Lightning, trumpet and shout

The comparison Jesus chose

When Jesus wanted to tell His disciples how to recognise His coming, He did not reach for an image of stillness. He reached for the most sudden, public and unmistakable event in the natural world.

“Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Notice the contrast Jesus builds. The counterfeit is in a place you have to go to: the desert, the inner rooms. It is local and it is hidden; someone has to tell you where to find it. The real coming is like lightning that lights the whole sky from one horizon to the other. Nobody has to tell you that lightning has struck. You do not go looking for it. It finds you. That is the test Jesus gave: if someone has to tell you He has come, He has not come.

The loudest event in history

Paul’s description to the Thessalonians is the fullest in the New Testament, and it is written to comfort people who had buried loved ones and wanted to know whether the dead would miss the Lord’s return.

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Count the sounds: a shout, the voice of an archangel, the trumpet of God. Then count the events: the Lord Himself descends from heaven; the dead in Christ rise; the living are caught up together with them in the clouds. This is the passage from which the word “rapture” comes, from the Latin for “caught up”. It is worth noticing that the very passage used to teach a silent, secret rapture is the noisiest passage in the New Testament. Nothing in it is secret. The Lord is seen; the trumpet is heard; graves open all over the earth.

Jesus said the same thing in the same order:

Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

The sign appears in heaven; all the tribes of the earth mourn; they see Him; the trumpet sounds; the angels gather the elect. The gathering of the elect, the “rapture”, happens at the visible, audible coming, in full view of a mourning world. It is not a separate, earlier event.

Fire and glory

Paul wrote a second letter to the same church, and described the same coming from the other side, as it will be experienced by those who are not ready.

and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed.

Once again, one event with two faces. The troubled believers receive rest “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels”. Those who do not know God meet “flaming fire” at the same moment, “in that Day”. The relief of the church and the judgment of the world happen at the same coming. There is no gap in which the church is gone and the world carries on.

The Old Testament saw it too

Our God shall come, and shall not keep silent; A fire shall devour before Him, And it shall be very tempestuous all around Him. He shall call to the heavens from above, And to the earth, that He may judge His people: “Gather My saints together to Me, Those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.”

“Our God shall come, and shall not keep silent.” A thousand years before Paul, the psalmist described the gathering of the saints at the coming of God with fire, tempest and a voice that calls to heaven and earth. The second coming is not a New Testament novelty, and in neither Testament is it quiet.

What the world will do

John saw how the unready will respond when the sky opens:

Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

Kings, generals, the rich, the powerful, the slave and the free, every class of humanity, see “the face of Him who sits on the throne” and cry out to be hidden from it. Nobody is wondering where the Christians went. Everybody is looking at the same sky. And John saw who is in that sky: heaven opened, a white horse, One called Faithful and True, with eyes like a flame of fire and many crowns, followed by the armies of heaven, and on His robe a name written, “KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:11-16).

Putting the pictures together

Lightning across the sky. A shout, the voice of an archangel, the trumpet of God. Clouds, power and great glory. Mighty angels and flaming fire. The sky receding like a scroll, and every class of humanity seeing His face. The Bible has given us, from Jesus, Paul, John and the psalmist, a single consistent portrait of the second coming, and every brushstroke is public. We will see in the next two chapters that the two phrases most often used to argue for a secret coming, “like a thief” and “one taken, one left”, come from the very passages that paint this portrait, and that they mean something quite different from what is usually claimed.