Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 24:31

"And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." — Matthew 24:31 (ASV)

He shall send his angels — These words are memorable as the formal expansion of what had been hinted at previously in the parables of the Tares (Matthew 13:41) and the Net (Matthew 13:49).

With a great sound of a trumpet — The better manuscripts omit “sound,” reading simply: With a great trumpet. We do not know, and cannot know, what reality will correspond to this symbol, but it is interesting to note how deeply it impressed itself on the minds of not only the disciples who heard it, but also those who learned it from them. When St. Paul speaks of the trumpet that shall sound (1 Corinthians 15:52) and of the voice of the archangel and the trump of God (1 Thessalonians 4:16), we feel that he was reproducing what had been proclaimed, and that his eschatology, or doctrine of the last things, was based on a knowledge of, at least, the substance of the great prophetic discourse recorded in the Gospels.

They shall gather together his elect — The “elect” are the same in concept, though not necessarily the same individuals, as those for whom the days were to be shortened (Matthew 24:22). The work of the angels is to gather them, wherever they may be scattered, into the one fold. As with so many of the potent ideas in this chapter, this work of the angels is expanded in the visions of the Apocalypse, when the seer saw the angels come and seal the one hundred and forty-four thousand on their foreheads before the work of judgment was to begin (Revelation 7:2).

In each case, the elect are those who are living on the earth at the time of the second coming. In these chapters, there is indeed no distinct mention of the resurrection of the dead, though they, as well as the living, are implied in the parable of judgment with which the discourse ends.