In my previous study I pointed to several references in the first chapter of Paul’s first epistle to the Thessalonians, which point to Jesus’ Olivet Prophecy. With this in mind, where did Paul get his understanding of the wrath to come (1Thessalonians 1:10; cp. 5:9), and his mention that believers in Christ would be saved out of it? He gets it from Jesus’ mention of the Great Tribulation, a time of trouble more terrible than any other from the beginning of the Jewish age to that time in the first century AD (Matthew 24:21). It is clearly evident that Jesus was elaborating on Daniel’s prophecy in chapter 12. Daniel was told there would be a time of trouble unmatched in Jewish history (Daniel 12:1), and all, whose names were written in the book, would be saved out of it. Jesus claimed: if God hadn’t shortened the time of the trouble no Jew would be saved alive, but for the elect’s sake, the time of the trouble would be shortened (Matthew 24:22). So, clearly, Paul’s mention of the great wrath, which the Thessalonian believers would be saved out of by Christ at his coming, was the Great Tribulation, which Jesus mentioned in his Olivet Prophecy.
Some scholars have denied this, because Paul mentions that the Thessalonian believers turned to the Lord from idols (1Thessalonians 1:9), concluding he must be speaking of gentile believers rather than Jewish. Nevertheless, this isn’t so, and it is easily proved that the idolaters that Paul had in mind were the Jewish authorities. To begin with, Jews have always had a problem with idols of some kind in their history, from the erection of the golden calf to that very day in the first century AD. Moreover, Luke records Paul preached only in the synagogues of Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-2). If this is true, then, clearly, the idols mentioned couldn’t have been sculpted images of Greek gods. The scholars who make a point of Paul’s readers being gentiles are unmistakably wrong. Also, why would the Jews be so upset with Paul, if he preached only to gentiles? What was that to them, and, if it is true that Paul’s mission was to the gentiles of the city, why would they listen to Jewish arguments about what they, i.e. gentile believers were doing (Acts 17:5-8)?
What, then, were the idols in question? They were the authors of the Oral Law, out of whose traditions Paul’s enemies must have argued, because the Bereans, we are told, were more noble than the Jewish authorities at Thessalonica, in that they searched the Scriptures daily to know of a certainty that Paul spoke the truth about Christ (Acts 17:10-11), alluding to the fact that the Thessalonian leaders had to have argued with Paul from something other than the Scriptures. Jesus, himself, said that the Jewish authorities made the word of God void through their dependence upon the traditions of the elders, i.e. the authors of the Oral Law (Mark 7:4-9), making them, the dead elders, idols in the place of God!
Returning, now, to the argument that Paul was drawing from Jesus’ Olivet Prophecy, notice that Jesus claimed all these things, which included the time of the Great Tribulation, would occur before that generation, in which Jesus and his disciples lived, had passed away (Matthew 24:34). An interesting detail is seen in Revelation 3:10. There Jesus tells the church of Philadelphia that he would save them out of the hour of temptation that would come upon the whole earth (Roman Empire).[1] So, both the “hour of temptation” and the Great Tribulation are in the future, according to the texts in the Olivet Prophecy and the Apocalypse. Notice, however, what Peter claims in his first epistle to the same general area to which the Apocalypse was written (1Peter 1:1; cp. Revelation 1:4, 11):
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you (1 Peter 4:12; emphasis mine).
If both the Olivet Prophecy and the Apocalypse put the fiery trial or the Great Tribulation in the future, Peter’s epistles must have been written after the Great Tribulation had begun. Believers would be saved out of it, but the unbelieving Jews would be judged, whereby both their capital, Jerusalem, and their Temple would be destroyed, thus ending the Old Covenant in 70 AD, leaving no room for a 2000 year delay in the Lord’s return.
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[1] Both hour (G5610) and world (G3625) are feminine and agree, but temptation (G3986) is masculine and agrees with them (G3588) “that dwell upon the earth” (Revelation 3:10). Satan or “the adversary” of Revelation 3:9 is also masculine, as are “which say they are Jews” in verse-9, and these agree. So, the hour comes upon the whole world, but the temptation (viz. the Great Tribulation) comes upon the Jews.
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