Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - 1 Thessalonians 5:4 - 5:4
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Note here, the wisdom and holy caution of our apostle in his application to the Thessalonians; he had in the foregoing verses asserted the certainty and suddenness of Christ's coming, namely, to destroy Jerusalem, and to judge the world. Now, lest these Christians should be terrified in their minds, and shaken with apprehensions of fear from that sudden destruction he had mentioned, he casts in a seasonable word of comfort here in the words before us, assuring them that were sincere Christians amongst them, that how sudden soever the coming and appearance of Christ might be, yet it should not find them unready and unprepared for it, because they were not in darkness, but in the light, and were not children of the night, but of the day; that is, they were not now in a state of heathenism, but Christianity; they were not any longer in their gross and natural ignorance of God, as they were before conversion, but they were the children of the light and of the day; living and walking in the light of the gospel, and in all holiness of conversation.
Learn hence, that as sincere Christians are freed from the gross darkness of their natural state, from the darkness and ignorance of sin, and do walk in the light of a holy conversation, so their knowledge and practical holiness will be a good security against the terror of surprising afflictions, and particularly against the dread and terror of the day of judgment: Ye are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.