Episode Synopsis:

The greatest event in all of human history was the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The most hoped for event in humanity’s future is Jesus Christ’s return when he will raise the dead, judge the world, and bring about the new creation.  Since the moment Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and the attending angels told his disciples that he would return in the same manner in which he departed, his people have longed for Jesus to return.  Our greatest hope is to be that generation still living when the Lord returns so that we need never taste death.  Along with the first Christians we cry out, “Maranatha!  The Lord come!” 

Like many of us, the Thessalonians had questions about details of the Lord’s return–what it means and when it will happen.  When they first heard Paul’s teaching and preaching they gladly accepted this wonderful truth that Jesus’s resurrection and ascension guaranteed our Lord’s bodily return at the end of the age.  But some of them wondered, “what happens to those who die before our Lord comes back?”  Do they miss out on the benefits of the resurrection?  Others were asking “how soon will the Lord return?”  They took Paul to be saying the Lord would return very soon.    Do the signs of Jesus’ return of which Paul had spoken, give Christians the tantalizing clues from which we can figure out when the Lord will return?

Paul addresses these questions in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11.  We’ll talk about all of this in the next three episodes of the Blessed Hope Podcast as we consider Paul’s answers to the questions about Christ’s second advent put to him by the Thessalonians.

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