The Wrath to Come
R. S. Barrett. 1 Thessalonians 1:7-10 So that you were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia.… Men in these times seem unwilling to hear of future punishment. Hell is no longer a word for ears polite. They talk as if "a certain class of preachers" invented hell and kept it burning to enforce their precepts. I was in Naples in 1884, the year that cholera was epidemic. The Neapolitans accused the physicians of bringing the cholera. The physicians predicted it; they told the people that unless they cleaned up their city the scourge would come. They laid down rules and gave warning. So when the cholera came, the people thought the physicians brought it to intimidate them into washing themselves and keeping their backyards clean, so they threw stones at the physicians and drove them out of the city. These physicians had come to risk their lives for the ungrateful people who rejected them. Thus, when preachers begin to talk of the scourge which will follow sin, the people — that is, some of them — begin to think the preachers are in some way responsible for this scourge. The preachers are assailed as cruel, fanatical, behind the times, and all that. Our Lord is a Physician. He came and found the disease of sin and its fatal consequences here already. He did not bring them. He left His home to improve the sanitary condition of this world, to cleanse its filth. And in order to induce men to submit to His treatment, He warns them to flee from the wrath to come. (R. S. Barrett.) Parallel Verses KJV: So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. WEB: so that you became an example to all who believe in Macedonia and in Achaia.