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The Bible Year

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 5, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 49.

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The Bible Year

Assignment for October 8 to 14

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians

“This epistle was written by Paul from Corinth, A. D. 52, to the church at Thessalonica, which consisted of Jews, Jewish proselytes, and converts from heathenism. On their second missionary tour Paul and Silas visited Thessalonica (now called Saloniki), which was and still is an important and prosperous commercial city and seaport, after having been driven from Philippi. Great success attended the preaching of the gospel, some of the Jews believed, and ‘of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.’ The special object of the epistle was to encourage and strengthen the newly formed church, the apostle having been compelled to leave Thessalonica on account of persecutions from the unbelieving Jews. Timothy was sent from Athens to establish the believers, and to comfort them under afflictions; and the good tidings brought by him of their faith and love, coupled with the insuperable difficulties in the way of a personal visit, induced Paul to write this letter. The language used is very tender and affectionate, and well calculated to inspire the converts with hope and joy. Note especially the prominence given to the second advent, the details of which are more fully and succinctly given than in any other of Paul’s writings.”—Dr. Anderson.

The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians

“This epistle was written by Paul from Corinth shortly after the first letter. Its special design was to counteract some erroneous expectations concerning the immediate nearness of the second advent. After referring to the gathering together of the church to the Lord Jesus Christ, the apostle tells them that certain important events were to take place prior to the Lord’s coming with his people; and he dwells especially on the revelation of the ‘man of sin,’ giving full details of his character and actings in the last days. Notice that the second advent of Messiah is referred to, with more or less amplitude of detail, in every chapter of both these epistles.”—Id.

The Epistle to the Galatians

On his second missionary journey, while detained by sickness in the Roman province of Galatia, Paul had raised up a number of churches. About 280 B. C. this territory was settled by fugitive Gauls, driven out of Italy and Greece; and their descendants, with a mingling of Greeks, Romans, and Jews, formed the population in Paul’s day. The people, perhaps owing to the influence of their Gallic ancestry, are described as “susceptible of quick impressions and sudden changes, with a fickleness equal to their courage and enthusiasm, and a constant liability to that disunion which is the fruit of excessive vanity.”
A few years after Paul’s visit certain Jewish teachers who professed Christianity visited the Galatian churches, and introduced false doctrines among them. They ignored the decisions of the church council held a few years before in Jerusalem, and urged the Galatian Christians to enforce certain ceremonies that they held as essential. The believers not being thoroughly grounded in the truth, and having little tenacity of purpose, a critical situation arose among them, which threatened to disrupt the churches.
It was this situation, word of which reached Paul, probably while in Corinth, that led him to write with his own hand the earnest letter to the Galatians. “He indignantly rebukes his children in Christ for their sudden alienation from him and from the truth; vindicates his authority, and his teachings as an apostle, by showing that he received them from Christ himself; and forcibly presents the great doctrine of Christianity—justification by faith—with its relations to the law on the one hand and to holy living on the other.”
“The apostle’s earnest words of entreaty were not fruitless. The Holy Spirit wrought with mighty power, and many whose feet had wandered into strange paths returned to their former faith in the gospel.” For nine hundred years the churches of Galatia were mentioned in ecclesiastical history.
“Since the days of Luther,” says Meyer, “the epistle to the Galatians has always been held in high esteem as the gospel’s banner of freedom. To it and the epistle to the Romans we owe most directly the springing up and development of the ideas and energies of the Reformation.”