One element about prophecy about the future that has puzzled me in a certain context is the phrase “sudden destruction” in the following:
For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3)
As I say, my perplexity has stemmed from the context. This is a follow-up passage from the Apostle Paul’s further revelation on the mystery about the Rapture:
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:16–18)
For me, the disconnect came from my long-thought belief that there will be, following the disappearance of millions of believers, a collapse–a meltdown—of human interaction on a global scale. Chaos would immediately follow this staggering event, but it would, I believed, be a more-or-less controlled chaos; the cry for peace and safety would be like a growing worldwide emotional breakdown and financial, societal, and cultural collapse that would cause people to beg for somebody to fix it all.
Antichrist would be willing and able to step up, and the panicked people would readily accept the back-to-normal promises he offered, giving him growing control over the nations.
But why, then, the term “sudden destruction”? It smacks of instant devastation, not of slow or even rapid collapse into chaos and dystopian existence for the world of left-behind people.
The realization strikes that “peace and safety” seems to connote something far deeper than freedom from chaos and disorder from financial catastrophe and the breakdown of law and order. It indicates, I am convicted, a desperate desire for a preservation of life itself, not just a call for restoration to something akin to normalcy.
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