‘For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we who are alive, who are left, will together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.'
We will not at this point cloud the glory of these words by controversy (see excursus at the end of chapter 5). The picture is immense, but it speaks of things that we cannot fully comprehend. To press the detail too literally to conform it to a viewpoint is to overlook that here we are dealing with something beyond human comprehension. This was the moment for which creation had waited and groaned, the full redemption of God's people both dead and living (Romans 8:19-23), and the One Who was coming was not just a king, He was the King of glory, and those who united with Him were no longer flesh and blood but spiritual beings.
‘For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven.' Cease argument and gaze in wonder. The Lord Himself will be revealed in His glory. He will come with the clouds and every eye will see Him (Revelation 1:7). For there will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven -- and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and He will send forth His angels with the sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven (Matthew 24:30-31; Mark 13:26-27). 1 Corinthians 15:51-53 puts it, ‘we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will all be changed.'
‘With a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God.' The picture is a military one. The sergeant major calls the troops to order (note the anonymity of the shout), the commander-in-chief gives the order to march and the trumpet sounds. But this time the commander-in-chief is the archangel, a reminder that although not mentioned here the angels are there at their stations, and the trumpet is the trumpet of God, sounded by the royal trumpeter on His behalf. And it is ‘the last trump' (1 Corinthians 15:52), the final culmination of all trumpets that have sounded in the purposes of God (see Exodus 19:16; Isaiah 27:13; Joel 2:1; Zechariah 9:14; Matthew 24:31), for the end is here. These pictures depict heavenly events in earthly terms. We must not literalise them. Spiritual beings do not blow trumpets. Basically it refers to ‘the command to march'.
‘And the dead in Christ shall rise first.' At the voice of the Son of God the tombs are opened, and the dead come forth, raised as incorruptible to the resurrection of life (John 5:25; John 5:28-29)
‘Then we who are alive, who remain, will together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.' Paul numbers himself with the living because at that time he was living. He is enthusiastically picturing the whole scene as though they were all taking part in it, as indeed at that time was his hope. The ‘we' really means ‘we Christians', whoever are alive at the time. Without the pronoun in the first person the picture would have lost some of its emphasis and some of the sense of participation. It was essential.
Notice the clouds, a common feature of the glorious appearance of the Son of Man. The clouds have not been previously mentioned here but are assumed on the basis of well known teaching elsewhere (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27). They indicate the heavenly nature of the whole operation.
Notice also that the living will be caught up together with the resurrected dead, and will with them meet the Lord ‘in the air', the sphere in which Satan once was active (Ephesians 2:2). But he is a defeated foe, and he cannot stand before the Lord of glory. The word ‘caught up' is not necessarily ‘forceful'. It is used of transference by the Holy Spirit in Acts 8:39, and of someone (probably Paul himself) caught up to the third heaven for revelation in 2 Corinthians 12:2. He did not even know whether it was in or out of the body. There is not therefore necessarily the idea of rescue. (This is also true in extra-Biblical literature). It thus indicates being ‘borne by the hand of God' (compare Ezekiel 3:14; Ezekiel 11:1; Ezekiel 11:24). Both living and resurrected are caught up together. In this we see the irresistible power of the Lord. Being caught up includes spiritual transformation which takes place in both dead and living in the twinkling of an eye (1 Corinthians 15:52).
The verb to ‘meet' is regularly used of the citizens of a city going our to meet an important personage in order to bring them in triumph into the city. But there Paul stops with no further detailed explanation. Where they proceed to is unimportant here. He is dealing with the question of the resurrected dead in relation to the living at the Lord's coming, and having dealt with the question He points to the grand conclusion, ‘so shall we ever be with the Lord'. Any other fact pales into insignificance. The final purposes of God are complete and the eternal future is with Him in His presence, wherever He may be.
The idea of the Lord so coming down, but in judgment, is found in Micah 1:3; Zechariah 14:5 which may well be seen as following immediately on this event.