At the end of the church age, before the times of restoration of all things, Christ, who is carrying out His ministry according to His heavenly offices above all the heavens, will come back from heaven according to His promise (Matt. 24:33-44).
At the end of the church age, before Christ will leave the height of heaven to where He has ascended, the overcoming saints will be raptured, before the great tribulation, to His throne in the heavens (Rev. 12:5-6; 14:1-4; Luke 21:36). Afterwards, Christ will descend from His heavenly throne to the air with the overcomers. This is the secret aspect of His parousia which will occur before the coming great tribulation. He will remain in the air for a period of time to accomplish three important things.
First, when Christ descends from heaven and remains in the air, He will receive up the majority of the believers who remain on earth during the great tribulation (1 Thes. 4:15-17).
Second, after He receives up the believers, Christ will judge all the believers in the air before His judgment seat to reward the faithful and overcoming ones and to punish the unfaithful and defeated ones (1 Cor. 4:5; 2 Cor. 5:10).
Third, He will marry the faithful and overcoming saints as His bride in the millennial kingdom to enjoy His marriage feast (Rev. 19:7-9).
After He accomplishes the above three things, Christ will descend from the air to the earth (Matt. 24:30) with the saints as His bride. This is the open aspect of His parousia, which will occur after the great tribulation.
First, Christ will receive up the believers. As those betrothed to Christ, the believers take Him as their Husband (2 Cor. 11:2). In His second coming, as mentioned earlier, Christ will receive them up to the air to judge them, rewarding the overcomers and punishing the defeated ones. He will marry the overcoming believers who match Him, that is, the overcoming church as His bride.
Second, He will destroy the religious system of Roman Catholicism and Christianity; He will also destroy the false believers. In His second coming, Christ will first use Antichrist, who will persecute religion, to burn and destroy (Rev. 17:16) the religious system of Roman Catholicism and Christianity, which is the system of Christendom and the mysterious, great religious Babylon mentioned in Revelation 17:5. Then He will send the angels to bind all the false believers, the tares spoken of in Matthew 13:25-26, into bundles and cast them into the furnace of the lake of fire (Matt. 13:30, 39-42). Thus He will become the Destroyer of the wicked and adulterous religion and of the false believers.
Third, Christ will save the people of Israel, the Jews. In Christ’s second coming, Antichrist will lead the great armies of the nations to surround the people of Israel and Jerusalem to destroy them. At the very moment of peril, Christ will descend to defeat and slay Antichrist and his armies (Zech. 14:1-5, 12-14). Then the people of Israel will look to Him (Zech. 12:10), and He will be their Deliverer so that all Israel will be saved (Rom. 11:25-26).
Fourth, He will judge the Gentiles. In Christ’s second coming, after He destroys Antichrist, who opposes God and persecutes God’s people, and the armies of the nations who join him in doing evil, as mentioned in the preceding point, He will sit on His throne of glory to judge all the remaining Gentiles of the nations. Based upon their well-treatment or ill-treatment of God’s people—the children of Israel and the believers who remain during the great tribulation—He will separate them into two groups, the “sheep” and the “goats.” The sheep will be justified and blessed and will enter into the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world, that is, the earthly part of the millennium, to be the people enjoying its blessings. The goats will be condemned and cursed and will go to the lake of fire to suffer eternal punishment (Matt. 25:31-46). Thus Christ will judge the inhabited earth in righteousness (Acts 17:31) before the millennial kingdom as the Judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5).