In the brief period between the writing of Paul’s two Thessalonian epistles, some teachers had arisen in the church at Thessalonica who were advocating a false doctrine. Their teaching was that the Day of the Lord had come and that the church was already in the Great Tribulation. Doubtless, the persecution that the Christians were suffering had something to do with that fact. If so, these false teachers failed to distinguish between “tribulation,” which the Lord