Jesus will gather to Himself angels, and the dead in Christ.
He then returns to the earth with the angels and these saints. Some of the angels then go throughout the four corners of the earth, and gather the living saints. They are thus "raptured," or snatched off the earth's surface, to temporarily meet the Lord and the other angels and saints in the air.
Jesus thus makes His return to earth visible, and known to everyone, everywhere, whether saints or pagans. He sets foot, or lands, if you will on the Mount of Olives, just as it was said that He would reappear, in the manner that He left. We all land with Him, and rule and reign from Israel, God's land.
So the rapture into the clouds, or sky is actually very short lived.
The reason this occurs is that for 3and1/2 years the antichrist has been imprisoning, torturing and killing anyone who would not take His mark and worship him. He is particularly ruthless and vengeful against the Jews and the Christians who will not do so.
Because of the immense pressure forced upon people to deny the true God, in order to survive, there will be a great apostasy from true belief in God.
This time of great pressure is called the Great Tribulation. It is a lie from the pit of hell, and a grand delusion, that the rapture will occur before the tribulation even starts.
No man will know the exact day or hour, of the Lord's return with and the gathering of the saints. But we are to know the season! It will be towards the end of the GTrib. The days will be cut short, otherwise no believing flesh would survive the fury of the antichrist governing system.
When those days of Satan's wrath are cut short, then God's wrath commences with His return to the Mount of Olives, with His saints and angels. His trumpet and bowl judgments, commence, upon all unbelieving flesh. Saints are safe in Israel, while the world is being judged and destroyed for its unrepentant sinners.
At Pentecost, in 33 A.D. Peter said that we are now in the last days, and he also said that a day is a thousand years. Therefore the second of these two last days, will end in 2033. Minus the 2 to 4 year error in our modern calendar. I expect the GTrib to begin 3 and 1/2 years prior to that.....approximately 2026......rapture around 2029.
By 2026 I suspect Islam will once again be ruling the world,{as it was in 1000 A.D. at the end of the first of the "last days"} and the antichrist will come from Turkey as their promised great Mahdi-Messiah. All of Islam will certainly worship him and thus try to force, with sword and guillotine, the rest of us, to worship Satan, as they do.