Quotes & Notes
- Treasury of Scripture Knowledge:
* Wherefore. 1Th 5:11,14; Isa 40:1,2; Lu 21:28; Heb 12:12
* comfort. or, exhort.
Heb 10:24,25
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Robertson's Word Pictures:
With these words (en tois logois toutois). In these words. They were a
comfort to the Thessalonians as
they still comfort the people of God.
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Jamieson-Fausset-Brown:
comfort one another--in your
mourning for the dead (1Th 4:13).
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Adam Clarke's Commentary:
Comfort one another with these words.] Strange saying! comfort a man
with the information that he is going to appear before the judgment-seat
of God! Who can feel comfort from these words?
That man alone with whose spirit
the Spirit of God bears witness that his sins are blotted out, and the
thoughts of whose heart are purified by the inspiration of Gods Holy
Spirit, so that he can perfectly love him, and worthily magnify his name.
Reader, thou art not in a safe state unless it be thus with thee, or
thou art hungering and thirsting after righteousness. If so, thou shalt
be filled; for it is impossible that thou shouldst be taken away in thy
sins, while mourning after the salvation of God. They that seek shall
find.
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Family Bible Notes:
The prospect of meeting our pious friends at the day of judgment, and
with them, perfect in body and soul, ascending with Christ and all his
redeemed, to be for ever like him, soothes the anguish of parting with
them, and fills the soul with
joys unspeakable and full of glory.
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People's New Testament Commentary:
Cheer each other with these
assurances. Tell the mourning ones that when they are called to
meet the Lord they will find their own sleeping ones in the glorious
company.
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William Burkitt's Notes:
That is, draw matter of consolation to yourselves from the foregoing
considerations, against the loss of your deceased friends; intimating,
that the best and choicest of
comforts, for supporting the spirits of men under afflictions in
general, and the loss of dear relations in particular, are drawn from
the holy scriptures; comfort one another with these words, that
is, with such scriptural words as he had now written.
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Albert Barnes' Commentary:
Wherefore comfort one another. Marg., exhort. The word comfort probably
best expresses the meaning. They were to
bring these glorious truths and
these bright prospects before their minds, in order to alleviate the
sorrows of bereavement. The topics of consolation are these:
first, that those who had died in the faith would not always lie in the
grave; second, that when they rose they would not occupy an inferior
condition because they were cut off before the coming of the Lord; and
third, that all Christians, living and dead, would be received to heaven
and dwell for ever with the Lord.
With these words. That is, with these truths.
{1} "comfort" "exhort"
REMARKS.
1. This passage (1Th 4:13-18) contains a truth which is to be found in
no heathen classic writer, and nowhere else, except in the teachings of
the New Testament. For the elevated and glorious view which it gives of
future scenes pertaining to our world, and for all its inestimable
consolations, we are wholly indebted to the Christian religion, Reason
unassisted by revelation, never dared to conjecture that such scenes
would occur; if it had, it would have had no arguments on which the
conjecture could be supported.
2. The death of the Christian is a calm and gentle slumber, 1Th 4:13. It
is not annihilation; it is not the extinction of hope. It is like gentle
repose when we lie down at night, and when we hope to awake again in the
morning; it is like the quiet, sweet slumber of the infant: Why, then,
should the Christian be afraid to die? Is he afraid to close his eyes in
slumber? Why dread the night-- the stillness of death? Is he afraid of
the darkness, the silence, the chilliness of the midnight hour, when his
senses are locked int repose? Why should death to him appear so
terrible? Is the slumbering of an infant an object of terror?
3. There are magnificent scenes before us. There is no description
anywhere which is more sublime than that in the close of this chapter.
Great events are brought together here, any one of which is more grand
than all the pomp of courts, and all the sublimity of battle, and all
the grandeur of a triumphal civic procession. The glory of the
descending Judge of all mankind; the attending retinue of angels, and of
the spirits of the dead; the loud shout of the descending host; the
clangour of the archangel's trumpet; the bursting of graves and the
coming forth of the millions there entombed; the rapid, sudden, glorious
change on the millions of living men; the consternation of the wicked;
the ascent of the innumerable host to the regions of the air; and the
solemn process of the judgment there--what has ever occurred like these
events in this world? And how strange it is that the thoughts of men are
not turned away from the trifles--the show--the shadow--the glitter--the
empty pageantry here--to these bright and glorious realities!
4. In those scenes we shall all be personally interested. If we do not
survive till they occur, yet we shall have an important part to act in
them. We shall hear the archangel's trump; we shall be summoned before
the descending Judge. In these scenes we shall mingle not as careless
spectators, but as those whose eternal doom, is there to be determined,
and with all the intensity of emotion derived from the fact that the Son
of God will descend to judge us, and to pronounce our final doom! Can we
be too much concerned to be prepared for the solemnities of that day?
5. We have, in the passage before us, an interesting view of the order
in which these great events will occur. There will be
(1.) the descent of the Judge with the attending hosts of heaven;
(2.) the raising up of the righteous dead;
(3.) the change which the living will undergo, 1Co 15:52;
(4.) the ascent to meet the Lord in the air; and
(5.) the return with him to glory. What place in this series of wonders
will be assigned for the resurrection of the wicked, is not mentioned
here. The object of the apostle did not lead him to advert to that,
since his propose was to comfort the afflicted by the assurance that
their pious friends would rise again, and would suffer no disadvantage
by the fact that they had died before the coming of the Redeemer. From
Joh 5:28,29: however, it seems most probable that they will be raised at
the same time with the righteous, and will ascend with them to the place
of judgment in the air.
{Typist's note: Barnes assumes a GENERAL judgment. Others believe that
the Christian, whose eternal destination has already been determined,
will be judged at THE BEMA seat with regard to REWARDS. The WICKED will
not be raised until the end of the Millenial Reign and will be judged at
THE GREAT WHITE THRONE judgment.}
6. There is no intimation here of a "personal reign" of Christ upon the
earth. Indeed, there is no evidence that he will return to the earth at
all. All that appears is, that he will descend "from heaven" to the
regions of "the air," and there will summon the living and the dead to
his bar. But there is no intimation that he will set up a visible
kingdom then on earth, to continue a thousand: or more years; that the
Jews will be re-collected in their own land that a magnificent city or
temple will be built there; or that saints will hover in the air, or
reign personally with the Lord Jesus over the nations. There are two
considerations in view of this passage, which, to my mind, are
conclusive proof that all this is romance--splendid and magnificent
indeed as an Arabian but wholly unknown to the apostle Paul. The one is,
that if this were to occur, it is inconceivable that there should have
been no allusion to it here. It would have been such a magnificent
conception of the design of the Second Advent, that it could not have
failed to have been adverted to in a description like this. The other
consideration is, that such a view would have been exactly in point to
meet the object of the apostle here. What could have been more
appropriate in comforting the Thessalonian Christians respecting those
who had died in the faith, than to describe the gorgeous scenes of the
"personal reign" of Christ, and the important part which the risen
saints were to play in that great drama! How can it be accounted for
that the apostle did not advert to it? Would a believer in the "personal
reign" now be likely to omit so material a point, in a description of
the scenes which are to occur at the Second Advent?"
7. The saints will be for ever with the Lord. They will dwell with him
in his own eternal home, Joh 14:3. This expression comprises the sum of
all their anticipated felicity and glory. To be with Christ will be, in
itself, the perfection of bliss; for it will be a security that they
will sin no more, that they will suffer no more, and that they will be
shielded from danger and death. They will have realized the object of
their long, fond desire---that of seeing their Saviour; they will have
suffered the last pang, encountered the last temptation, and escaped for
ever from the dominion of death. What a glorious prospect is this!
Assuredly we should be willing to endure pain, privation, and contempt
here for the brief period of our earthly pilgrimage, if we may come at
last to a world of eternal rest. What trifles are all earthly sorrows
compared with the glories of an endless life with our God and Saviour!
8. It is possible that even the prospect of the judgment-day should be a
source of consolation, 1Th 4:18. To most men it is justly an object of
dread--for all that they have to fear is concentrated on the issues of
that day. But why should a Christian fear it? In the descending Judge he
will hail his Redeemer and Friend; and just in proportion as he has true
religion here, will be the certainty of his acquittal there. Nay, his
feelings in anticipation of the judgment may be more than the mere
absence of fear and alarm. it may be to him the source of positive joy.
It will be the day of his deliverance from death and the grave. It will
confirm to him all his long-cherished hopes. It will put the seal of
approbation on his life spent in endeavouring to do the will of God. It
will reunite him to his dear friends who have died in the Lord. It will
admit him to a full and glorious view of that Saviour whom "having not
seen he has loved;" and it will make him the companion of angels and of
God. If there be anything, therefore, which ought to cheer and sustain
our hearts in the sorrows and bereavements of this life, it is the
anticipation of the glorious scenes connected with the Second Advent of
our Lord, and the prospect of standing before him clothed in the robes
of salvation, surrounded by all those whom we have loved who have died
in the faith, and with the innumerable company of the redeemed of all
ages and lands.
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