Shaken in Mind

A brother in Christ recently asked an important question about inmillennialism’s¹ interpretation of the following passage:

Now, brethren, concerning the coming (Gk. parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. (2 Thess 2:1–4)

This passage raises many interesting questions. What is the “gathering together” Paul mentions? What “falling away” does he have in mind? Perhaps most interesting of all, who is “the son of perdition” that claims divine status? 

I will save these questions for future posts. Here, I want to deal with the question this brother raised: If inmillennialism is correct, why were the Thessalonians in danger of being “soon shaken in mind or troubled”?

This question arose when I was making a point about the inmillennial perspective: The “Day” under consideration could not be the future “Day of the Lord” that the common prophetic models² teach. According to them, this Day will involve some combination of spectacular events: a secret rapture of the church and/or the physical resurrection, the Antichrist sitting in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, an unprecedented worldwide “great tribulation,” et al. I stated that neither Paul nor the Thessalonians were thinking of events like these. They were thinking about more localized events about which they could learn from a letter.

I suggested to this brother that a modern Christian, well-established in the Left Behind version of end-time events, would never allow a letter to convince him that the day-of-the-Lord had come. He could point to the intact graves of Christians as proof that it had not. If Paul had taught the Thessalonians any of the current prophetic models, they could have done something similar to relieve their concerns. We must suppose a different prophetic model to understand how such a spurious letter could trouble the Thessalonian church. 

Inmillennialism emphasizes that Paul had taught the Thessalonians about Jesus’ Olivet Discourse. He said that God’s “wrath has come upon them [i.e., the apostate Jews] to the uttermost” (1 Thess 2:16; cp. Luke 21:23). Echoing the words of Christ, Paul had said, “When they say, ‘Peace and safety!’ then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape” (1 Thess 5:3; cp. Matt 24:8 ESV).

We can imagine how a letter claiming to be from an apostle could have persuaded the Thessalonians that some version of God’s judgment of Israel had occurred. Robert L. Thomas says Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians “perhaps late in the summer of A. D. 50.”³ The Roman Emperor Claudius had “expelled Jews from Rome in about A.D. 49 (Acts 18:2), probably due to conflict between Jews and Christians in Rome.”⁴ The supposed letter could have said that God had thus judged the Jews, but that the temple was still standing. Such a letter would cause the Thessalonians to be “shaken in mind or troubled.” 

The Jews who accepted Paul’s message had risked their lives on the truthfulness of his words. Paul had visited the synagog when he first came to Thessalonica. His message divided the Jews: some believed the gospel, “but the Jews who were not persuaded, becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, and gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar” (Acts 17:5). Even after Paul left the city, “When the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds” (Acts 17:13).

The Christian Jews were in heated conflict with their neighbors. They had forsaken (or so it seemed) the religion of their fathers who had worshiped God through the Mosaic law-covenant for fifteen hundred years. That worship revolved around the temple and the Aaronic priesthood. Now, the Christians had believed Paul’s report—Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited Messiah. He had risen from the dead (Acts 17:3) and would soon judge the unbelieving Jews and destroy their temple, ending the Mosaic age. He would then reign as King in his messianic-age kingdom (cf. Acts 17:7).

If God’s wrath had come against Israel, yet the temple remained intact, then Paul’s message was false. And, Jesus was a false prophet, not the longed-for Messiah. The Christian Jews in Thessalonica had forsaken their heritage to follow an imposter.

Nehemiah Nisbett makes some helpful comments about this supposed scenario. He first raises questions similar to the one my brother asked:

What occasion was there therefore to admonish [the Thessalonians] particularly of the destruction of Jerusalem? Or why should they be under such agitations and terrors upon that account? What connection had Macedonia with Judea, or Thessalonica with Jerusalem?

He then says, 

The real fact is, that as our Lord had put the credit of his Religion, and the full proof of his being the Messiah upon the accomplishment of his prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem; all Christians, however distant from Jerusalem, were deeply interested in the matter, and if it had not been accomplished, the triumphs of Infidelity would have been complete.…

In a word, while Jerusalem was standing, the controversy, whether our Lord sustained the character of the Messiah, was not fully decided, and the door was still open for Impostors to lay claim to that character, which would naturally afford room for suggestions which, from the known character of the unbelieving Jews, they would not fail to avail themselves of, to the great annoyance of the Christians.⁵

The New Testament elsewhere gives evidence of how the temple’s continued existence challenged the Christians of Jesus’ generation. Peter says “the holy prophets” and “the apostles of the Lord and Savior” had foretold that scoffers would come in the “last days” of the Mosaic age. They would say, “Where is the promise of His coming (Gk. parousia)? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet 3:4). Jesus had said the Jewish world—with the temple at its center—would collapse in his generation (Matt 24:1–3, 29–30). This would occur in his parousia (Matt 24:3, 27, 39). If the temple had continued to stand after all those who heard Jesus predict its demise had died (cp. Matt 16:27–28), he would have been a false prophet.

The Christians at Thessalonica faced the same temple-still-standing problem. Therefore, they might “be soon shaken in mind or troubled … by letter” from a (supposed) apostle if that letter claimed God had judged Israel without destroying the temple. The Mosaic age would not have been over, the messianic age would not have arrived, and Paul and Jesus would be false prophets. The monumental step of faith the Thessalonians had taken would have been a fool’s errand.

Thankfully, this was not the case as I, Lord willing, hope to show in future posts. The “falling away” Paul mentions occurred, the “man of sin” was revealed, and the Lord consumed him “with the breath of His mouth and destroy[ed] him with the brightness of His coming (Gk. parousia) (2 Thess 2:3–4, 8). The temple fell in that generation, just as Jesus predicted, adding to the proof that he was the Messiah.

The Thessalonians had not believed in vain, no matter what a written letter might have said.

1. For a full-length account of this prophetic model, see Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020). It is available here. A PDF version of the book is available here. For a summary, see the free PDF here.
2. I provide a summary of these models here.
3. Robert L. Thomas, “1 Thessalonians,” in Ephesians–Philemon, vol. 11 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 303.
4. Chad Brand et al., eds., “Claudius,” Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003), 307.
5. N. Nisbett, The Mysterious Language of St. Paul, in His Description of the Man of Sin (Canterbury: Rouse, Kirkey, and Lawrence, 1808), 72–73, 77.