"Gathers the resurrected saints from Heaven" ?
Not correct, according to the Greek. The statement reverses the direction of travel and conflates two different events.
What 1 Thess 4:16-17 actually says in Greek:
katabēsetai ap' ouranou — the Lord will descend from heaven
oi nekroi en Christō anastēsontai prōton — the dead in Christ will rise first
harpagēsometha ... en nepheleisin ... apantesin ton Kyrioun en aerī — we will be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air
The verb is anastēsontai (from anistēmi, "to rise up"). This is a resurrection from the dead — from their burial places — not a retrieval from Heaven. The dead are not sitting in Heaven waiting to be picked up; they are in their tombs and will be raised. The preposition is absent; the verb itself carries the meaning "rise from among the dead" (BDAG).
I do not believe in the 'soul sleep' theory tradition.
1 Peter 3:18-20 about the "spirits in prison" is about people that died back to the flood, as written. They are dead in regards to their flesh bodies, but alive in regards to their 'spirit', which is a heavenly dimension operation. Soul sleep theory believes those "spirits in prison" represent demons, and that Jesus was only declaring His victory over them. Not so. That event of Jesus at His resurrection preaching The Gospel to those "spirits in prison" was about fulfilling the Isaiah 42:7 prophecy...
Isa 42:6-7
6 I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles;
7 To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.
KJV
That
"prison house" is not about earthly prisons. It is about Satan's pit prison in the heavenly dimension. That is why 1 Peter 4:5-6 then says this:
1 Peter 4:5-6
5 Who shall give account to Him That is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
6 For, for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.
KJV
And the Biblical fact that Lord Jesus went to those "spirits in prison" once His flesh body was "quickened", is yet another example those were alive and aware in the heavenly.
1 Peter 3:18-20
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
KJV
Thusly, Apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-15 that we who remain are alive shall not 'precede' (KJV "prevent" NT:5348 means 'precede' in the Greek) them who are asleep. Precede to where? To the heavenly. And that's why Paul says Jesus will bring those asleep saints with Him, when He comes.
1 Thess 4:14-15
14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
KJV
This idea is confirmed in the Matthew 24:31 and Mark 13:27 verses, where it should be evident Jesus is Who Apostle Paul was pulling that idea from.
In the Matthew 24:31 gathering of the saints, it says they are gathered
"... from one end of heaven to the other." If they are gathered from heaven like Jesus said there, it means they have to already be in the heavenly. That does not say those saints are gathered from the ground then to the sky. In the Mark 13:27 version, about the saints still alive on earth, it says its saints are gathered
"... from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven." Any other interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 that goes against that evidence in Christ's Olivet discourse is to contradict our Lord Jesus Christ.
Have you not read Ecclesiastes 12:5-7? It reveals that when our flesh dies, there is a "silver cord" that is loosed, and then our flesh goes back to the earth where it came from, but our spirit goes back to God Who gave it. Per Hebrews 4:12, God made us with a flesh body, a spirit, and a soul. Our spirit and soul parts are of the heavenly order. Only our flesh is of this earthly order.
This is why Lord Jesus said in John 3:6 that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of The Spirit is spirit. But Nicodemus didn't understand because obviously he believed the tradition of soul sleep. Per Matthew 10:28 Lord Jesus said to not fear those who can kill our flesh body, but not our soul. That right there is about the distinction between the earthly order and the heavenly order of our makeup God made us with. Apostle Paul made this even more clear in the 2 Corinthians 5 Chapter showing that we also have a body not made with hands, but one from God, eternal in the heavens, meaning of the heavenly dimension.
"Brings those with Him at His descent to the earth"
The direction is up, not down. Christ descends (partially — to the air), the dead rise, the living are caught up to meet him in the air (en aerī). Nobody is brought down to the ground. The endpoint Paul states is: esometha hyp' autou pantote — "we will always be with the Lord." No earthly destination is mentioned.
1 Thessalonians 4:16 says Jesus will "descend from heaven." Matthew 25:31-32 says Jesus when He comes, He will sit upon His throne of glory (David's throne He inherits, which is an earthy throne), and then all the nations will be gathered before Him. That can only happen upon this earth. Therefore, that reveals that He descent is back to this earth, after He gathers His saints of course, but still at that same one-time future coming.
I never said that 1 Thessalonians 4 is where it says all the saints gathered by Lord Jesus go to the Mount of Olives. Instead, that is written in the Zechariah 14 Scripture, which is where I pointed you to in my previous post.
The "day of the Lord" is when Jesus' future coming to gather His Church will be. Zechariah 14 lays this out too, and confirms what the two angels said in Acts 1 about Jesus future return. Per Revelation 16:15, just prior to the 7th Vial being poured out, Jesus warns the Church that He comes "as a thief". That metaphor is from what Apostles Paul and Peter taught that the "day of the Lord" shall come "as a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5 and 2 Peter 3:10). That day is how the Zechariah 14 Scripture starts out.
Zech 14:3-5
3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle.
That future battle is about the Revelation 16 event of Armageddon on the 7th Vial, which Lord Jesus and His angels fight on the day of His future coming "as a thief".
4 And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
5 And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee.
KJV
