1 Thessalonians 2:16

forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved; to fill up their sins always: but the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.

Thessalonica is the place where Jewish opposition finally revealed how obdurate, unscrupulous and obtrusive it could be. There was no reason whatever behind that wandering committee of self-appointed opponents going into every town where Paul preached and stirring up hatred and persecution against the church. Having failed in their persecutions both in Judea and upon the mission field, at Thessalonica they enlisted the Gentiles, their magistrates and leaders, and turned them against Paul and the gospel. This was the "sin against the Holy Spirit" Jesus had mentioned in Mark 3:29. God had mercifully forgiven Israel the murder of the prophets (sin against God), and the murder of Christ (sin against the Son); but as Jesus said, the sin against the Holy Spirit was final.

Christ had already announced the hardening of Israel, but if they had accepted the gospel they might yet have been saved; but, in the continued opposition in Gentile lands, such as Thessalonica, Paul correctly read it. It could only mean that the destruction of the Holy City was not too far away. Jesus had faithfully promised:

But the king was wroth; and he sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned their city (Matthew 22:7).

Stated in the past tense, that is, the prophetic tense, this was a clear indication of what would happen if Israel persisted in their opposition to Christ and his gospel. Paul properly read the signs of the times as indicating the near-approach of that destruction.

It is a gross mistake to make anything racial out of the sad words in this passage. Just as Israel had their "times," marked by innumerable mercies from heaven, so it has been with the Gentiles; but our "times" too are also in all probability drawing to an end; and a fate even worse than that which destroyed Jerusalem looms threateningly in the not-too-distant future- unless, and God grant that there may be, a wholesale turning of the people of our day to the Lord Jesus Christ occurs.