The Last Trumpet

For two thousand years the voice in the strings has moaned. Now it may rise, for a sound is coming that drowns out every other sound.

A trumpet.

Not just any trumpet — the last one.

In Depth — Which trumpet is the "last"?

Paul writes eschatè salpinx, "the last trumpet," with a definite article, as though his readers knew which one he meant. But eschatè is ambiguous: it means "last in time" or "concluding one of a known series," and the word itself does not settle which. (A well-documented fact about the root word.) This is therefore the sharpest point of contention in the whole subject, and I will not make it look smoother than it is.

The obvious guess is the seventh trumpet of Revelation 11:15, the last of a row of seven. Yet the author deliberately sets that equation aside, and on good grounds. Paul wrote around the year 54; Revelation was recorded some forty years later. His Corinthian readers knew no "seven trumpets"; that book did not yet exist. He could not possibly have been pointing to a series no one yet had. Moreover the character differs: the six trumpets before the seventh are judgment plagues upon the world, whereas Paul's trumpet is a gathering and resurrection trumpet — the dead raised imperishable, the living changed. And the seventh trumpet extends over "days" (Revelation 10:7), whereas Paul's trumpet sounds in the twinkling of an eye. (Facts that put any equation under pressure.)

Where, then, does the "last trumpet" come from? From Israel's own familiar pattern of gathering: the trumpet that calls the people together (Numbers 10), the great trumpet that brings back the scattered (Isaiah 27:13), and possibly the closing blast of the autumn feast. That explains the article out of something Paul's readers did know. The author thus distinguishes the trumpet of removal from the trumpets of judgment: the bride belongs to the first, before the wrath; the seven trumpets of Revelation fall afterward. (A weighed reading with grounds — no forcing of the text; the single-event reading remains an honest opponent.) A firm hand on the distinction between gathering and judging; a loose hand on the precise numbering. Paul writes about it with an excitement you can almost feel trembling through the parchment, as though he can no longer keep the secret to himself: "Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:51–52).

In Depth — The Feast of Trumpets

There is one feast in Israel's calendar that turns entirely on a sounding blast. "In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation" (Leviticus 23:24; compare Numbers 29:1). The Hebrew name is Yom Teruah, "day of the blast" — and what Scripture itself says about it is strikingly meager. Three things: the day falls on the first of the seventh month; the day is named for the blast; it is a day of rest and a gathering of the people before God. (Well documented.)

Honesty demands that I say at once what is not there. Scripture nowhere calls this day "Rosh Hashanah," names no shofar by name (only teruah, the blast), and does not expressly tie the day to the resurrection or to the end. All those connections — the day of God's kingship, of remembrance, of the trumpet; the closing blast teqia gedolah called "the last/great blast"; the association with the raising of the dead — come from later Jewish tradition and from typological interpretation. (The tradition itself: well documented. Whether in its developed form it is older than Paul: disputed.)

And yet the day stands in a telling place. The spring feasts — Passover, the firstfruits sheaf, the Feast of Weeks — are demonstrably fulfilled in the New Testament: the death, the resurrection, the outpouring of the Spirit. Then follows a long summer stillness, and only in the seventh month does the trumpet sound, followed by the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. Many readers draw the line onward: as the spring feasts were fulfilled at the first coming, so the autumn feasts at the second, beginning with the trumpet of the gathering. (A weighed reading — attractive, widespread, but nowhere compellingly prescribed by Scripture; suggestive, no proof of a year.) A firm hand on the pattern; a loose hand on the clock.

In the twinkling of an eye. Shorter than the blink of an eyelid.

In Depth — The silver trumpets

If Mount Sinai supplies the primal image of the trumpet, Numbers 10 supplies the manual. "Make two silver trumpets for yourself; you shall make them of hammered work. You shall use them for calling the assembly and for directing the movement of the camps" (Numbers 10:2). This is the chatsotserah, the silver priestly instrument — something other than the shofar, the ram's horn that anyone may blow. The silver trumpets are official: they regulate the life of the covenant people, and precisely for that reason they fix what a trumpet does in Scripture. (Well-documented root words.)

The text distinguishes four functions, and together the four form a single image. One: assembly. At a long, sustained blast the whole congregation gathers at the tent of meeting; at one trumpet only the leaders come (10:3–4). Two: setting out. At a broken, alarming blast the camp breaks up and moves toward the promised land (10:5–6) — the signal of departure. Three: war. "When you go to war against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets. And you will be remembered before the LORD your God, and you will be saved from your enemies" (10:9) — a war alarm that is at the same time a prayer. Four: feast. On the feast days and at the offerings the trumpets are blown, "as a memorial before your God" (10:10). (All four: fact, from the text.)

Gathering, setting out, calling for deliverance, coming into remembrance before God — precisely that fourfold cluster the New Testament assigns to the final trumpet: the dead raised, the people brought home, the enemy defeated, His own known before the face of God. (The functions stand in the text; the application to the removal is a weighed reading.) This meaning is older than and independent of any later trumpet scheme — it rests on the oldest grammar of the blast itself. Two thousand years of church history, seven lampstands that smoldered and flickered and nearly went out by turns — and then, in less time than it takes you to draw breath, it is over. The dead rise.

In Depth — The resurrection body

"How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?" (1 Corinthians 15:35). It is the scorn of the Greek hearer, for whom a body that comes back was something crude and absurd. Paul answers with the image of the seed: what you sow does not come to life unless it first dies, and what comes up has a wholly different form than the bare kernel that went into the ground (15:36–38). Dying here is no end but a passage; and there is real continuity — it is your body, not a stranger's — with a radical change of quality. (Well documented; the grain of wheat does not become rye.)

Then come four contrasts, four "sown [...] raised" (15:42–44). The body is sown in corruption and raised in incorruption (phthora over against aphtharsia). Sown in dishonor, raised in glory (doxa). Sown in weakness, raised in power. And, the hardest pair: sown a sòma psuchikon, raised a sòma pneumatikon. (Fact, from the text.)

That last pair is the most often misunderstood. It does not mean "material over against immaterial," nor "body over against spirit" — in both cases the word is sòma, body. The question is by what the body is governed. A sòma psuchikon is carried by the psuchè, the natural soul: the body as we now know it, mortal, fitted to this life. A sòma pneumatikon is wholly pervaded by the pneuma, the Spirit of God: not a spirit without a body, but a body so under God's Spirit that it transcends the laws of the perishable. (A weighed reading with strong grounds; Christ's risen body could eat and be touched, Luke 24.)

Behind all this stands the second Adam. "The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit" (15:45). Adam received life; Christ gives it. We have borne the image of the man of dust — and shall bear the image of the heavenly (15:49). The living are changed. The perishable puts on imperishability the way you put on a clean shirt in the morning.

In Depth — The firstfruits and the harvest

Paul calls the risen Christ an aparchè, a firstfruits (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23). That is no loose figure of speech; it is a word from Israel's harvest calendar. In Leviticus 23 the first sheaf of the barley harvest, the wave sheaf, is "waved before the LORD" on the day after the sabbath in the Passover week — a dedication of the first yield that released the whole harvest (23:10–11). Fifty days later, at the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of the wheat harvest were offered (23:15–17). The feast calendar is a harvest calendar. (Well documented.)

A firstfruits does three things. It sanctifies: "if the firstfruit is holy, the lump is also holy" (Romans 11:16). It guarantees: the first ripe stalks prove that the full harvest is coming — a firstfruits without a sequel is unthinkable, for the word by definition demands a harvest to follow. And it represents: the first sheaf is of the same nature as the whole harvest, wheat stands for wheat. Therefore Christ's resurrection is no isolated miracle about Him alone, but a promise about His own, and the measure of their body: as the first sheaf, so the harvest. (Well documented.)

And there is an order. "But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming" (15:23). The word is tagma, a term from the battle array — an ordered division. That the resurrection proceeds in order and is not one undivided mass moment is certain; Paul names here expressly two divisions, the first of which, Christ, is already fulfilled. Whether within that order there lie still further moments — a separate resurrection of tribulation saints, for instance — the author reads from other texts, not from this verse. (The word allows distinct moments; it does not prove them — a weighed reading.) The change at the last trumpet is, in this light, the bringing in of the full harvest of which Christ was the first sheaf. And the bride who was made ready throughout the whole first book — washed, clothed, betrothed, waiting — is at last fetched up. The bridegroom comes to meet her, or rather: she goes to meet Him, outward, into the air, the way a village bride ran to meet the bridegroom when his torches appeared in the distance. The meeting that the first book longed for happens here, in this chapter, in this indivisible moment.

In Depth — The meeting

The sister text of 1 Corinthians 15 stands in Thessalonians. "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). Three signals accompany the descent: the shout (keleusma, a command), the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet — all three the register of Numbers 10, the register of gathering and command. (Well documented.)

The hinge word is apantèsis, "to meet." In the Greco-Roman world it often denoted the solemn welcome: when a ruler approached a city, a delegation of citizens went out to meet him beyond the gate, received him with honor, and escorted him in. The same word stands at the ten virgins who go to meet the bridegroom (Matthew 25:6) and at the brothers from Rome who go to meet Paul and proceed with him (Acts 28:15). The meeting in the air is therefore a royal welcome, fitting to the parousia, the arrival of the Sovereign. (Well documented.)

One thing I must mark honestly: the word does not settle the direction. Post-tribulationists read into it a descent with the Lord to the earth; others, with the wedding image, an ascent to the house of the Bridegroom. But Cosby has shown that apantèsis in most texts simply means "meeting," without a fixed "escort back." And the text itself stops at "to meet the Lord in the air" and is silent about what comes after — ascending or descending. (Well documented.) The figure paints the welcome as royal and strips every model of its compulsion; the direction must come from outside this text. (A weighed reading.) What is certain is the outcome: always with the Lord.

And the timing is gracious. She is fetched up before the worst comes. Before the abomination is set up, before the great distress breaks loose over the earth — before that, the bride goes out the door. Not because she is better than those who remain. Not because she has earned it; Part III showed painfully enough how little she has earned. But because a bridegroom does not let his bride walk through the storm he reserves for his enemies. She shares the birth pangs of the beginning — the first stabs of pain in the birth of a new world — but the heavy wrath, the abomination, there she is taken away before it. Pre-abomination. Out, before it becomes midnight.

Who is that bride, in John's scene? Here comes the boldest reading in this whole book, and I am not going to make it prettier than it is. In Revelation 12 a woman bears a child, "a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron," and that child "was caught up to God and to His throne" (12:5). Caught up — the same gesture as the rapture, snatched upward before the dragon can devour it. The author of this series reads the bride into that caught-up child: the Church, snatched away in a moment to the throne, before the fury of the dragon. I say at once that this is the most disputed link of the whole model — the author himself calls it his weakest point, and that is no disgrace but honesty; a man who tells you where his reasoning is thinnest is a man you can trust at the thick parts. So hold it as this book holds everything: the form with a firm hand, the detail with a loose one. Gone is the bride, that stands. Whether the child of 12:5 is precisely her — that you may weigh.

But — and now the violin sinks again, for joy that forgets another's pain is not joy but selfishness — the bride goes up, and the woman stays. Read on in that same chapter, and you see her standing there: the mother, alone, on the earth, with a dragon that turns toward her now that he has missed the child. The bride is safe. Her mother is not, not yet. And that mother — that is the people this whole book grieves over. Israel. There the book goes, into the dark, one more time, before it becomes light.

In Depth — The frame of the third day (and where it can break)

The model behind this part has a precise form, and honesty asks that I show it with its fault lines. The seventieth week of years runs from autumn 2027 to autumn 2034. In the first half the seals open; at the seam of the sixth seal, around 2028–2029, falls the removal of the bride — before the trumpet judgments, before the abomination. In the middle, around Purim and Passover 2031, the abomination of desolation is set up (Daniel 9:27; Matthew 24:15); there the day-counts of Daniel begin to run — the 1,260 days of the fleeing woman, the 1,290 and the 1,335 (Daniel 12:11–12) — and they all converge around autumn 2034, where Christ returns visibly. (This is a weighed reading with remarkable inner coherence; several links — especially the child of Revelation 12:5 as the bride — are disputed, and the author marks them as such himself.)

when	what happens
autumn 2027	the seventieth week of years begins; in the first half the seals open
around 2028–2029	at the seam of the sixth seal: the removal of the bride, before the trumpet judgments, before the abomination
around Purim and Passover 2031	in the middle: the abomination of desolation set up; the day-counts of Daniel (1,260, 1,290, 1,335) begin to run
autumn 2034	the day-counts converge; Christ returns visibly

And then the most honest sentence of all, which the author writes about his own edifice: before 2034 the model is barely refutable, but after 2034 it becomes sharply testable. If that autumn passes without the return, then the date falls — and a man of honor says that aloud, beforehand. What does not fall then is the form: the two days, the third day, the stiff neck that heals, the Pierced One who is recognized. Those stand upon Scripture, not upon the clock. (A firm hand on the pattern; a loose, open hand on the year. Whoever reads this after 2034, let him test it — that is how it should be.)