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Thursday August 23
[size=x-large]Comfort One Another[/size]
Read 1 Thessalonians 4:13, 17, 18. What is the ultimate purpose of this passage about the second coming of Jesus?
As we said earlier, the purpose of prophecy is not to satisfy our curiosity about the future but to teach us how to live today. For Paul, the order of final events has practical implications for everyday Christian living. Prophecy is valuable to the degree that it impacts the way we relate to God and to each other. In this case, Paul wanted to use last-day events to bring comfort to those who had lost loved ones.
Read 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17. What important aspects of the Bibles teaching about the Second Coming are not covered in these texts? See John 14:1-3, Matt. 24:31, Acts 1:9-11.
This text says that believers join Jesus in the air to be with him forever. The key theme is the act of reuniting with each other and being together with Jesus. The text is silent regarding where they go after the initial encounter in the air, even though Paul clearly does not say that, at the Second Coming, Jesus and the believers will descend from heaven to earth and reign there. In fact, within the passage itself, the movement of the saints is only upward. The dead believers first rise up from their graves. Then they and the living believers ascend together to meet their Lord in the air.
Paul provides further information in 1 Corinthians 15:23, 24. There he draws a strong parallel between the experience of Jesus and of those
[size=x-large]Comfort One Another[/size]
Read 1 Thessalonians 4:13, 17, 18. What is the ultimate purpose of this passage about the second coming of Jesus?
As we said earlier, the purpose of prophecy is not to satisfy our curiosity about the future but to teach us how to live today. For Paul, the order of final events has practical implications for everyday Christian living. Prophecy is valuable to the degree that it impacts the way we relate to God and to each other. In this case, Paul wanted to use last-day events to bring comfort to those who had lost loved ones.
Read 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17. What important aspects of the Bibles teaching about the Second Coming are not covered in these texts? See John 14:1-3, Matt. 24:31, Acts 1:9-11.
This text says that believers join Jesus in the air to be with him forever. The key theme is the act of reuniting with each other and being together with Jesus. The text is silent regarding where they go after the initial encounter in the air, even though Paul clearly does not say that, at the Second Coming, Jesus and the believers will descend from heaven to earth and reign there. In fact, within the passage itself, the movement of the saints is only upward. The dead believers first rise up from their graves. Then they and the living believers ascend together to meet their Lord in the air.
Paul provides further information in 1 Corinthians 15:23, 24. There he draws a strong parallel between the experience of Jesus and of those