Titus 2:13 looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, (NASB1995)

It is believed that Paul wrote 1 Timothy and Titus after he was released from his First imprisonment in Rome. And that it was while in that first imprisonment that he wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.

Why might that be important? Let’s consider what he had written to the Philippians, before he had written to Titus about our blessed hope.

Philippians 3:10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (NASB1995)

Paul having been in the Roman Prison must have rightly concluded in some way that it would not be his personal lot to see the return of the Lord and the Rapture.

Some Dispensationalist’s believe that because he had written I Thessalonians as possibly his earliest letter to us in the Church and because he had written in the first person concerning the Rapture, that he believed that it would occur as an imminent event in his lifetime. But even if that might have been so, that expectation if it were ever his was gone by the time he wrote Philippians.

So you are beginning to see how this all impacts his writing us about our blessed hope for this hope was contained in one of his last letters to us. Listen again:

Titus 2:13 looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, (NASB1995)

Although dispensational teaching will attempt to make a distinction between our blessed hope (making it equivalent to the Rapture), and the glorious appearing spoken of here, that understanding is fallacious. There is no separating the two.

Paul’s blessed hope was the resurrection, and he attached it here to Christ’s glorious appearing. In fact every believer including those who will have accepted Christ during the Tribulation and then come across this verse will have that same blessed hope to which Paul points us and every believer. This being said: Christ’s coming only becomes imminent when the signs surrounding His coming are being fulfilled. Paul saw in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-5, that we are not in darkness as is the world concerning this day, which he calls the day of the Lord. We have the word to lead us. The signs to lead us. And we have the Holy Spirit to lead us. May the Lord Jesus bless you in you study of this and every doctrine, and may the Holy Spirit lead you in the study of His Word.