For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with God's trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise first,
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: The Lord’s return will be visible--"every eye shall see him" (Revelation 1:7). It will also be audible. The word translated "shout" means a command. Phillips captures the imagery graphically in his rendering of this verse: "One word of command, one shout from the archangel, one blast from the trumpet of God and the Lord himself will come down from Heaven!" It is unfortunate that interpreters have not been content to let this unadorned description of the end time stand without embellishment. This, the fullest description of these events to be found in scripture, has become the special province of those who wish to engage in speculative theorizing about the future. Not content with the words of inspiration, they have sought to fill in the blanks, to "go beyond what is written" (1 Corinthians 4:6 NIV). It is nothing short of amazing to observe the way some wrest these passages in order to squeeze in theories about two resurrections, one for the righteous, another a thousand years later for the wicked, and intervening between the two, a reign of Christ in an earthly kingdom. That the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, will be raised in a single resurrection is emphasized in several unambiguous statements of scripture. Note the following: