This past March I went through Paul's 2 letters to the Thessalonians with my weekly Inductive Study class.
Now, 1&2 Thessalonians are not books that I particularly wanted to teach. There are a lot of highly debated passages within the 2 letters, many of which touch on eschatology, that I did not want to teach on. Some of these passages have caused a lot of hurt and division amongst Christians over the years and I did not want to be one to add to that. However, we were making our way chronologically through Paul's letters and these two letters were the next ones on our list.
None the less, I want to make it clear that the decision to teach these books was not one I made lightly. After consulting with my Pastor and friend whom I was leading the study with, we decided to go ahead with studying this book.
The moment I began studying these books in preparation for the teachings, I realized that there was no way we could follow our regular inductive format with our 1 hour sessions a week. It was clear that in order to study these books inductively there was a lot more historical and literary background needed than for our previous books. Furthermore, I would need more time to study and present the opposing viewpoints on the more controversial passages, especially if I was going to present them with as unbiased a viewpoint as I can.
This resulted in two weeks of historical background teaching, plus an additional week on apocalyptic literature, as opposed to our regular one week of historical background to go along with our discussion weeks.
Please, please, please, if you have any questions about these teachings, do not hesitate to contact me and ask. You are not required to agree with everything that I say in these lectures, but I do encourage you to listen to them with an open mind and be prepared to hear viewpoints different than your own. I have tried to tackle the impossible task of presenting all of varying interpretations on this book as best as I can.
Here is Week 1 of Historical Background Listen Here >>
In this lesson we cover the basic Historical Background for 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Below is the Timeline I reference midway through the lesson.
Here is my 3rd Week's lesson covering the Intro to Apocalyptic Literature Listen Here >>
Now, don't let my Introduction to this lesson shock you. I do use a pretty extreme example to highlight the importance of reading the Bible in context. The concept of Apocalyptic Literature may be something very new to you, but trust me, this is a type of literature that is very important to understand when studying the Bible. I hope this is a very insightful lesson for you.
Here is Week 4's lesson where we return to Historical Background again Listen Here >>
If it helps, you can read my History After Jesus Handout here > >
Once again, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. I hope that these lessons are insightful.
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