I have been following the recent discussions about the "
rapture" of the church. I put it in quotes because it can be a controversial doctrine in Christian circles. A friend pursued this subject with me, and I obligingly (and willingly) joined him.
We believers must wrestle with the
Scriptures and allow God to win. It usually happens when a brother or sister, who has a better handle on that Scripture than we do, comes and shows us where we are wrong in our thinking. This is God's grace, and nothing less.
To recap,
I Thessalonians 4:13-18 says:
"The Coming of the Lord
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, gthat you may not grieve as others do hwho have no hope. 14 For
isince
we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him
jthose who have fallen asleep.
15 For this
we declare to you
kby a word from the Lord,
4 that
lwe who are alive, who are left until mthe coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
16 For
nthe Lord himself will descend
ofrom heaven
pwith a cry of command, with the voice of
qan archangel, and
rwith the sound of the trumpet of God. And
sthe dead in Christ will rise first.
17 Then
we who are alive, who are left, will be
tcaught up together with them
uin the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so
vwe will always be with the Lord.
18 Therefore encourage one another with these words."(
Biblia.com)
This passage describes an event future to its readers: the
Rapture of the Church in the first century A.D. Paul is explaining to the church at Thessalonica that their grief over lost loved ones who believed in Christ is not hopeless. They would indeed see them again - at the Rapture!
So Who Are "We?"
The argument is over whether the "we" in verses 15 and 17 (
orange with yellow)
includes the readers in Thessalonica, or is it only the writers of the epistle--or is it something else. The "exclusive-we" is a Greek form of the word that defines a group as being
separate from its audience, i.e. we - but not you.
This is indeed a valid argument. But "context is king," as
Ed Stevens* says. To say that it
excludes the readers of Paul's epistle to the Thessalonian church is hard to swallow. I would say that it
distinguishes between the living saints and those who are dead:
"...we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will not precede [go before] those who have fallen asleep."(v.15)
Therefore, the
exclusive-we, in context, distinguishes the
living body of believers from those who are dead!
Whew!
* Ed Stevens was interviewed by
Michael Loomis on
AD70.net for the program, "Then and Now." This
podcast helped me to solidify the explanation and understanding of the fulfilled view of the Rapture.
His notes are
here:
