Are There Two Second Comings?
S ally observed that the last staple in the stapler never worked, so she had an idea. She decided that when loading a new strip of staples she would go ahead and remove the last one. That should do it. Sally learned, of course, that removing the last one did not solve the problem of having a last one. The next to last one became the last one. And that staple didn’t work either. Silly Sally. As we learned in the previous chapter, the Bible describes a future day that will be identified by the sound of a trumpet. Three times we are told that a trumpet blast will mark the coming of the Lord. The boy in the baptistry blew his to mimic when “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). This happens “at his coming… in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound” (1 Corinthians 15:23, 52). And Jesus said it is when “they shall see the Son of man c