This is not meant to be a complete commentary on 2 Thes. 2. Instead, I want to demonstrate that Paul had to have taught the Thessalonians that the rapture of the Church would precede the End Times judgments. Think of it as a supplement to your study of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.
By most accounts Paul stayed in Thessalonica for only about 3 weeks and during that time he founded a Church and taught them the doctrines of salvation and sanctification, the Trinity, the nature of man, the assurance of pardon, and the Day of the Lord. He continued teaching them after he left with his first letter, written from Corinth in 51 AD, in which he introduced the doctrine of the rapture (1 Thes. 4:16-17). Shortly after that they received another letter appearing to be from him, announcing that the Day of the Lord had come. They reacted with fear and confusion and immediately sought clarification.
“Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus and our being gathered to Him, we ask you brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy report or letter supposed to have come from us saying that the Day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let any one deceive you in any way for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.” (2 Thes 2:1-3)
From Paul’s response it’s clear the previous letter had been a forgery, sent by someone pretending to be him and designed to frighten them. It worked. The Greek words for unsettle and alarm literally mean to agitate, incite, and frighten. Something in the letter had contradicted their understanding of his teaching and they were upset. Reading 2 Thes 2:1-3 we see that the forgery must have disputed Paul’s teaching on events leading up to the Day of the Lord. This is the only logical explanation for his 2nd letter to the Thessalonians.
Notice that right from the beginning Paul separated the coming of the Lord from our being gathered to Him. That’s because they’re two different events. We can’t tell their relative timing from this, but we can tell they’re not the same thing. One is when He comes back down to Earth, while from 1 Thes. 4:16-17 we know the other has us going up to meet Him in the air and continuing to Heaven. The 2nd coming will be witnessed by everyone (Matt. 24:30), but the rapture is an instantaneous disappearance (1 Cor. 15:51-52) that happens without warning.
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