Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] What these seasons are, learn from the Thessalonians. For we read: "How you abandoned your idols to become slaves of a God who is living and genuine, and to await his Son out of the skies, the one he brought back from among the dead — Jesus": [2] and again: "For what else is our expectation, delight, or victor's wreath, except yourselves, before our Lord Jesus in his presence at his arrival?" And again: "Before our God and Father, when our Lord Jesus arrives, together with every one of his holy ones." [3] Teaching them against excessive mourning for those who sleep in death, he lays out, at the same moment, the sequence of the rising: "For since we hold that Jesus perished and stood up alive again, God will likewise bring along with him those who fell asleep by way of Jesus: [4] this much we declare to you on the Lord's own authority, that we, the living, still remaining when the Lord arrives, shall not go ahead of those already asleep: [5] since the Lord in person will come down out of heaven with a shout of command, an archangel's voice, and God's own trumpet-blast, and it is the dead who belong to Christ who will rise first: [6] afterward we, the living, the ones left behind, shall be swept up together with them among the clouds, to greet the Lord Christ in mid-air, and thus we shall remain with the Lord forever." [7] Whose ear has yet caught this archangel's voice, this trumpet of God — outside, perhaps, of some heretic's private chamber? Even granting that God's trumpet might mean the gospel-preaching already summoning them, still, either their bodies must have already died in order to have already risen — in which case how are they still breathing? — or they have already been carried off among the clouds — in which case how are they still standing here among us? [8] Truly the most pitiable of men, as the apostle declares, are those who have hope only in this life — for by grasping ahead of time they cut themselves off, seizing now what is promised only after this life, and are cheated of the truth no less than Phygelus and Hermogenes were. [9] And so the majesty of the Holy Spirit, keen-sighted about exactly this kind of thinking, adds in that same letter to the Thessalonians: "Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, there is no need to write to you: [10] for you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night: [11] when they are saying 'Peace' and 'All is safe,' then sudden destruction will fall upon them." [12] And in the second letter, with fuller concern, to the same church: "Now we ask you, brothers, in view of our Lord Jesus Christ's arrival and our being gathered together to him, [13] that you not be quickly shaken in mind, nor be troubled, whether by a spirit, or by a word" — meaning of false prophets — "or by a letter" — meaning of false apostles — "as though from us, alleging that the day of the Lord is already at hand: [14] let no one deceive you in any way, for it will not come unless the falling away comes first" — the falling away, that is, from this present empire — "and the man of lawlessness is revealed" — that is, the antichrist — "the son of destruction, [15] who sets himself against and lifts himself over everything termed divine or an object of reverence, so that he enthrones himself within God's temple, proclaiming himself God: [16] do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? [17] And now you know what restrains him, so that he may be revealed in his own time: [18] for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only let him who now restrains it go on restraining it, until he is taken out of the way" — and who is that, but the Roman state, whose breaking-up, scattered into ten kings, will bring on the antichrist? — [19] "and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the mere appearance of his coming: [20] whose arrival follows Satan's own operation, with every kind of force, and wonders, and deceptive marvels, and with all wickedness's trickery, for those headed toward ruin."