• Continuing on today in the first chapter of this wonderful first epistle to Timothy, we see something of great importance.  Paul makes a statement in verses 15 and 16 that has significant dispensational importance.  He calls himself the chief of sinners and then the first in the line of recipients of God’s grace through Christ’s “longsuffering”.  In each case, whether regarding himself as ”chief” or “first” in a series, it is exactly the same Greek word used even though the translation in the KJV is different.  But the meaning is clear and it is exceedingly critical for us to understand it.  Paul, apostle of the Gentiles, and minister of “the dispensation of God, the one which is in faith” as verse 4 reveals, is first in the long line of those that would believe his precious good news summarized in verse 15 with these words: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”  May we take this teaching to heart and follow faithfully in his footsteps as he exhorts Timothy.  For indeed, as he writes in verse 17, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, [be] honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

• We introduce our studies today in Paul’s first letter to Timothy by looking at his introduction to the letter, his statement of apostleship and his very personal reference to the recipient of the letter, his very dear and precious Timothy.  The special place brother Timothy had for Paul is well summarized by this expression, my “own son in the faith”.  Paul had it seemed been the one who led Timothy to saving faith and not his mother or grandmother who are said elsewhere to be believers as well.  But the letter is written to encourage Timothy to wage warfare against the false teachers who had been so successful at Ephesus.  They were legalists of a sort and so that is his main emphasis in this chapter.  The pure and effective teaching would be concerning grace as indeed this is a special dispensation directed to that abundance of grace and the faith that engenders it as verse 4 indicates.  The best manuscripts of that verse read “the dispensation of God, the one which is of faith”!  I wish the translators of the KJV had had those manuscripts available to them, but it seems they did not.

• Paul’s teaching in his church epistles often present a series of great contrasts.  Each chapter of these two letters has the singular focus of just that, the pre-Tribulational Rapture of the Body of Christ.  This is Paul’s central focus in each of these chapters and the main teaching of these letters.  The exhortations all revolve around the way of life of believers with this heavenly hope.  The two letters to the Thessalonians present the contrasts between the hope and expectation (as God sees it) of believers living under the grace rule and those that reject the gospel of the grace of God.  For the one there is waiting for them the Rapture with all the blessings of a heavenly inheritance.  For those still living when the calling is brought to fulfillment only a transformation in needed.  For the others who have died, the glorious resurrection is assured.  

We will close our study in the apostle Paul’s letters to the Thessalonian believers with two studies, this one on the overriding theme of the second letter, and the second on an overview of Paul’s pre-Tribulational, Rapture teaching. In the second letter, the apostle reasserts the graphic and eternal difference between our revealed inheritance and that of the unbeliever.  But the focus is also on how the Lord will BOTH provide those future and eternal blessings and current blessings in this life.  The grace poured out then is pre-figured, as it were, by pouring out blessings in this life, by his grace.  In one expression, “Grace Unto Grace, Both Then and Now”, which is the title of that study.  We should be encouraged to know through this letter that God’s promised mighty working on our behalf in eternity future will always be matched in our lives now by a mighty working of grace even today.  Enjoy!

Today we finish our verse by verse study of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians.  In these final verses, the apostle first asks the believers to pray for him, and that is significant.  He asks for their respect and honor and then goes on to a long section (10 verses!) where he strongly exhorts all to be self-sufficient like he was himself.  He was a tentmaker while on his missionary journeys and that was his “testimony” underscoring this critically important point.  They are also to support themselves and to be independent so that they may be able to help others who are in need.  Separation from those who are disobedient is “commanded” with those that will not follow his lead being publicly set aside.   He concludes the letter with a particularly touching reference to his own salutation in his own hand.  That would have been so precious for those in this fellowship as only they would possess that actual autograph. His final words, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with you all” matches what he closed with in the first letter.  Praise God for such grace!  Amen.

In this letter especially, the apostle Paul has written that those that were persecuting the Thessalonians would surely be judged by the Lord God in due time.  He was specifically writing to them about the Rapture of Christ’s Body Church and then what would occur on this earth during the Tribulation period immediately afterwards.  During that period those that had rejected the gospel of the grace of God and then found themselves in the Tribulation would be blinded with a special blindness so that they could not at that time then believe.  There would be no “second chances”.  He shows great contrasts here at the end of chapter 2 between those unbelievers and the Thessalonians especially highlighting their calling (“chosen from the beginning”), that they should uphold his own example for living (the “traditions”), and finally, that through the grace of God they would have “good hope”.  What a precious promise based on such a teaching and this exhortation.

    * Today we finish a four part series on one aspect of the rapture of the church that is often either ignored or opposed, that those left behind when the Lord calls us to meet him in the heavens, those that have heard and rejected the gospel of the grace of God, will be lost forever with no second chance during the Tribulation.  Popular “evangelicalism” of the “pre-Trib” variety, often holds that those unbelievers will have a second chance to believe and be saved during those seven years.  Even popular movies promote this idea dramatically.  However, Paul explicitly denies any second chances in the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians.  He writes there that “God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a  lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”  They cannot believe during the Tribulation, he writes, because they have been blinded by God himself.  So there is no second chance for them at least.  Many consider this unfair, perhaps, but could not the same argument be made for anyone who dies having rejected Christ?  But clearly there is no second chances for them.  “And who is sufficient for these things?”  Amen.

Today, in part 3 of a 4 part series on the Rapture of the Church, we will highlight the apostle Paul’s teaching on verses 3 through 10 of 2 Thessalonians.  These verses are one of the main teachings on what is often called today the “pre-Tribulational” Rapture of the Church.  There Paul teaches that when the Rapture of the Church occurs (called the “falling away” in verse 3, really simply a “departure” or “separation” as the word is usually translated in Paul’s letters), then the man of lawlessness will be free to manifest himself and his evils openly.  The great restrainer on his powers today, namely the Church itself, will be taken out of the way as verse 7 indicates.  Unfortunately, the translators tend to obscure this precious teaching due to their often  anti-dispensational presuppositions.  Even the KJV translators try to make this all about “spiritual apostasy” which it is not.  The latter has always been with us, even from Paul’s day as he has written so clearly in 2 Timothy, etc.

• Paul gives many details in chapter 2 of second Thessalonians regarding the coming Tribulation and how Satan, called the “man of sin” there, will wreck havoc on this earth and especially for believers.  Many will be saved in that time including the elect of Israel.  That will be “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer. 30:7) and that nation will be delivered then from their long enemy.  But what Paul teaches here is that the church the Body of Christ will have to be removed from this earth (called the “falling away” in verse 3) before Satan will be fully free to work his destruction.  The fact as he reveals here is that it is the church that is the restrainer of his full influence.  This letter establishes the timing of the Rapture so strongly and so clearly.

• In chapter one of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, we saw that the sufferings of the church the Body of Christ are a “token” or “sure indication” (same Greek root word even) of God’s coming judgments on those that have persecuted us, the same ones he has just described in 1:8 as “… them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”.  So there is no question that he is concluding his former teaching here regarding those coming judgments during the Tribulation period.  Those judgments therefore are not intended for us today as the false teachers had been teaching.  That is, after all, the whole point of this teaching, that we will not suffer the trials of those days because “… [that day shall not come], except there come a falling away first, and [then] that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”  Our teaching today is an introduction to those words and to that teaching.