Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, ‘Peace and safety!’ then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.

‭‭1 Thessalonians‬ ‭5‬:‭1‬-‭3‬

(1) In the book of Hebrews we read, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” After it was at first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard. The doom of the unbelieving world will be inescapable on the eschatological Day of the Lord. In our study today, we will see this incredible verse when interpreted in the light of parallel Bible prophecies. So let’s take a quick tour of the events described in this verse.

(2) FIRST: While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” Note that Paul does not say before but (while) they are feeling comfortable with world events, which in our present day likely refers to coming to a peace agreement in the Middle East. Without going into all the details, the time of peace and safety could correspond to at least some of the first half of Daniel’s seventieth week, when the Antichrist makes a “firm covenant with the many (Israel) for one week.”

(3) We must remember that a week is seven years. This covenant would also explain how Israel would be able to rebuild in Jerusalem their Temple on the Dome of the Rock, an occurrence which would bring about a holy war if it were attempted today. During this first half of the seven-year period, the “true colors” of the Antichrist are not apparent—or are they? And so the world feels comfortable and confident that peace in the Middle East has been achieved.

(4) There are, however, some problems with this interpretation, primarily the fact that when the third seal is broken, “I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, ‘Come.’ And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that mankind would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.” ‭‭Revelation‬ ‭6‬:‭2‬-‭4‬ ‭NASB1995‬.

(5) Family of God, what do you do with this? Although the timing of this cannot be accurately stated, it may correspond to the Antichrist (“Little Horn”) exerting his power, coming up out of ten heads, three of which fell before him (Daniel 7:20). Note that it is followed in 7:21, describing the Antichrist “waging war with the saints [especially the Jews] and overpowering them,” an end-time event!

(6) TODAY: So what is this thing called peace and safety? What are its elements? Where does it come from? It is of God as being its source, origin, author, and giver—but it belongs to Him in a yet deeper sense, for He Himself is peace. And in some humble but yet real fashion, our restless and anxious hearts may partake in the divine tranquility, and with a calm repose, kindred with that rest from which it is derived, may enter into His rest.

(7) If that be too high a flight, at all events, the peace that may be ours was Christ’s—in the perfect and unbroken tranquility of His perfect manhood. What, then, are its elements? The peace of God must, first of all, be at peace with God. Conscious friendship with Him is indispensable to all true tranquility. Where that is absent, there may be the ignoring of the disturbed relationship, but there will be no peace of heart. The indispensable prerequisite is “a conscience like a sea at rest.”

(8) Unless we have made sure of our relationship with God, and know that He and we are friends, there is no real repose possible for us. In the whirl of excitement we may forget, and for a time turn away from, the realities of our relation to Him, and so get such gladness as is possible to a life not rooted in conscious friendship with Him. Unlike the Pacific Northwest, such lives will be like some of those sunny islands in the Eastern Pacific—

(9) …extinct volcanoes, where nature smiles and all things are prodigal and life is easy and decadent; but someday the clouds gather, and the earth shakes, and fire pours forth, and the sea boils, and every living thing dies, and darkness and desolation come. We are living, my brother and sister, upon a volcano’s side unless the roots of your being are fixed in a Father God who is our friend! Again, the peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human…

(10) …life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses. Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, “Do this”; reason, judgment, prudence say, “It is at your peril if you do!” One desire fights against another, and so we are rent asunder daily. There must be the harmonizing of all our heart if there is to be real rest of spirit. No longer must it be like the chaos where the creative word was spoken—where, in gloom, contending elements strove.

(11) Again, the Adamic Race has no peace because in most of them everything is topmost that ought to be undermost, and everything undermost that ought to be uppermost. “Beggars are on horseback” (and we know where they ride), “and princes walking.” The more regal part of the Adamic Race nature is suppressed and trodden underfoot; and the servile parts, which ought to be under firm restraint and guided by a wise hand, are too often supreme—and wild…

(12) …work comes of that. When you put the captain and the officers, and everybody on board that knows anything about navigation, into irons, and fasten down the hatches on them, and let the crew and the cabin boys take the helm and direct the ship, it is not likely that the voyage will end anywhere but on the rocks. Multitudes are living lives of unrestfulness, simply because they have set the lowest parts of their nature upon the throne and subordinated the highest to these.

(13) Our unrest comes from yet another source. We have not peace, because we have not found and grasped the true objects for any of our faculties. God is the only possession that brings quiet—peace and safety. The heart hungers until it feeds upon Him! The mind is satisfied with no truth until behind truth it finds a Person who is true. The will is enslaved and wretched until in God it recognizes legitimate and absolute authority, which it is a blessing to obey.

(14) Love puts out its yearnings, like the filaments that gossamer spiders send out into the air, seeking in vain for something to fasten upon, until it touches God and clings there. There is no rest for the Adamic Race until they rest in God. The reason why this world is so full of excitement is because it is so empty of peace, and the reason why it is so empty of peace is because it is so void of God. The peace of God brings peace with Him, and peace within.

(15) It unites our hearts to fear His name and draws all the else-turbulent and confusedly flowing impulses of the great deep of the spirit after itself in a tidal wave, as the moon draws the waters of the gathered ocean. The peace of God is peace with Him and peace within. I need not, I suppose, do more than say one word about that descriptive clause in my text: it “passeth all understanding.” The understanding is not the faculty by which we lay hold of the peace of God—

(16) …any more than you can see a picture with your ears or hear music with your eyes. To everything its own organ; you cannot weigh truth in a tradesman’s scales or measure thought with a yardstick. Love is not the instrument for apprehending the heart, nor the brain the instrument for grasping these divine and spiritual gifts. The peace of God transcends the understanding, as well as belongs to another order of things than that about which the understanding is concerned.