Tom writes:

And so we will be with the Lord for ever. That is a phrase worth repeating over and over and over and over. It was a phrase Paul used to encourage a persecuted church. It is a phrase that encourages any saint in any space who stews on it. Will you stew on it? We will be with Jesus. Forever. The kind one, the wise one, the healer will while away week after week with us as his friends. This hope sets such a liberating context to our lives that I want to tattoo it on my soul. Whatever life looks like now, no matter how beautiful or how savage, it will all fade into nothingness when He comes. And no matter what risk comes off or doesn’t come off, no matter what venture triumphs or fails, our future fate is now found with him. That is the pastoral purpose of this powerful passage.

Much has been debated about the rapture language of these closing phrases (the word rapture is a translation of “caught up” we see in verse 17). A really solid way of understanding any New Testament concept is Jesus’ fulfilment of a concept that was already present in the Old Testament. So we should expect this hope that Paul describes as a Jesus-defined fulfilment of what the Old Testament saints expected. And while we do see Elijah - and perhaps Enoch - being whisked off to some wafty location by the angelic hosts, there is no Old Testament expectation for that to happen to everyone else. They wanted God to win his earth back, with a great victory over evil. I therefore suspect that if Paul heard the 20th Century obsession with a Rapture of the church before or after a Great Tribulation he would just scratch his head and say “you what?”. And then he’d preach till sun-up about us being with the Lord forever. Never mind anything else; we will live with the Lord forever. Whether we die or remain alive, whether we are ugly or beautiful, knackered or full of beans, when he returns, we will be swung into his victory parade to dance arm in arm with people from every century and nation and people-group and culture. And he will be over us all and close to us all and fulfilling us all and smiling at us all. Let’s encourage each other with this thought. Let’s encourage each other with these words; we will be with the Lord forever.

Question for reflection

How is the beauty of God’s future encouraging you right now?

1 Thessalonians 4 - Monday 29th July