Another question from Lizzie

2 Thessalonians 1

 ¹ Paul, Silas^[a] and Timothy,
   To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:
 ² Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

 ³ We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters,^[b] and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. ⁴ Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.  ⁵ All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. ⁶ God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you ⁷ and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. ⁸ He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹ They will be punished with everlasting (age-lasting) destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might ¹⁰ on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
 ¹¹ With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith. ¹² We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.^[c]

Barry is this about Israel AD 70 ??? or is about all of us???

Hi Lizzie
Have made an insertion into the quoted text to fix up the awful translation.

Re your question - AD70 or the end of the church age - ..... it could be either, depending on whether you're a preterist or a futurist.

This scripture however seems a bit more likely to refer to the end of our age IMO because it is "the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marvelled at among all those who have believed."
That sounds to me more like "the end of the church age followed by the millennium when his holy people will be ruling with Christ" than "the end of the Old Covenant age followed by nothing special that I know of."

Nevertheless, I still have all options on the table because I see preterists and futurists both have their problem scriptures to explain, although preterists probably have fewer.

In any case, God's punishments only occur during the ages and are always remedial and designed to bring wrongdoers to repentance and reconciliation eventually, so that Jesus will be successful in drawing all people to himself (John 12 : 32) and all people will eventually acknowledge that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God (Phil 2: 11) .

If I haven't answered everything you had in mind with this email, please try me again.


Anyone else got opinions on this?  Of course you have.  I appreciate this is not on our main topic of universal reconciliation, but I'm sure Lizzie wouldn't mind hearing opinions other than mine from keen students of the Word.  Barry