Dennis Tuuri

# 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3

“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, ‘Peace and safety,’ then sudden destruction come upon them as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape.”

We spoke on First Thessalonians 4, the last half of that chapter, dealing with the comfort that Paul provides to Thessalonians and those of us who read the scriptures through the ages relative to the final resurrection of the dead, speaking of the reunion of believers with their bodies, the reunion of believers with one another, and ultimately, of course, the basis for all that. The ultimate joy of the final resurrection is our reunion with the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ when he finally returns at the end of the consummation of the ages.

I wanted to just by way of reviewing that a little bit quote from a man named George Steiner. Several of you have heard me refer to this quote over the last six or seven years. I was amazed one night to watch a PBS Bill Moyers interview with George Steiner who at that time was chief literary critic for the New Yorker magazine. One of the great men of letters of our country and a very brilliant man.

I thought of him a lot as I was studying for the talk from 1 Thessalonians 4 and it’s pertinent to 1 Thessalonians 5 as well—the darkness that the unbeliever finds himself in and his foolishness. In this interview which I have a transcript of, Steiner said that he thought the two great things that really make us men and began, or really produced men in terms of culture and history.

The first was when the first caveman said to his neighbor that the water hole is over there, knowing full well that the water hole was over there when he lied. And Steiner said this is the great beginning of mankind—the ability to counterfeit reality, to posit a different reality. And of course, we would have to say that the first sin was indeed the beginning of man as Steiner knows him, which is fallen man.

The second thing he said that makes us truly men is the ability to speak in the future tense, the development of the future tense in our language, the ability to think beyond our own death and into the future and millions of years into the future. This is the second thing that makes us truly men.

Steiner said that, and Moyers said in response to this, “So language is the power to resist the world as it is.” Steiner said, “To resist it, to say no”—which is great, which is quite a fierce thing—”but also to hope. Hope is a kind of future tense often without any anchorage in substantial reality.”

You see, for Steiner and for the unbeliever, hope is not based upon the reality that God has created in Jesus Christ. His hope for the future is not based upon the final return of Jesus Christ the way ours is. His hope for the future is based upon the future tense, the ability in our language to speak of a day beyond our own death.

So Moyers says, “So language, or rather art and literature all have been civilizing influences on our journey.” Steiner said, “They have been the drugs of dreams without which, I think in the face of the scandalous fact that all of us have to die—” And again, Steiner says, “I find that a profoundly scandalous fact. In the face of this lousy, rotten scandal that not one of us will get away with it. We all die. In other words, in the face of this, we have simply refused to lie down. And we have constructed these great anti-worlds, these worlds of antimatter, which are art and literature.”

You know, you’ve heard lots of deathbed stories of Christians who face their own death with a degree of joy, knowing that they shall soon be with the Lord and with those departed in the Lord. The truths from First Thessalonians pointed us to that two weeks ago. And I can just imagine George Steiner, unless God brings him to repentance in the meantime for his sins, on his deathbed, instead of looking at the face of Jesus and the loved ones that he will see who have departed in the Lord, I can imagine Steiner on his deathbed saying, “The future tense. The future tense. That’s the source of my hope.”

Well, it is silly. And it’s the blindness that the unregenerate are in. And we must remember it’s the blindness we’ve been delivered out of.

Paul continues to speak of eschatology in chapter 5 with a couple of very important changes. Chapter 4 dealt with the final consummation, the return of the Lord, and the comfort it brings in terms of reunion. Chapter 5 speaks of the day of the Lord and he definitely changes subjects.

If you look at verse one of the text, we read two indicators in the text itself of specific changes, a change of subject. Verse one of chapter 5, “But of the times and seasons, brethren, you have no need that I write unto you.” Now, we’ve heard phrases similar to that already in this epistle. In verse nine of chapter 4, we read, “But as touching brotherly love, you need not that I write unto you.” In verse 13 of chapter 4, to introduce the subject of the escaton and the final consummation of all things, he says, “But I would not have you be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep.” So he’s going to instruct them.

And so when Paul says in verse one of chapter 5 that as touching this thing you have no need that I write unto you, that is a specific indicator of a new topic being addressed in the context of this epistle. Secondly, when Paul uses the term brethren, he also gives an evidence there of a change of subject. In chapter 2 verse 1 and verse 17, chapter 4 verse 1, verse 13, and again in chapter 5 verse 12, Paul uses the term brethren when he introduces new topics in the epistle.

This section that we’ll be dealing with—dealing with the day of the Lord and those in darkness and light—goes through verse 11 of chapter 5. Now, there’s a fairly easy way to see the break in subject matter. But if you look at verse 12 of chapter 5, he says, “We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you.” Paul frequently in his epistles, and does in first Thessalonians as well, use the term brethren as an indicator of a new topic to be addressed.

Now, I point this out because it’s important that we see that while we are still talking in some sense about eschatology, there’s a definite change in subject indicated by our text. And so Paul wants us to know that, and it’s important that we understand that.

Paul goes on to remind them that after telling them that he doesn’t really need any instruction in terms of these things, he goes on and speaks to them in terms of what they do need to know. And he does this to the purpose that they might encourage and edify one another—which phrase is found in verse 11.

Remember we said that chapter 4, the last half of it, and chapter 5, the first half of that chapter are somewhat parallel, and that both posit a question or a topic. Paul gives instruction on that topic and concludes by saying that use this to comfort each other. In chapter 4 and in chapter 5, use this to encourage and edify each other in the context of your church.

So Paul goes on to restate to them things they really already had known to the end that they might be strengthened and encouraged. It’s interesting to me that while Paul says in the very introductory passage to this section, in chapter 1, that you have no need of instruction relative to the times and seasons, I think what Paul is saying here in one sense is you don’t need specifics in terms of dates and what is exactly going to occur in the next 5 years or 10 years. You don’t need that kind of specificity in terms of eschatology.

He’s going to tell them what they do need to remember. I think that Paul is saying that this is not really to be looked at as a time-referenced passage. And yet so frequently this is one of the very passages that people turn to and make a time reference out of it.

We were talking around the campfire last night. You know, it’s interesting how for this particular talk on judgment—judgment upon those in darkness—and next week we’ll talk about the other side of that, the day of the Lord and those in light. God has kind of called us out of the world in a physical sense here at family camp. And it’s a great joy to be convoked together in a sense in a close physical community, to be able to encourage and edify each other during the day and talk of the Lord and things of the scriptures as well.

And last night I found it very encouraging to me. I was sort of concerned about a few items, and I came out to the campfire and engaged myself in an excellent conversation with a number of men. And it’s a great thing to be able to do that in the context of a group of believers.

But we were talking about this passage a little bit, and in terms of the business world, one thing you may want to kind of equate this passage to—saying Paul says in essence, if you’re running a business in terms of quarterly financial statements, you don’t need that kind of detailed information. What you do need to know, if you’re a Christian businessman, is that godly businesses that work and govern themselves in relationship to God and his word prosper over time and avoid the judgment of God upon those businesses that deny God and the application of his scripture to what they do. Those businesses are in darkness.

And so Paul in this text in 1 Thessalonians 5, in terms of specific specificity in terms of times and seasons, you don’t need that instruction. But what you do need to know is this: that those who are troubling you and persecuting you, those who are in darkness, destruction comes upon them temporally. And those who walk in the light, in the light of God’s word and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, they are not only the subjects to escape judgment, but indeed the judgment comes that they might be established.

The day of the Lord is likeness and establishment to those who are in the Lord, but it is darkness and destruction upon those who are in their own darkness already by rejecting him. So Paul sort of says the same thing: you don’t need quarterly financial statements. You don’t need that kind of specificity. What you do need in order to be encouraged and edified and built up is knowing that the temporal judgments of God exist in time and in history.

So basically what Paul tells him in terms of those in darkness can be summarized in the phrase from verse three rather. He says, “For when they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with child.” Sudden destruction comes upon those who are in darkness. And that is what Paul instructs the Thessalonians in terms of the day of the Lord and those in darkness.

What the reality of that is: Paul says that the day of the Lord comes suddenly upon those who are outside of Jesus Christ. The term implies a breaking in, as it were, upon their daydream of sleep and slumber in the context of night and darkness. And other illusions are used as well—drunkenness, etc.

Suddenly he talks about the day of the Lord coming as a thief in the night. And one of the meanings of a thief in the night is that the thief comes suddenly when the owner of the household is not aware of his coming. Jesus used that in his teaching as well. The householder, if he knew what hour the thief would break in, would have been prepared, but he didn’t know. Suddenly, the thief is there when he is asleep.

Labor pains is another picture that Paul uses in these three verses to speak of the day of the Lord and those in darkness. Now, you might say, well, labor pains are expected at the end of nine months, but you know, usually you’re not. You don’t know the specific time, and you tend to forget about it and all of a sudden one day labor pains come. And for some pregnancies they come quite hard and quite fast. And Paul says it’s with that suddenness as well that the day of the Lord comes upon the unbeliever.

And those people that are positing peace and safety—he says indeed they say peace and safety and then it comes. Peace refers to that internal state of people being at ease with themselves. Safety refers to the peace of not being obstructed by people or conditions from the outside. And the unbeliever posits himself to be in peace and safety. But God suddenly breaks into his life.

One commentator, I believe it was Hendrickson, said that it’s as if you have an artist painting the cliffs along a seashore and he’s sitting on a rock next to the beach there looking at the cliffs and painting them. And he’s so engrossed with all of that he doesn’t see the tide coming in and the great wave coming in that’s going to take him and drown him in the ocean.

Well, so it is with those who are in darkness. They are so absorbed with the world and with the things that have become idolatrous to them, they become so absorbed in that, they fail to see what should be obvious to them: the temporal judgments of God that have existed throughout time in history and will in the future as well. Suddenness comes upon—is one of the descriptive terms that Paul uses for those in darkness in terms of the day of the Lord. But it is suddenness to destruction. It is not suddenness to blessing, but rather suddenness to cursing.

He says, “They shall not escape.” Definitive statement strongly emphasized by the text. They will escape in no way. Absolutely not. There’s a double negative here. They shall not escape. Not at all. The thief will do his damage. The suddenness of the labor pains will lead to increased pain and affliction and a sense of not ease but of disease. Destruction comes upon them.

Paul says the term destruction refers not to an annihilation. The term specifically means the removal of all things that are necessary for peace, joy, and bearableness in terms of life. I guess you could say that Steiner’s present tense will be taken away from him suddenly since that is what he posits his assurance based upon. The destruction of God overtakes them. The same way that God’s blessings overtake and gallop after those who are in obedience to his word, so God’s curses gallop after those who are disobedient.

Now the subject of all these are those who are in darkness. Sudden destruction comes upon them—those in darkness. Later in the chapter, these are described as men who are asleep and who are drunken. They get drunk at night. The ultimate picture of debauchery, getting drunk and falling asleep and being completely unaware of where you’re at.

I guess that you could say in our modern phraseology, these are night people that he is speaking of. Not in the sense of the physical night, obviously—although frequently sin does take a great leap up when the darkness comes. These things are pictures from God and they do have reality to them. But rather night people who have rejected the only light that is available to the world, the light of Jesus Christ. They’re darkened in their understanding, rejecting the source of light, the source of understanding, the source of knowledge, the Savior and God’s revealed word.

And as a result, they are night people and we are to be people of the day. People cognizant of God’s blessings and cognizant of his word and instruction. The scriptures say later in chapter 5 that these are those who are appointed to wrath. It says that by implication. It says that this won’t overtake us who are in light because we’ve not been appointed unto wrath. And the clear implication of that is that those who do receive this sudden destruction are those who have been appointed to wrath by God.

His sovereignty in their lives is asserted here. Those who say peace and safety in times of apostasy and wickedness are specifically those who are singled out here for the temporal judgments of God that Paul means to comfort and encourage the Thessalonians with knowledge of. As Lensky said, the blind world will remain blind until the last despite the great procession of signs during the course of the years. History is marked, riddled as it were, with God’s preemptive judgments against individual men and nations, countries and people. And yet, in spite of this, those in darkness are overtaken as the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night.

Paul’s point is that it’s not to be a thief in the night to those who are aware and those who understand the scriptures.

Now, Paul writes these three things: that there’ll be sudden destruction upon the ungodly, upon those in darkness. He writes these things relative to the day of the Lord and those in darkness, as well as the accompanying instruction we’ll deal more fully with next week regarding the day of the Lord and those in light, to the end that these particular Christians and those who should later read the epistle might be strengthened and encouraged.

Okay, his whole purpose here, as we read in verse 13, is that they might be strengthened and encouraged.

Many have asked quite appropriately: if Paul here refers to the end of the escaton, if this is a link with the end of chapter 4 when he’s speaking of the final resurrection, how is this to encourage and strengthen the Thessalonians when this was to occur at some great distance away in terms of time? How can we see this text as positing encouragement and edification to the Thessalonians if this judgment upon their persecutors is going to be delayed for thousands of thousands of years?

I believe that to posit the application of this text to some remote future robs it of its strengthening and encouraging aspect to believers who live in times of trouble, in times of persecution, and in times of great wickedness. The Thessalonians lived in such a world, and we live in such a world today as well.

David Chilton in his excellent book, Paradise Restored, spends several pages dealing with the subject of the day of the Lord—which is what is being spoken of here—the day of the Lord and those in darkness and those in light. And Chilton excellently, I think, posits the concept that the day of the Lord, like many concepts in the scriptures, has a definitive, progressive, and a consummative aspect to it. In other words, the original day of the Lord was the day of the creation, the first day of God’s light coming upon the world. There is a progressive day of the Lord throughout history when God comes. The day of the Lord, Chilton says according to the scriptures, and I believe he’s accurate here, is God’s special presence manifested in the context of a people, a group or nations or an individual.

It’s interesting that the aspect of darkness and light that Paul stresses in First Thessalonians 5, and throughout the scriptures, has this two-fold aspect to it: the day of the Lord is darkness, dread and damnation to those who are in rebellion, but it is light and establishment for those who are in Jesus Christ and in the covenant people of God who are obedient.

We read responsively from Joel chapter 2 in the day of the Lord, then in those in darkness. We’ll read next week responsively from Joel, the day of the Lord and those in light, and you’ll see this twofold aspect to it.

Chilton talks about how the day of the Lord can be equated to the day of clouds in the scriptures. He speaks in Paradise Restored, and I’ll quote here: “As soon as we see the connection between the cloud and the day of the Lord, that the day of the Lord is the glory cloud of God coming in judgment and the cloud is the day of the Lord in action. A great number of biblical ideas begin to fall into place.

For example, the Israelites experienced the day of the Lord at the edge of the Red Sea when the cloud descended. This is in Exodus 13 and stood between them and the Egyptians. For the covenant people, the cloud was light and salvation. But for the Egyptians, it was darkness. God’s coming always has that two-fold aspect to it.”

Indeed, in Exodus 15, when we read of God’s great victory over the Egyptians, we read that the enemy said—just as the enemies of the Thessalonians said—”I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My lust shall be satisfied upon them. I will draw my sword. My hand shall destroy them.” And then verse 10 of Exodus 15: “Thou did blow with thy wind. The sea covered them. They sank as lead in the mighty waters.”

Throughout the scriptures, the day of the Lord posits an enemy to God’s people who are destroyed by God. And it posits those people as being in a state of peace and safety. In other words, they’re convinced, as the Egyptians were, of their ability to rout the people of God. And so God’s judgment comes upon them with sudden destruction in history.

Throughout history, we have examples in Old Testament recorded history as well of God’s day of the Lord coming upon apostate men and nations. The story of Samson, for instance, when Samson brings down the wrath of God upon the Philistines at the end of that story. They were in peace and safety. They thought they had conquered the great enemy that God had raised up against them. And yet God’s sudden destruction came upon them as well.

Jesus tells us that the day of the Lord is as in the days of Noah, in the days of Lot. In other words, these are events that have happened repeatedly throughout history and shall repeatedly and progressively work themselves out throughout recorded history until the great and final coming of the Lord, the final day of the Lord, in which all things will be brought to conclusion.

The point of all this is that the Thessalonians needed encouragement because they were being persecuted. Turn to 2 Thessalonians 1 and look at verses 3-10. And this gives us the context really and more understanding on the text from 1 Thessalonians.

But in 2 Thessalonians, Paul says in verse three: “We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meat, because that your faith groweth exceedingly and the charity of every one of you will toward each other aboundeth. So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God. For your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which he also suffered. Seeing it as a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you. And to you who are troubled, rest with us.

When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.”

The point that Paul is saying here is you have contemporary persecutors and they are troubling you. And it is a good thing for you to recognize and be encouraged in the fact that God will bring judgment upon those. He’ll bring tribulation upon those who have brought you tribulation.

Paul, I think, gives us a couple of very explicit teachings here when he says in verse 8 that the flaming fire takes vengeance on them that know not God. That darkness aspect again. And that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. They obey not the gospel, I think, is a specific reference to the Jewish church at that time that obeyed not the gospel of the Messiah who had come to them.

And so Paul says that those who trouble you will be troubled by God. And specifically, as we read earlier in First Thessalonians, it is the Jews primarily who were the persecutors of the Thessalonian church. The book of Acts records historically for us that the Jews came down from another synagogue to trouble them in Thessalonica, and Paul actually had to leave the city fleeing for his life. It was the Jews primarily who were persecuting these Christians in Thessalonica.

And so we read earlier in First Thessalonians about the Jews who had tried to stop and impede the gospel, the spread of the gospel. And Paul says that wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. And Paul, I think here in chapter 5, is picking up that theme from chapter 2 in 1 Thessalonians when he says again that God’s wrath will come upon these people who trouble you. And indeed it will come upon you quickly, and it will come upon them suddenly as well.

Hebrews 10:24, which should be a familiar passage to most of us. We read it in several of our communion liturgies. Hebrews 10:24 says: “Let us consider one another’s provoking to love and to good deeds, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but admonishing one another, and so much the more as we see the day approaching.”

Paul wrote to the Hebrews that the day was approaching and that they could see the day approaching. The contemporary church at that time, the Hebrews, were to see the approaching day of God’s judgment which come upon Jerusalem in AD 70 and come upon the whole Jewish system. It would end the persecution of the church, the great tribulation upon the church that had been taking place up to that time.

And Paul’s whole point in Hebrews is to warn these Christians not to fall back from the church and think they’re going to avoid persecution. What he’s saying is if you fall back and you don’t continue steadfast with the synagogue of Jesus Christ, the super synagogue and the greater temple, and you fall back to the Jewish system, which has rejected Messiah, then you fall back not in an ability to withstand persecution, but you fall back to greater persecution and greater judgment because God’s day of wrath, the day of the Lord that will bring darkness to God’s enemies, light to God’s people, the destruction of those who oppose Jesus Christ, the establishment of those who are in Jesus Christ, that day will come upon you as an enemy.

And so Paul warns them. They will be able to see the approach of that day. And Paul says in our text is sudden destruction upon those in darkness. And this was to prevent the day from overtaking them as a thief in the night. For they were not of the night, but of the day. The sure knowledge of God’s impending and terrible judgment against the Jews was to encourage and strengthen the saints as they admonished each other to continue in the faith and so stay in the day instead of falling back into the darkness of the Old Testament sacrificial system and those who posited it.

Once Messiah had come and brought it to conclusion, Jesus said in Matthew 24 that except that the days of the tribulation be shortened, there should no flesh be saved. But for the elect’s sake, those days shall be shortened. I think at least in partial allusion, our Savior is referring to the tribulation that the Jews were to bring upon the Christian church. We read that earlier in this series going through Thessalonians, the great persecutions, arrests, imprisonments, killings of Christians that occurred at the hands of the Jewish nation.

And Jesus said that all the blood of their fathers would come upon their heads who had rejected Christ and not only rejected Christ but put him to death and then also tried to stop the progression of the gospel. That’s the day I think that Paul is pointing the Thessalonians to bring them encouragement.

Hebrews 10, that chapter that says you can see the day approaching, concludes in this way, and I’m reading from the Moffatt translation: “Now do not drop that confidence of yours. It carries with it a hope of reward. Steady patience is what you need, so that after doing the will of God, you may receive what you are promised. For in a little, a very little now, the coming one will arrive without delay. Meantime, my just man is to live on by his faith. If he shrinks back, my soul takes no delight in him. We are not the men to shrink back and be lost, but to have faith, and so to win our souls.”

The sure message that Paul had given to the Thessalonians was the same message that he, or the epistle writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, brought to them some years later. And now he’s saying that it is a little while, a very little time now, and Jesus will come without delay to bring this wrath upon those who trouble the church of Jesus Christ. In a little while, the author of Hebrews says, this will occur.

The Thessalonians wanted comfort—needed comfort, I should say—about the dead in Christ. And they received it, as we said, with Paul’s teaching on the reunion of body and soul, believers and loved ones, and believers in Jesus Christ.

The subject in 1 Thessalonians 5 moves to the outcome of those who had in all likelihood caused some of those deaths of the loved ones that they were comforted about. In chapter 4, Paul comforts, encourages, and strengthens the Thessalonians by reminding them of God’s imminent judgment upon those who had troubled them in the body of Christ. Their end shall be sudden and destructive and shall mean the establishment of the saints.

Two subject matters that Paul addresses. Four—he addresses them comforting them about the ones who had died in Christ. Chapter five, he comforts, encourages, and strengthens them by telling them that those who had probably in many cases, or in some cases, caused the death of some in the Thessalonian church and certainly had persecuted all of them—that those people would be judged temporally by God in time and in history. And that’s what 1 Thessalonians 5, I think, is all about—the first half of the chapter.

This wasn’t just a message to the Thessalonians, though. It’s a message that echoes down the centuries to all believers who read it and who are in similar circumstances with the Thessalonian church. Those circumstances being persecution, people troubling the church of Jesus Christ, and promoting wickedness in society.

As such, then, the words in this text come down to us, and it is part of what we need to hear as well to strengthen and establish us the surety of God’s judgment in history—temporal judgment that is against those who oppose the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now it’s an interesting time in terms of God’s bringing us to this text at this time at this place. We went camping a week or so ago at Silver Falls campground, and I hadn’t really made the connection, but we drove up to the conference center there to take a look at it. It’s part of the campground, and as we were driving around the conference center, I remembered what happened last year at family camp here.

We got a call at family camp last year that the state board of education had met at the Silver Falls Conference Center where I was a week and a half ago and decided at that retreat—paid for by your tax dollars, away from the minute the normal minutes that are kept of such meetings—in secrecy. In other words, they’re men of darkness. They had planned the destruction, as it were, of the homeschooling community. They had planned to come after us with a vengeance to enact new and powerful rules upon us.

The state board said peace and safety. Measure 11 gives us a great opportunity here to do what many of us have wanted to do for some time now: put the thumbscrews on those fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers. Measure 11 gives us that opportunity. They say peace and safety. We can write rules. They can’t stop us from writing rules. They can turn out as many members as they want, but they can’t stop the administrative rule process. And they’re right. Whatever that seven-member board wants to do in terms of education, they do. And you can try to take legal action after it’s done, but essentially they accomplish what they will.

We live in a land that is primarily ruled by bureaucrats and by administrative fiat as opposed to by legislation.

Well, in the providence of God, here we are a year later at the end of this process, and we have the state board being foiled in their attempts to bring administrative rules and to bring restrictions on the freedom of Christian homeschoolers in our state. We went to the legislature and they thought, well, peace and safety. It’s okay. We’ve got friends in the legislature. We’ll be able to stop this bill. We’ll probably be able to stop it in the House and show how crazy it is. We’ll do some things here and there. But no, we came out of the House with a unanimous vote.

Well, then they thought peace and safety, and the information we received of the state board and department of education had spoken to the chairman of the Senate Education Committee and gotten assurances from her that we wouldn’t be given a work session on our bill. Peace and safety. Senator Gold soon found out that wasn’t too wise a course to take. And so we were given hearings on our bill. And more than that, we were given a work session. And lo and behold, they were in trouble again.

And what did they do? Rather, they called on the governor, and she wrote a letter to the education committee in the Senate saying, “Don’t pass this bill.” Implying, of course, that she may veto it. Peace and safety. The governor will stop all this, right? No. We passed the committee. We passed out of the House nearly unanimously. Their last thing that they had to do was, of course, what happened here a week and a half ago.

We meet together to consider this text from Thessalonians, the immediate context of Governor Roberts’s veto of the homeschool bill.

Now, we live in a state—in Oregon, those of us who are from Oregon—where we now have undoubtedly the most activist liberal governor that the state has ever seen. This is a governor who actively promoted pro-lesbian and pro-sodomite legislation in the Oregon legislature, testified strongly for it, sees these people as worthy of getting special attention and treatment from her.

Now, I know that those who take the homosexual-sodomite lifestyle—it is their responsibility for their sin. And what I’m going to say doesn’t alleviate the responsibility that comes upon them in any way, shape, or form. The judgment of God will come upon them. Hopefully, some to repentance, some to damnation. But what of the governor and what of those officials in our society who are supposed to posit biblical morality in their legislation? What of those who encourage such a lifestyle at every moment and every opportunity they have? What about people who put that as an acceptable alternative before the young children growing up in the state education systems, for instance?

Don’t they share responsibility for the destruction that is done in the lives of those children who fall into sodomite and lesbian behavior? Well, it’s clear from the scriptures that they do. The governor has a greater responsibility before God because of her position. Because of that increased responsibility, she has greater accountability and she’ll suffer greater judgment when she sends these children down the sodomite path.

Now, I know it’s their responsibility and they’ll be judged for their sin. But Governor Barbara Roberts will be judged greater than them. She has caused some to stumble.

What about a governor who promotes actively video poker and signs that bill into legislation—let it become law—and yet vetoes a bill trying to protect the rights of the best citizens this state, the state of Oregon, has? What about a governor who—you may not be aware of this either from the legislative session—for several years now, the Republican party successfully had language in the funding of the school-based clinics that did not allow for abortion counseling in the health-based, or the health clinics that are school-based in Oregon public schools?

Governor Roberts got that all done away with, and she now is going to actively use the school-based health clinics in the state of Oregon for abortion counseling and for contraception distribution.

Now, I know it’s the responsibility of the mother who takes her child into the murderer and pays him the fee to murder that child in her womb. But I know also that a governor who promotes abortion and murder in that way and leads people down that path again suffers a greater condemnation from God.

We live in an ironic situation. How could anybody in their right mind protect gamblers, abortionists, murderers, sodomites, and lesbians and then see us under the strong attack of a state administrative agency for no reason? Have that promulgated throughout the press as being a ridiculous attack upon homeschoolers and fail to see that we needed legislative redress?

How could that occur? Well, it is ridiculous. But you see, Governor Roberts is one of those people that First Thessalonians 5 talks about. She’s one of the people in darkness. She can’t see. She’s blinded herself to the light of God’s truth. And God turns her over increasingly to a blindness and stupor that prepares her for judgment.

The Thessalonians were encouraged by Paul in knowing of the temporal judgments of God. And we must be encouraged as well, realizing that God is faithful to judge temporal persecutors of his people. God may indeed, and often does, build up the enemies of God for an even bigger fall by feigning victory in the short term. One of God’s purposes in this—the stronger purpose than building him up for stronger judgment—is he uses these for the conforming of the saints to the image of Jesus Christ.

The trials and persecutions, the tribulations that come upon us are within the sovereign plan of God to produce in us patience, endurance, victory orientation, and hope over the long haul. He uses these persecutions to strengthen us, to build us in prayer, to build us in an awareness of the real warfare that exists between those who are in the world and darkness and between those who are in the kingdom of light.

But when God has finished his perfecting work in the saints and when he has built up the unbeliever through feigned victory, his day of sudden destruction—judgment—comes upon them. Comes upon the church’s enemies. And Governor Roberts is an enemy of the homeschooling community. And she knows, and in our conversation with her, she made it clear that she knows that most homeschoolers are Christians.

She called me the day before the veto and we talked for about 35 or 40 minutes. She said, “Well, Dennis, I’m not an enemy of homeschoolers.” She said the same thing on TV the week before. “I talk to homeschoolers and they’re good people and don’t portray me as an enemy of homeschoolers.” And I said, “Well, you know, your actions speak louder than your words.”

And many times in that conversation, it essentially was an argument as opposed to a conversation. She didn’t call me to get advice about the bill. She called me to try to get me to tell the homeschooling community, the Christian homeschooling community, that she really was doing this for their best.

You know, and I made it clear to her that’s not what we’re going to do. We’re going down our course of action that we believe God has instructed us to do. We’ll try for a veto override. We’re going to go to the attorney general’s office and see what legal action we can take against the chairman of the state board of education who lied to both House and Senate education committees blatantly. That’s a violation of Oregon statute, etc. And I told the governor all this.

She doesn’t want to realize that she has declared herself. I don’t know of a single homeschooler in the state of Oregon—and I’m talking about the secular ones as well. Now, there are not many of them, but the ones that are organized—I know their leadership. I don’t know of a single homeschooler who thinks that Barbara Roberts is a friend of homeschoolers.

She’s in darkness. She’s in blindness thinking that she can pull this off, but she can’t. The state board, Barbara Roberts, now says peace and safety in this issue. We’ve settled this now. We’ve vetoed it. We can caucus in the Senate. We can prod. We can prevent an override of the veto. But God says—whatever means God chooses to use—that we need to know for our strength, for our encouragement, for our comfort that Governor Roberts will suffer the temporal judgments of God in time and in history.

That’s what he tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5. You don’t need to know quarterly financial reports. We don’t need to know if the veto override will work. We don’t need to know if it will come through, the specifics. We don’t need to know what the time and season of that will be. But what we do need to know is that the day of darkness—the day of God’s judgment of darkness against those who are in darkness—bringing that consummate of darkness of his wrath upon them, is to be played out in the context of the body politic in the state of Oregon and in that community.

Barbara Roberts will suffer the temporal judgments of God. And we’re to delight in that. We’re to be praise to that end. And we’re to see it as a good thing when it does finally occur.

You know, the big line throughout the epistles is not the fallen pagan world ultimately and the judgment that comes upon them. As I said, Paul singled out the Jews, the ones—the false church as it were—who are persecuting the true church in the first century AD. These are the special judgments of God. And indeed, Peter tells us that judgment begins with the house of God.

Barbara Roberts would not be where she were if it weren’t for Christians. There’s a liberal branch of the Christian church that has far greater numbers than we can pull together. And that liberal branch believes in the same thing Barbara Roberts believes in. It believes in the murder of unborn children. And it believes in the acceptability of sodomy and lesbian activities and it believes in letting people become gambling addicts as it were.

That community has supported Barbara Roberts, and the judgments that come forth from God’s throne room in time in history that we can expect to see in the next 20, 30, 40 years will come against them as well and come against them primarily. And indeed, Governor Roberts has been raised up by God, among other things, to bring judgment home to the apostate church in America and in Oregon—the churches that refuse to listen to the law word of God.

On one hand, we have the liberal church that has rejected his word as authoritative. On the other hand, we have fundamentalist Christians who are also responsible for the election of that governor.

I spoke to a supporter of Mr. Mobley for governor just last week. Interesting in the providence of God that we’re here a year later talking about this. Interesting in the providence of God that last week I had to get our water softener worked on, and the man who came out from Sears to work on it was a Christian and a supporter and a friend of Mr. Mobley.

And you know, it’s just sad to me that this man is a good picture, I think, of so many who supported Mr. Mobley and ended up giving us Barbara Roberts. This man’s a Christian. He’s a good man. He’s zealous for the Lord. But he’s been trained—in whatever church he goes to—in that intellectualism to think things through very far is probably not safe. You don’t want to think things through very far.

And so there’s that reaction against what we do. There’s the reaction that says we don’t know what you guys want. You know, the Mobley campaign was not about biblical law. It was about conservative values. And if we’ve got conservative apostate Christians on the right—or excuse me, liberal apostate Christians on the left who support the election of Governor Roberts and the promotion of evil and the suppression of righteousness in our state, which is what she is doing—on the right, we also have those who are more conservative than they are Christian and who don’t understand that the public schools are apostate and need to be wiped out eventually and done away with and don’t understand that abortionists, including the mothers, are under the death penalty of God for their murder of their children. And that’s what the scriptures say and that’s what this church I hope understands. They don’t understand these things. They want to go back to 1950 in the days of the Fawns, happy days. They don’t want to go back to the idea of biblical law and the Puritan situation in our country that gave it its great origins. So both…