Discussion questions

1. In 1 Thessalonians verse 10 the Bible talks “to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead. Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath” Here it talks about Jesus second coming. In Chapter 3 verse 13 it talks about when our Lord comes with all of his people. It doesn’t give us any indication of when that will be. It only says “when” which means it actually will happen at some point but we don’t know when the exact time will be.

In chapter 4 verse 15 it says that “ We won’t go up to meet him ahead of his followers who have already died”. I am not sure if I exactly understand what is being said here. I think it is Jesus first than the people that already have passed away and then the believers who are still alive by the time Jesus comes back?


2.The kingdom is both a present experience and a future hope. The present experience is when Jesus died on the cross for our sins. We all have fallen short of the glory of God and Jesus stepped in and forgave us. Jesus gives us the peace and hope. The Holy Spirit lives inside of us. He is with us all the time but it is not the same as heaven. We have hope that we are going to the “Kingdom” one day. I believe that is heaven where we will be with Jesus. That is something we can look forward to. There is where we will be truly set free of all of our shortcomings. There will be no more sadness, sickness and pain it will only be good things and the things God initially designed how the world is going to be, but then sin came into the world and things changed but in heaven we don’t have any of those bad things!

I'm with you, Marlou. The timeline of Jesus' second coming is utterly confusing to me. Will the dead be "raised" to life before the living are taken to be with Jesus? How can we possible come to any conclusion about the timeline of the end days when the Bible is so vague on it? All that we can know for certain is that He is coming regardless of when and how. We know that He is, and we just need to be prepared for it.