PMW 2026-028 by Jason Bradfield
Gentry note:
Jason Bradfield once again applies devastating logic and destructive grammatical analysis to hyper-preterism. In this article he offers a master class in how NOT to interpret Scripture. He demonstrates this from the hyper-preterism in Gary DeMar’s writings. He also provides a warning regarding the necessity of understanding Greek grammar before writing about it. I highly commend Bradfield’s work and recommend you sign up to receive his new articles on a regular basis. I certainly have! (https://www.reformation.blog)
But now:
“We Who Are Alive” Is Not a Time Text
Among hyper-preterists, one of the more popular arguments for a first-century fulfillment of the resurrection is that Paul’s language in 1 Thessalonians 4:15 functions as a “time text.” The claim runs like this: when Paul wrote, “we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,” he was asserting that he personally expected to be among the living when Christ returned. Since Paul was alive in the mid-first century, the parousia must have been a mid-first-century event. Hyper-preterists Gary DeMar and Kim Burgess, among others, have pressed this reading.
“At this point in time, Paul still fully expected to be alive in his earthly body at the parousia of Christ as based on the direct warrant of Christ Himself in texts like Matthew 10:23, 16:27-28, and 24:34. This is precisely why Paul deliberately used “we” language in both 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15.1″
The argument sounds intuitive on the surface. But it collapses under the weight of Greek grammar, Paul’s own broader testimony, and, most critically, what Paul says in the very next verse. What we are dealing with in 1 Thessalonians 4:15 is not a prophetic time indicator at all. It is a category identification, and the difference matters enormously.
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The key phrase in Greek is hemeis hoi zontes hoi. The pronoun hemeis (”we”) is followed by two articular present participles: hoi zontes (”the ones living”) and hoi perileipomenoi (”the ones remaining”). The participles function substantivally, which means they describe a class of people defined by their condition at the time of the event, not at the time of writing. Paul is saying, in effect, “those among us believers who are in the state of being alive and remaining when the Lord comes.” The present tense of the participles is relative to the main action of the sentence (the coming of the Lord), not to the moment Paul picked up his pen. This is a standard use of the articular participle in Koine Greek and there is nothing in the grammar that restricts the referent to Paul and his immediate contemporaries.
To appreciate why this matters, consider the broader context of the passage. Paul is writing to a grieving church. Believers in Thessalonica had died, and the remaining congregation was distraught, apparently worried that their departed brothers and sisters would miss out on the parousia. Paul’s entire argument is pastoral comfort:
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 ESV)
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A Critique of the Hyper-preterist Error
by Ken Gentry
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The structure of Paul’s argument is to divide all believers into two groups: the dead in Christ and the living who remain. He uses “we” because he and his readers are currently alive and naturally fall, as things presently stand, into the latter group. But the whole point of the passage is that the timing is open-ended enough for some believers to have already died. If Paul “knew” the parousia would occur within his lifetime, the Thessalonians’ grief over a few recently deceased believers would be a remarkably trivial crisis to warrant apostolic correspondence. The passage only makes full pastoral sense if the timing genuinely remains unresolved.
But here is where the “time text” reading suffers its most decisive blow, and it comes from Paul himself in the very next breath. Without skipping a beat, Paul transitions into chapter 5:
“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. (1 Thessalonians 5:1-2 ESV)”
The thief metaphor is entirely about unpredictability. A thief does not send you a letter telling you when he is coming. The whole point of the image is that the timing is unknown and unknowable. Jesus used the same metaphor in Matthew 24:43 for exactly that reason, and Peter picks it up in 2 Peter 3:10 the same way. If Paul had just planted a time text in 4:15 telling the Thessalonians that the parousia would occur within their lifetime, why would he immediately pivot to telling them the timing is as unpredictable as a break-in? You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say “I’ve just told you it will happen while we’re alive” and then say “but you have no need for me to write about the timing because it comes when no one expects it.” Those two claims work against each other if the first one is really a time indicator. But on the categorical reading, the sequence is perfectly coherent: Paul is saying that whenever this happens, the dead will not miss out, and whoever among us is alive at the time will be caught up with them. As for when that will be, you already know the answer: you don’t know, and you can’t know.
What makes this connection even more devastating to the hyper-preterist “time text” claim is the phrase Paul uses. “The times and the seasons” in 1 Thessalonians 5:1 is ton chronon kai ton kairon. This is the same word pair that Jesus himself used in Acts 1:7 when the disciples asked him about the timing of the restoration: “He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons (chronous he kairous) that the Father has fixed by his own authority’” (Acts 1:7 ESV). The only differences are the grammatical case (accusative in Acts, genitive in 1 Thessalonians, because of their different syntactic positions) and the conjunction (“or” in Acts, “and” in 1 Thessalonians). But it is unmistakably the same phrase.
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Paul is not just making a general point about unpredictability. He is echoing the Lord’s own words. And he is doing it immediately after the passage that hyper-preterists want to turn into a chronological marker. Jesus told the disciples that the timing of these events is not for them to know. Paul then tells the Thessalonians, using the same phrase, that they have no need for him to write about the times and seasons, because they already know the answer: it comes like a thief. They know this because Jesus already told them so. That is not what you write ten seconds after dropping a time text. That is what you write after deliberately not giving one.
The parallel passage in 1 Corinthians 15 reinforces all of this….
To finish reading the article, go to:
https://www.reformation.blog/p/we-who-are-alive-is-not-a-time-text
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