The following BIBLE PROOF of Christ's coming to gather His saints AFTER the tribulation totally SCRAPS your error in interpretation of those above verses.
Matt 24:29-31
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
31 And He shall send 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.
KJV
Mark 13:24-27
24 But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
25 And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.
26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
27 And then shall He send His angels, and shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.
KJV
For those who stay sharp in reading God's Word, you should notice those two gathering events by Christ that I underlined. The Matthew 24 version is about the 'asleep' saints that Apostle Paul said Jesus will bring with Him when He comes. And the Mark 13 version is about the saints still alive on earth that will be "caught up" to Jesus and them at His coming.
Those verses, including what you have underlined, say nothing about whether the gathered elect were alive or dead when they were gathered. Making such assumptions is not being sharp in reading God's word!
The "four winds" mentioned in Matthew 24:31 shows that it referring to the earth, not heaven. As the WEB translates it:
Matthew 24:
(31) He will send out his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together his chosen ones from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.
and the GNB interprets it as:
(31) The great trumpet will sound, and he will send out his angels to the four corners of the earth, and they will gather his chosen people from one end of the world to the other.
Similarly Mark 13:27 is referring to everywhere on the earth.
Thus Apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4 was actually teaching about Christ's coming and gathering of the Church from the above Scripture understanding. Lord Jesus had obviously made Paul understand that.
Yes, Paul was talking about the rapture and gathering together of the Church in 1 Thessalonians 4 - that is obvious. But it has no bearing on whether the rapture takes place before or after the Great Tribulation. Those verses are not proof unless you can prove the "elect" or "chosen ones" are the Church - the Tribulation saints are not part of the Church.
To get a good understanding of when the rapture will occur we need to study Jesus' revelation to John, which foretells the future of the Church and the rest of mankind.
Chapters two and three of Revelation are the letters from Jesus to the seven churches. These letters are also prophetic of the church during the Gospel age. Then in Revelation 4:1 John describes a voice from heaven saying “Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter”, i.e. he was shown (symbolically) events that will happen at the end of the Gospel age, after the rapture (“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord”, 1 Thessalonians 4:17).
John is then shown a vision of the throne of God in heaven, and he sees that around the throne there were twenty-four seats, and “upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold” (Revelation 4:4). These twenty-four elders represent a group, and we know that they cannot be tribulation believers because they are contrasted with them in Revelation 7:13-14. They are not angels because they are contrasted with them in Revelation 7:11 (“all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts”). They are not the nation of Israel because they’re distinct from them (Revelation 7 & 12).
Their distinguishing characteristics are that they are on thrones (“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne”, Revelation 3:21), they have white clothes (“He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment”, Revelation 3:5), they have gold crowns (“be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life”, Revelation 2:10), and they sing the song of the redeemed (“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth”, Revelation 5:9-10). Note that they’re made kings and priests (and they’re not from Israel only, but from every nation), and only three groups are kings and priests: Melchisidec, Jesus and the Church. John identifies himself and the Church with this group too (Revelation 1:4-6 “John to the seven churches which are in Asia”, “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father”). These twenty-four elders clearly represent the resurrected Church, and they are in heaven with Jesus and God.
Note that Revelation 4:5 says “there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne”, and Revelation 1:20 identifies these, “the seven lampstands are the seven churches” (ESV). So the churches that were on the earth in chapters one to three are in heaven in chapter four, which is in harmony with chapter four describing events after the rapture.
In the first three chapters of Revelation there are twenty-four titles of Jesus, which are all gentile or church type identifiers. From chapter four on (after the rapture), the style is very Jewish, e.g. Revelation 5:5 “Behold, the
Lion of the tribe of Judah, the
Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals thereof”, and Revelation 5:6 “stood a
Lamb as it had been slain” – the titles in bold are Jewish titles of the Messiah.
Chapter five describes Jesus unsealing and opening the scroll. Note for later that verse 8 says that the twenty-four elders each had harps, not palms. Chapters 6 to 19 describes the events that will occur in the 7 year period after the rapture (the so-called seventieth week of Daniel, Daniel 9:24-27). Jesus described this period, the “Great Tribulation”, in Matthew 24:14-22, which ends with “except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened”. This Great Tribulation affects the whole world, but particularly it affects Israel, hence in verse 16 He says, “Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains”. This shall be worse for Israel than the Holocaust, during which one in three Jews were killed. According to Zechariah 13:8-9 two out of three shall be killed (“And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein”).
The purpose of the Tribulation is part explained by Hosea 5:15: “I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me earnestly” (ASV). It is the day of the wrath of the Lamb (Revelation 6:16-17), His wrath against them who rejected Him and had Him crucified. It is also described as the day of the LORD, “Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah’s wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he will make an end, yea, a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the land” (Zephaniah 1:18, ASV). (John says in Revelation 1:10, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”, i.e. he was about to see things pertaining to this time of tribulation.)
Note that the Tribulation doesn’t begin until the Lamb opens the seal, and the Lamb doesn’t receive the scroll until after the 24 elders have cast their crowns before the throne (Revelation 4:10), so the Church has been raptured or resurrected before the Tribulation starts, and the Church does not go through the Tribulation.
Revelation chapter 6 ends with “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” Then chapter 7 answers that question. It tells that there will be some special servants who will be sealed - “Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads” (Revelation 7:3). It also tells us “the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel” (Revelation 7:4). It then goes on to detail that there will be 12,000 from 12 tribes of Israel (totalling 144,000). They are all Jews.
[To be continued.]