The goal? Yes, because Paul never wavered in his sense that Jesus would reappear. He would “descend from heaven,” though to get the flavor of that we have to remind ourselves that “heaven” is not “up in the sky,” but is rather God’s dimension of present reality. Jesus would come from heaven to earth not—as in much popular fantasy—in order to scoop up his people and take them back to “heaven,” but in order to complete the already inaugurated task of colonizing “earth,” the human sphere, with the life of “heaven,” God’s sphere.
