For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
Revelation 11:12
Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them.
Revelation 11:12 is calling up the two witnesses that died and were given life again. There is great similarity between them and us.
Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.
Will we be taken out before this happens? The timing of these prophecies is difficult to calculate.
And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.
After the taking away of 1 Thessalonians 4:17 the Day of the Lord happens.
The second woe has passed; behold, the third woe is soon to come.
And then the Seventh Trumpet sounded.
Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”
Is this the third woe? I have tried over and over again to reconcile these events and it just leads to more and more questions. So I have resolved myself to preach the gospel and then the end will come. I am not exactly sure which end He is referring to in Matthew 24:14.