude my remarks on Paul’s “rapture passage” (1 Thess 4:13–5:11).
In my last post, I summarized the inmillennial1 view—Paul used figurative language to describe the Mosaic-age-to-messianic-age transition. The dead in Christ would “rise first,” then the living saints would “be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess 4:16–17). They would enter the heavenly kingdom together. The temple’s fall in AD 70 would complete this age change.
After providing this summary, I intended to discuss Paul’s ensuing prophetic statement (1 Thess 5:23). But then I read one of my previous notes and realized that it confirms my conclusion about the “rapture passage.” I want to share the insights in that note before moving on.
The Thessalonians feared that saints who died before the temple’s fall would be disadvantaged in the new age. They wondered, Will our deceased brothers and sisters take part in the parousia (presence) of Christ with his churches?
Paul summarized his answer in the last sentence of this section: “God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him” (1 Thess 5:9–10). The dead saints in Thessalonica would live and participate in the messianic age.
Paul’s statement agrees with John’s description of the soon-coming new age: “I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years” (Rev 20:4).
Both apostles said dead saints would live with Christ in the messianic age. Those Thessalonians who died before the temple’s fall would reign with him in his parousia.
Before this conclusion, Paul said, “Concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you” (1 Thess 5:1).
The Thessalonians did not need further instruction because the Apostle was reasoning with them from Jesus’ Olivet Discourse (Matt 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21:5–38). (I listed a dozen links between the Olivet Discourse and the “rapture passage” in a previous post.) There, the Lord gave the time for the temple’s fall: the day and hour were unknown, but it would occur in that generation (Matt 24:34, 36). So, the Thessalonians knew about “the times and the seasons” and did not need Paul to explain further.
These words—“the times and the seasons”—confirm my thesis about the “rapture passage.” The Scriptures use them to refer to a change of government, and this is what Jesus had said would happen when the temple fell: “The kingdom of God [would] be taken from [apostate Israel], and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt 21:43). This event would serve as the line of demarcation between the Mosaic and messianic ages.
Nehemiah Nisbett provides helpful information about Paul’s words:
The only way to ascertain the Apostle’s meaning, and of course to determine the sense of the ensuing context, is to examine in what sense the phrase, “times and seasons,” is used by the sacred writers; for upon that the whole evidently depends. The instances where this expression occurs, are indeed but few, yet enough, I believe, to determine the Apostle’s idea of it.
In the 2d chapter of Daniel, that prophet, having been favored with the revelation of the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had forgot, expresses his adoration of the divine perfections, displayed in the government of the world, in these remarkable words, verses 20, 21. “Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: and he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings.” Here the prophet evidently uses the very expression of the Apostle for a change of government, or an alteration of the political state of a nation, as he afterwards more fully illustrates it, in the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, verses 39, 40. “After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron.” In the 7th chapter of the same prophet, the expression is a little varied, but the sense is manifestly the same. Speaking of a king that should arise in future times, he says of him, verse 25, that “he shall think to change times and laws.”
There is one passage more, where this phrase is used, and that is in the New Testament, by our Saviour himself; and he evidently adopts the sense, as well as the expression of the prophet; for when his disciples asked him, when he would restore the kingdom to Israel, without giving them a direct answer to their question, he replied: “it is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power” (Acts 1:7). As if he had said—“You have no business to pry too curiously into the dispensations of Heaven, in producing those great revolutions which his wisdom may see fit to bring about; but to rest satisfied that they will take place in their proper time.”
When, therefore, the Apostle uses the like phrase, probably, as in the case of our Lord, in answer to some query put to him, it is not likely that he should vary the established meaning of it, by referring it to the general resurrection, but applied it to that period, when the Jewish constitution was to be abolished, and Jerusalem laid in ruins; especially if it is considered that this period was then very near at hand.
If this is admitted to be the true sense of the 1st verse of this chapter [1 Thess 5:1], there will be no difficulty in applying what follows to the same event. All is clear and pertinent, and is so very much like the language of our Lord in his prophecies upon this subject [in the Olivet Discourse], that it cannot well be mistaken.2
The Apostle’s rapture language—being caught up into the clouds—refers to a change of “the times and the seasons.” The Mosaic age would soon give way to the messianic age and its parousia of Christ. All saints—both living and dead—would participate in it.
Adam Clark confirms that Nisbett’s interpretation of Acts 1:6–7 is legitimate. The disciples asked the Lord, “Will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Clark says,
The disciples may be supposed to ask, having recollected our Lord’s prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the whole Jewish commonwealth [in the Olivet Discourse], Lord, Wilt thou at this time destroy the Jewish commonwealth, which opposes thy truth, that thy kingdom may be set up over all the land? This interpretation agrees well with all the parts of our Lord’s answer, and with all circumstances of the disciples, of time, and of place.3
Conclusion
Commentators who hold one of the other prophetic models say the “rapture passage” is about the end of history or the end of the present (church) age. Paul, they say, was speaking about the bodily resurrection. If so, how does this relate to the Thessalonians’ question? How could a discussion about a resurrection event thousands of years in their future comfort them regarding the status of their dead saints? And, how could some of them live to see it (1 Thess 4:15)?
Paul was not speaking about the bodily resurrection in his “rapture passage.” First Thessalonians 5:1 confirms that this is so. He was speaking of the soon-coming (to them) destruction of the Jewish commonwealth and the Mosaic-age-to-messianic-age transition. The Thessalonians knew about this change of “the times and the seasons.” When it happened, Paul said, the living saints would “certainly have no advantage over those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thess 4:15 HCSB).
Inmillennialism accepts this understanding of Paul’s “rapture passage.” Some of the Thessalonians would live to see the age change of which he spoke. Once God changed “the times and the seasons,” the saints would live in the kingdom destined to “break in pieces and consume all [other] kingdoms” (Dan 2:44). They would then see our Lord Jesus Christ defeat his last enemy, death, in the bodily resurrection at the end of the new age (1 Cor 15:25–26).
Footnotes
- I document this perspective in Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020). This book is available here in hardcopy and here as a PDF. A free summary PDF document of inmillennialism is here.
- N. Nisbett, An Attempt to Illustrate Various Important Passages in the Epistles (Canterbury: Simmons and Kirkby, 1787), 65–69 (emphasis added).
- Adam Clarke, The Old and New Testaments With a Commentary and Critical Notes, 6 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, [1970?]), 5:684.
