The Last Trumpet

As Paul puts it more than once, the resurrection of the righteous occurs with the use of a trumpet (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 1 Corinthians 15:51-52).  The resurrection of Jesus is but the first of many (15:20), the latter being raised to life in the eschatological future.  While the Bible does not say everything relevant to the issue in one place—indeed, it does not do this with a great many things—it does say enough to establish that this resurrection of those committed to Yahweh does not occur before some seven-year Tribulation as one might hear from evangelicals.  Supposedly, God is to remove Christians from the world before a time of great judgment and suffering comes, which itself leads up to the Second Coming.  What Paul says in conjunction with what Revelation and/or Matthew state teaches this.

This resurrection trumpet Paul has mentioned is called the final trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:52), and yet if this sounding happens before the events of Revelation at large as many evangelicals believe, then it would not be the last one mentioned in Biblical eschatology: Revelation 8:2, 6-13, 9:1-21, 10:7, and 11:15-19 address a series of seven trumpets that announce cataclysms for the inhabitants of the world well into the period evangelicals refer to as the Tribulation.  There could not be a "final" trumpet before the seven years in which seven more trumpets are used, but this is a contradiction that many evangelicals are quite comfortable to overlook.  They might not even notice the disparity.  However, even these seven trumpets are not the only ones that are clearly presented as being used during the so-called Tribulation.

One trumpet is spoken of in Matthew 24:31 as resounding at the literal return of Christ (24:30).  Here, the text says that the return of Jesus is marked by a trumpet that precedes the gathering of the elect to him, which overlaps with what Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15 when he writes of the resurrection of the righteous being connected to a trumpet, as well as how not all Christians will sleep (literally fall into the soul sleep of death, as Daniel 12:2, Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, and more teach).  Some of them will be gathered and given their bodies capable of eternal life while still alive.  In fact, this is the very trumpet Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 15.  The last trumpet, once again, cannot come before another trumpet seven years later, or else it would be logically impossible for it to be the last one!

Revelation 20:4-6, specifically mentioning people who died well into the rule of the "antichrist" (Revelation 13), says Christians killed by the beast or at his command are restored to life in the first resurrection.  There cannot be two resurrections in the first resurrection, as evangelicals commonly posit, perhaps obliviously.  A rapture before the tribulation period would be the first resurrection and the one at Christ's return would be the second, but the Bible says that the one at his return is the first and that the second resurrection, that of the wicked and unrepentant, is reserved for at least a thousand years later (Revelation 20:5).  The Bible teaches no "pre-Tribulation rapture."  It does teach a resurrection of the righteous and a transformation of the bodies of living Christians both tied to a trumpet, which is in turn tied to the Second Coming, which comes at the end of the beast's reign and not before.