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1 Thessalonians 5:2
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2 For [gar] yourselves [autos] know [eido] perfectly [akribos] that [hoti] the day [hemera] of the Lord [kurios] so [houto] cometh [erchomai] as [hos] a thief [kleptes] in [en] the night. [nux] KJV-Interlinear
2 For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. NASB
‘For you know,’ indicates that this doctrine was well known by the Thessalonians and we can presume that others back in Pauls day, understood this principle as well. Because they had obviously been taught the doctrine of the Rapture.
They knew also, that the Rapture would come upon the world as a thief would come to a house to rob it.
A thief comes when you least expect it. He plans his theft, as it were, when you will not be home, when you have dropped your guard. He plans to come and take your property, and then leave, only for you to discover after the fact, that you have been robbed.
You will not know when you were robbed, but only that it occurred in the past night, or at a time when you were away from home.
You cannot plan for the coming of the thief, otherwise you would be there waiting to catch him, or to cause him to abort his burglary. And even after he has robbed you, you cannot know exactly the hour that he was in your home. You know only that your things are now missing.
And so, the imminence of the Rapture is a permanent and unchanging doctrine. No one will ever guess the moment, the hour, the day or week or month or year, decade or perhaps even the century of His coming. No one who is living at the time of the Rapture, that is.
Now, you and I can guess and predict, perhaps this century or the next, as being the century of the Rapture. But what if it isn’t for another two centuries? That is certainly a possibility. What if there were a massive epidemic and the population of the world died off by the billions? Then the Rapture may not occur for a very long time, while the population takes many centuries to rebuild itself again.
Two principles are apparent here.
First, we cannot predict the date of the Rapture.
Second, people (in general) in the Rapture generation, will be taken by complete surprise. And certainly unbelievers who are generally clueless about Christian doctrines, will take some time, after the Rapture, before they figure it all out.
As for believers, there will be a very spiritually weak generation of believers living in that day. But then that describes our day, and nearly every generation in history.
