Dear friends:

A reader of my "open door" message a little earlier connected the "voice" and "trumpet" of Revelation 4:1 quoted with the famous rapture verse of 1Thessalonians 4:16-17 and the "voice" and "trumpet" contained therein.

The voice and the trumpet appear in both verses:

Revelation 4:1: "After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither."  (NASB:"like the sound of a trumpet.") 

In this rapture passage, the sound was primarily a "voice," which actually spoke, not a trumpet, but it sounded like a trumpet.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17: For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 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."

In this rapture passage, it speaks of both a "voice" and a "trumpet," but I wonder if the sound could be the same -- the angel's voice that sounds like a trumpet?  The wording would not preclude that possibility.

Supporting this idea is the Strong's Enhanced Lexicon description of the Greek word for trumpet, salpigx, which says, "perhaps from 4535, through the idea of quavering or reverberation."  That could also be a powerful, earth-shattering angelic voice.

This may shed light on the mystery of "the last trump" of 1 Corinthians 15:55, which uses the same Greek word, salpigx.

Jim