William Barclay wrote in his book The Mind of St. Paul:

"The great value of the doctrine of the Second Coming is that it guarantees that history is going somewhere. We cannot tell how it will happen. We cannot take as literal truth the Jewish pictures of it which Paul used. We need not think of a physical coming of Christ in the clouds, or a physical trumpet blast. But what the doctrine of the Second Coming conserves is the tremendous fact that there is one divine, far-off event to which the whole creation is moving; there is a consummation; there is a final triumph of God."