8 For from you sounded out the word of the Lord
not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward
is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing.9 For they themselves shew of us what manner of
entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the
living and true God; 10 And to wait for
his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered
us from the wrath to come.
The example set and the message preached by the Thessalonian
church brought new believers in Macedonia and throughout Greece.
Religion in the Roman Empire cannot be separated from the
politics of the Roman Empire. The Greeks personified their gods and the Romans
made theirs almost vague abstractions. However, to the Roman and the Greek
there was a sort of a deal with the gods. If you practiced your rituals letter
perfect and honored the gods by the form of your worship then you expected
benefits from them, almost like a business deal. Religious offices were political
in nature.
Religion had its most important expression in patriotism and
patriotism had its sanction and support in religion. In Roman religion there
was little discussion of a life after death. The focus of Roman religion was on
this earth. Greek and Middle Eastern gods were accepted but their worship was
considered inferior to the Roman way. Piety toward the gods was as important as
obedience to the civil magistrates.
You can imagine how hard it was for the Thessalonians to
turn from those forms of religious devotion that essentially made them Romans
or Greeks to the God of the Bible. It may have been a simple thing in their
head once the Holy Spirit had spoken to their spiritual hearts but it was a
life-changing and sometimes catastrophic change in their daily lives and
interactions with friends, family, and, most importantly, the authorities.
The Greek world, in which Thessalonica lay, had a deep
reverence for antiquity and, “the wisdom of the ancients,” which often took the
place of religion as in their deep reverence for the poems of Homer, the Iliad
and the Odyssey, about the Trojan War. Alexander the Great is even purported to
have slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow. Do not think it would
have been an easy thing to turn from this worldview to the God of the Bible.
Here is the first hint of the rapture of the church, what
the Bible calls, “translation.” The word, “rapture,” is not in the Bible. But
words like, “translation,” and phrases like, “caught up,” will reveal by their
context what is to happen and what the early church believed by virtue of many
quotes from the early church fathers such as Shephard, Victorinus, and Cyprian.
The Thessalonians were nourished by the faith that Christ
would return and remove them from, “this present evil world.” He would save
them from God’s wrath, which is to come upon this world.
Verse 10 says that they are to wait for Jesus from heaven
who has delivered them from the wrath to come. We see God’s wrath explained in
detail in the Book of the Revelation of John.
Revelation 11:18 And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of
the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto
thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name,
small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.
The first chapter of 1Thessalonians ends with three basic
doctrines of Bible-believing Christianity. One, that Jesus is physically
returning for us and, two, the resurrection of Christ, and, three, that the
church will not see God’s wrath visited upon the world, at least from this
angle. Hallelujah!!!
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