Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

1 Thessalonians 4:16

κελεύσματι = the loud summons which was to muster the saints (so in Philo, De praem. et poen., 19: καθάπερ οὖν ἀνθρώπους ἐν ἐσχατιαῖς ἀπῳκισμένους ῥᾳδίως ἑνὶ κελεύσματι συναγάγοι ὁ θεὸς ἀπὸ περάτων εἰς ὅ τι ἂν θελήσῃ χωρίον), forms, as its lack of any genitive shows, one conception with the φ. α. and the σ. θ. (cf. DC [33], ii. 766). The archangel is Michael, who in Jewish tradition not only summoned the angels but sounded a trumpet to herald God's approach for judgment (e.g., in Apoc. Mosis, xxii.). With such scenic and realistic details, drawn from the heterogeneous eschatology of the later Judaism, Paul seeks to make intelligible to his own mind and to that of his readers, in quite an original fashion (cf. Stähelin, Jahrb. f. deut. Theol., 1874, pp. 199 218), the profound truth that neither death nor any cosmic, crisis in the future will make any essential difference to the close relation between the Christian and his Lord. Οὕτω πάντοτε σὺν κυρίῳ ἐσόμεθα (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:11; 2 Corinthians 5:8; Philippians 1:20): this is all that remains to us, in our truer view of the universe, from the naïve λόγος κυρίου of the apostle, but it is everything. Note that Paul says nothing here about any change of the body (Teichmann, 35 f.), or about the embodiment of the risen life in its celestial δόξα. See Asc. Isa., iv. 14 15: “And the Lord will come with His holy angels and with the armies of the holy ones from the seventh heaven … and He will give rest to the godly whom He shall find in the body in this world.”

[33] CG Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (1907 1908)

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

1 Thessalonians 4:16

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