15– 18. ‘ Regarding this, we say, we are confident, for we have it on the direct authority of the Lord Himself that we who are surviving when the Lord comes will not in any way anticipate those who have fallen asleep. What will happen will rather be this. The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet-call of God. Then those who died in Christ, and in consequence are still living in Him, shall rise first. And only after that shall we who are surviving be suddenly caught up in the clouds with them to meet the Lord in the air. Thus shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.’ 15. ἐνλόγῳκυρίου] The ‘ word’ is often found in some actual saying of the Lord while He was upon the earth, such as Matthew 24:30 f. (=Mark 13:26 f., Luke 21:27), 16:27, John 6:39 f., but none of these cover the statement of the present verse, which must certainly be included in the teaching referred to (as against von Soden who finds it only in v. 16); while again this very want of similarity with any ‘ recorded’ saying should make us the more chary of postulating an ‘ unrecorded’ one (cf. Acts 20:35, and see Ropes Sprüche Jesu p. 152 ff.). On the whole, therefore, it is better to fall back upon the thought of a direct revelation granted to the Apostles to meet the special circumstances that had arisen (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:10, 2 Corinthians 12:1 ff., Galatians 1:12; Galatians 1:16, Ephesians 3:3), or more generally to find in this and the following vv. the interpretation which, acting under the immediate guidance of the Lord’ s own spirit (‘ quasi Eo ipso loquente, ’ Beza), St Paul and his companions were able to put upon certain current Jewish apocalyptic ideas. On a subject of such importance they naturally felt constrained to appeal to the ultimate source of their authority: cf. 1 Corinthians 7:10 οὐκἐγὼἀλλὰὁκύριος. Thdt.: οὐγὰροἰκίοιςχρώμεθαλογισμοῖς, ἀλλʼ ἐκθείαςἡμῖνἀποκαλύψεωςἡδιδασκαλίαγεγένηται. On Steck’ s discovery of the λόγος in 4 Ezra 5:41 f. see Intr. p. (CCGNT_12TH)">, and on the use made by Resch of this verse to prove St Paul’ s dependence on the Logia (Der Paulinismus u. die Logia Jesu (1904) p. 338 f.) see Kirsopp Lake in Am. J. of Th. 1906 p. 107 f., who finds in it rather the suggestion of a smaller and less formal collection of sayings. ὅτιἡμεῖςκτλ.] ‘ that we who are alive, who survive unto the Parousia of the Lord.’ These words must not be pressed as conveying a positive and unqualified declaration on the Apostles’ part that the Lord would come during their lifetime, if only because as we learn elsewhere in these Epp. they were well aware that the time of that coming was quite uncertain (5:1, 2 Thessalonians 2:1 ff.). At the same time there can be no doubt that the passage naturally suggests that they expected so to survive (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:51 f.), and we must not allow the fact that they were mistaken in this belief to deprive their words of their proper meaning, as when ἡμεῖς is referred generally to believers who shall be alive at Christ’ s appearing, or the participles are taken hypothetically ‘ if we are alive,’ ‘ if we survive.’ How far indeed an interpreter may go in the supposed interests of Apostolic infallibility is shown by the attitude amongst others of Calvin who thinks that the Apostles used the first person simply in order to keep the Thessalonians on the alert (‘ Thessalonicenses in exspectationem erigere, adeoque pios omnes tenere suspensos’ )! As a matter of fact the near approach of the Parousia here implied would seem, notwithstanding many statements to the contrary, to have been held by St Paul throughout his life: see Kennedy Last Things pp. 160 ff., where the evidence of the Epp. down to the closing statement Philippians 4:5 ὁκύριοςἐγγύς is carefully examined. On περιλείπεσθαι see below on v. 17, and on παρουσία see Add. Note F. οὐμὴφθάσωμενκτλ.] ‘ shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep.’ So far from the living having any advantage at the Parousia over those already dead, it would rather be the other way, an assurance which was the more required in view of the prevalent Jewish belief that a special blessing attached to those who survived the coming of the Kingdom: see Daniel 12:12, Pss. Sol. 17:50, Asc. Isai. 4:15 (with Charles’ s note), and especially 4 Ezra 13:24 ‘ scito ergo quoniam magis beatificatisunt qui derelicti super eos qui mortui sunt’ ; while as showing how the same difficulty continued to linger in the early Christian Church cf. Clem. Recogn. 1:52 (ed. Gersdorf) ‘ Si Christi regno fruentur hi, quos iustos invenerit eius adventus, ergo qui ante adventum eius defuncti sunt, regno penitus carebunt?’ Φθάνειν (2:16 note) reappears here in its generally class, sense of ‘ anticipate,’ ‘ precede,’ old Engl. ‘ prevent’ (Wright Bible Word-Book s.v.), cf. Sap. 6:13, 16:28, where, as here, it is followed by an acc. The double negative οὐμή is found elsewhere in the Pauline Epp., apart from LXX. citations, only in 5:3, 1 Corinthians 8:13, Galatians 5:16, always apparently with the emphatic sense which it has in class. Gk., and which can also be illustrated from the Κοινή: see e.g. the well-known boy’ s letter to his father P.Oxy. 119, 14 f. (2.– 3./a.d.) ἂμμὴπέμψῃςοὐμὴφάγω, οὐμὴπείνω. ταῦτα ‘ if you don’ t send, I won’ t eat, I won’ t drink; there now!’ On the general use of οὐμή in the Gk. Bible see Moulton Prolegg. pp. 39, 187 ff.