Today in our journey along Route 66 we come to Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians... Author Paul is the undisputed author of 1 Thessalonians. Bible commentators ancient and modern are agreed upon that. Date Another thing that all Bible commentators are agreed upon is that 1 Thessalonians is one of the earliest letters in the New Testament. In fact, it may be the oldest book in the New Testament. This letter may have been written as early as AD 48. The Church at Thessalonica was founded by the Apostle Paul and was born amidst persecution. You can read the whole story in Acts 17. Pauls’ fellow Jews in Thessalonica, who had rejected his message, drove Paul out of town. Apparently, they continued to persecute those in Thessalonica who had become followers of Jesus as their Messiah. Paul wrote his first letter to the Thessalonian Church a short time after his first visit there. Themes Paul wrote this letter to encourage this fledgling church amidst their suffering. So, it should c
Today in our journey along Route 66 we come to Paul’s Letter to the Colossians... Author In the early church this letter was universally accepted as a genuine letter of the Apostle Paul. In the 19 th century some critical scholars came to be belief that the heresy which Paul refutes in chapter 2 was that of Gnosticism. The word “Gnosticism” comes from the Greek word “Gnosis” which means “knowledge”. The Gnostics believed that the world was created and ruled by a lesser divinity, a demiurge, and that Christ was an emissary of the remote supreme divine being. Furthermore, the Gnostics believed that Jesus had passed on to them, by word of mouth, secret knowledge of the one, true supreme being, enabling them alone to achieve redemption. Now, here’s the thing… the Gnostic heresy did not appear in its full-blown form until the second century. So, if the letter to the Colossians was addressing the Gnostic heresy, then it could not have been written until the second century and therefore