Oh no, not at all should you apologize, I quite understood and recalled the relevant verses being spoken of.
It was in your second part my mind had some problems.
This is the passage:
2 Now, dear brothers and sisters,[
a] let us clarify some things about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and how we will be gathered to meet him. 2 Don’t be so easily shaken or alarmed by those who say that the day of the Lord has already begun. Don’t believe them, even if they claim to have had a spiritual vision, a revelation, or a letter supposedly from us.3 Don’t be fooled by what they say. For that day will not come until there is a great rebellion against God and the man of lawlessness[
b] is revealed—the one who brings destruction.[
c]4 He will exalt himself and defy everything that people call god and every object of worship. He will even sit in the temple of God, claiming that he himself is God.
5 Don’t you remember that I told you about all this when I was with you? 6 And you know what is holding him back, for he can be revealed only when his time comes. 7 For this lawlessness is already at work secretly, and it will remain secret until the one who is holding it back steps out of the way. 8 Then the man of lawlessness will be revealed, but the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by the splendor of his coming.
9 This man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles.10 He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them. 11 So God will cause them to be greatly deceived, and they will believe these lies. 12 Then they will be condemned for enjoying evil rather than believing the truth.
What I pick up from it is that someone had claimed the gathering together/first resurrection had occurred already and the current time was the beginning of that day of the Lord, and it shook some among them because they were still here, not gathered. I can only guess at what the person had said but it had to at least be pretty convincing. I’ve thought it could possibly have involved how they saw many of their dead walking around during the forty days being the first resurrection, since it’s all I can find thus far.
So Paul’s response, to my mind, is to say, remember, I told you before that gathering there would come two specific things that we would see before that day begins to occur - 1, the falling away and, 2, the man of lawlessness.
But if the gathering together/first resurrection comes before the appearing of the man of lawlessness, I can’t fathom why he gave that to settle and remind them.
To my mind, that, along with those who didn’t receive the mark being in and a part of the first resurrection in rev 20, have a lot of strength for the view that says the gathering has to occur at least after that man appears, whether days, weeks, months or whenever.
Ive even mused over whether “satan will throw some of you into prison for 10 days” might be far prophetic.