Episode 18: 1 Thessalonians 4 Under the Microscope

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope: Episode 18

Gary interviews Kim Burgess about 1 Thessalonians 4 and the cryptic language that Paul uses.

The people who first read the content of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 had a biblical background as to what Paul was saying. These compressed verses assume some of that background information to be able to understand it. In Acts, Luke recorded that Paul preached for three Sabbath days to the Jews in the local synagogue in Thessalonica where “he reasoned with them from the Scriptures” (Acts 17:2). This meant that they were familiar with the language and literature of Scripture, what we designate as the Old Testament (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

Much of the background necessary to understand the context was covered by Mike Sullivan in a four-part podcast series that he and I (Gary) did. Following Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart’s admonition, “the only proper control of hermeneutics is to be found in the original intent of the biblical text…. [W]e insist that the original meaning of the text—as much as it is in our power to discern it—is the objective point of concern…. A text cannot mean what it could never have meant for its original readers/hearers … [T]he true meaning of the biblical text for us is what God originally intended it to mean when it was first spoken or written. Or to put it in a positive way, the true meaning of the biblical text for us is what God originally intended it to mean when it was first spoken or written.”[1]

With that background in mind, Kim Burgess and I want to cover 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 as the first readers would have received and understood it. Let’s put ourselves in their contextual shoes. Kim, how would you go about interpreting what Paul wrote?

PDF Download: 1 Thessalonians 4 Under the Microscope

An expanded transcript of the podcast episode on 1 Thessalonians 4 that Gary did with Kim Burgess. With Scripture verses and explanatory material added, this reads more like an extra chapter to The Hope of Israel and the Nations than a supplementary outline (which is why we decided to charge a nominal fee for it… a lot of work went into it).

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Gary interviews Kim Burgess about 1 Thessalonians 4 and the cryptic language that Paul uses. This is often used as a passage to prove the Rapture of the Church, but Kim has a very different view of this passage, informed by the rest of Scripture. The “analogy of faith” teaches that we allow the clear passages of the Bible to interpret the unclear, and this passage is a great example of how the analogy of faith should be practiced.

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[1] Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 4th ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), 33-34.

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