All that typing and you still have the problem with “no one knows the hour or the day”.
Yep, here’s some more typing. (Your objection is a good point, I’ll get to it, but first this)
Pretribs (and midtribs, prewraths) assume there HAS to be two separate events, one for Jesus to come for his saints, another, and a very separate one seven years later after the tribulation, for Jesus to come with his saints. However, the 1 Thessalonians passage says no such thing.
Jesus is in heaven now at the right hand of God in expectation of his enemies to be made his footstool, Heb. 10:13. He doesn’t make the descent from heaven we see in the 1 Thessalonian passage, “For the Lord himself shall DESCEND from heaven with a shout, etc.,” until his enemies are where he wants them, to be put under foot. This assuredly does NOT happen before the tribulation, but at the end of it.
When he descends from heaven, he is on his way to the earth, therefore. He is descending to defeat his enemies, to put them under foot, and to reign over the earth in the millennial, after he defeats them. He remains in expectation in heaven UNTIL THEN. The resurrection and rapture of the saved takes place as he descends, on his way down, he meets them in the clouds on his way to Armageddon. Thus, he comes (in the one parousia), FOR his saints and WITH his saints, in one descent from heaven, in one event. It does NOT require two separate events, as pretribs tell us.
There is nothing in the Thessalonian passage, or any other passage, that says Jesus is to descend from heaven, then (after meeting the saints) turn around and go back to heaven. The only U-turn made is by the saints, who rise meet the Lord in the clouds, and continue with him in his descent. The Lord makes no U-turn, where he turns around and goes back to heaven, in our modern lingo this would be a traffic violation, an unauthorized U-turn. No scripture anywhere “authorizes” Jesus to do a U-turn. It is the saints who do the U-turn, not Jesus. Descending means descending!
Pretribs (midtribs, prewraths) read into the Thessalonian passage their respective theories of the tribulation. Seven years or whatever, when that is all it is - theory read into the scripture (read into the Thessalonian passage). When the passage is not even dealing with the tribulation. The passage’s intent was not to deal with such things as the antichrist, the abomination of desolation, and all such things, rather Paul was giving assurance, hope, and comfort to those in the Thessalonian church who were sorrowing over their dead loved one, vss 13,14, 18. It’s purpose was to describe the rapture only.
There was no need for Paul to go into a lengthy teaching about what that descent from heaven was, it would have been assumed among them to be the same parousia that Jesus spoke of in the gospels (Matt. 24). Paul called it “the parousia of the Lord,” vss 15, his readers at Thessalonica (since Darby hadn’t come along yet), knowing that Jesus was presently in heaven, would have understood the descent from heaven to be the Matt. 24:29-31 parousia.