“And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” (Matt 24:31)
It may be objected by preterist interpreters that the rendering angels in Matt 24:31 is referring to human messengers and not heavenly angels since the Greek term aggelos can refer to a human messenger. The problem with this is the immediate context is in the domain of the sky, heaven, and the clouds: “the Son of Man arriving on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matt 24:30).
There is no linguistic signal that the scene has changed. In the very next statement, the context is also the sky: “And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matt 24:31; cf. Luke 9:26: “For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels”).
Heavenly angels then are much more in keeping with the context than human messengers.
Moreover, the apostle Paul develops his Parousia teaching by drawing from Jesus’s Parousia teaching. Paul explicitly signals the domain of heavenly activity: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess 4:16).
Paul reinforces this point by describing that heavenly angels will accompany Jesus at his return, which will cut short the tribulation: “For it is right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to you who are being afflicted to give rest together with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels. With flaming fire he will mete out punishment on those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess 1:6–8).
It is concluded that preterist interpreters use strained exegesis that fails to explain their understanding of the event of the great tribulation being cut short.
