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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - 1 Thessalonians 5:1 - 5:1
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As if our apostle had said, "Although I have told you that there will be a general resurrection and future judgment, when Christ will certainly come in the clouds, and every eye shall see him, yet I suppose you do not expect that I should write to you of the particular time of his coming; for you have been told, that his coming will be like the coming of a thief, without warning and without noise, when persons are most secure, least suspecting, and wholly unprovided for it: yea, as the pains of a woman in travail, which are unavoidable; the thief may perhaps not come, but the pains of child-birth must come, and also be painful when they come."
Learn hence, 1. That the wisdom of God has thought fit to conceal and keep secret the determinate time of Christ's coming to judgment, and yet there is an itching curiosity in man's nature to search and pry into that profound secret, though the knowlege of it is not only impossible, but would prove unprofitable and hurtful to mankind, making the world secure and careless; wheras, not knowing the hour when our Lord cometh, should oblige us to be upon our watch every hour.
Note then, that our Lord will certainly come at one hour or other, but at what hour he will come cannot certainly be known, yet there is no hour when we can promise ourselves that he will not come.
Note, lastly, that the pain and sorrow, the trouble and horror which the day of the Lord will bring upon such as are unready and unprepared for it, no tongue can utter, no heart can conceive; the greatest of earthly and bodily torments and sorrows, such as the pangs of a woman in travail, being but weak shadows and slender representations of it, the day of the Lord cometh as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape.