“Immediately after the suffering of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man arriving on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 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 24:29–31)
In Matt 24:29–31, parables and similitudes follow to illustrate the beginning of God’s wrath. In Rev 19, the battle of Armageddon depicts the completion of God’s wrath after the trumpet and bowl judgments.
Jesus and Paul teach that God’s wrath is going to come upon the world “suddenly,” as a “thief,” and as in the days of Noah when the wicked “knew nothing until the flood came and took them all away.”
In other words, it is an incoherent interpretation to locate the beginning of God’s eschatological wrath with the battle of Armageddon after the world was just pummeled from the devastating trumpet and bowl judgments!
Some may object by claiming that the wicked will not know that the trumpets and bowls are God’s wrath. That is clearly absurd. They certainly will know that the source of the trumpets and bowls are divine wrath and not some freakish, natural series of occurrences (see Rev 6:15–17; 8:13; 9:20–21; 11:3–13; 11:15; 11:18–19; 14:6–11; 15:5–6; 16:8–11; 16:21; 17:14).
The second coming / day of the Lord will begin significantly earlier than the battle of Armageddon. Matthew 24:29–31 depicts the beginning of the second coming when the Antichrist’s great tribulation is cut short with the glorious return of our Lord in the sky to resurrect and rapture the saints, which will then be followed by the onset of the day of the Lord’s wrath.