2TH 03:18
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	/TB  Rom 16:20 
	Lihat TSK - sumber "Rom 16:20"
==TSK==
	. Ro 16:20,24



     CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE EPISTLES TO THE THESSALONIANS.

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, it is generally agreed,
was the earliest written of all St. Paul's epistles, whence we
see the reason and propriety of his anxiety that it should be
read in all the Christian churches of Macedonia--"I charge you
by the Lord, that this Epistle be read unto all the holy
brethren."  (ch. 5:27.)  "The existence of this clause,"
observes Dr. Paley, "is an evidence of its authenticity;
because, to produce a letter, purporting to have been publicly
read in the church at Thessalonica, when no such letter had been
read or heard of in that church, would be to produce an
imposture destructive of itself....Either the Epistle was
publicly read in the church of Thessalonica, during St. Paul's
lifetime, or it was not.  If it was, no publication could be
more authentic, no species of notoriety more unquestionable, no
method of preserving the integrity of the copy more secure....If
it was not, the clause would remain a standing condemnation of
the forgery, and one would suppose, an invincible impediment to
its success."  Its genuineness, however, has never been
disputed; and it has been universally received in the Christian
church, as the inspired production of St. Paul, from the
earliest period to the present day.  The circumstance of this
injunction being given, in the first epistle which the Apostle
wrote, also implies a strong and avowed claim to the character
of an inspired writer; as in fact it placed his writings on the
same ground with those of Moses and the ancient prophets.  The
second Epistle, besides those marks of genuineness and authority
which it possesses in common with the others, bears the highest
evidence of its divine inspiration, in the representation which
it contains of the papal power, under the characters of "the Man
of sin," and the "Mystery of iniquity."  The true Christian
worship is the worship of the one only God, through the one only
Mediator, the man Christ Jesus; and from this worship the church
of Rome has most notoriously departed, by substituting other
mediators, invocating and adoring saints and angels, worshipping
images, adoring the host, etc.  It follows, therefore, that "the
Man of sin" is the Pope; not only on account of the disgraceful
lives of many of them, but by means of their scandalous
doctrines and principles; dispensing with the most necessary
duties, selling pardons and indulgences for the most abominable
crimes, and perverting the worship of God to the grossest
superstition and idolatry.  It was evidently the chief design of
the Apostle, in writing to the Thessalonians, to confirm them in
the faith, to animate them to a courageous profession of the
Gospel, and to the practice of all the duties of Christianity;
but to suppose, with Dr. Macknight, that he intended to prove
the divine authority of Christianity by a chain of regular
arguments, in which he answered the several objections which the
heathen philosophers are supposed to have advanced, seems quite
foreign to the nature of the epistles, and to be grounded on a
mistaken notion, that the philosophers designed at so early a
period to enter on a regular disputation with the Christians,
when in fact they derided them as enthusiasts, and branded their
doctrines as "foolishness."  In pursuance of his grand object,
"it is remarkable," says Dr. Doddridge, "with how much address
he improves all the influence which his zeal and fidelity in
their service must naturally give him, to inculcate upon them
the precepts of the gospel, and persuade them to act agreeably
to their sacred character.  This was the grand point he always
kept in view, and to which every thing else was made
subservient.  Nothing appears, in any part of his writings, like
a design to establish his own reputation, or to make use of his
ascendancy over his Christian friends to answer any secular
purposes of his own.  On the contrary, in this and in his other
epistles, he discovers a most generous, disinterested regard for
their welfare, expressly disclaiming any authority over their
consciences, and appealing to them, that he had chose to
maintain himself by the labour of this own hands, rather than
prove burdensome to the churches, or give the least colour of
suspicion, that, under zeal for the gospel, and concern for
their improvement, he was carrying on any private sinister view.
The discovery of so excellent a temper must be allowed to carry
with it a strong presumptive argument in favour of the doctrines
he taught....And, indeed, whoever reads St. Paul's epistles with
attention, and enters into the spirit with which they were
written, will discern such intrinsic characters of their
genuineness, and the divine authority of the doctrines they
contain, as will, perhaps, produce in him a stronger conviction
than all the external evidence with which they are attended."
These remarks are exceedingly well grounded and highly
important; and to no other Epistles can they apply with greater
force than the present most excellent productions of the
inspired Apostle.  The last two chapters of the first epistle,
in particular, as Dr. A. Clarke justly observes, "are certainly
among the most important, and the most sublime in the New
Testament.  The general judgment, the resurrection of the body,
and the states of the quick and the dead, the unrighteous and
the just, are described, concisely indeed, but they are
exhibited in the most striking and affecting points of view."