Question:
The Bible makes it clear that when He (Jesus) comes at His second coming He will not touch the earth. But all the saved ones will join Him in the air and be taken to heaven while the unsaved will be destroyed by His coming brightness.
Answer:
We are at a loss to know where in the Bible you find that Jesus, at His second coming, will never touch the earth. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians says that both the resurrected dead and the living believers will be “caught up together…to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess. 4:17). Although Paul does not say what will happen next, the prophet Zechariah does: “And in that day His feet will stand upon the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two,;…thus the Lord my God will come” (Zech. 14:1-5).
There are many texts to indicate that after Jesus returns, He and His saints will be on the earth and only the wicked will be removed.
Prov. 10:30: “The righteous shall never be removed: but the wicked shall not inhabit the earth.” For God “did not create [the earth] in vain” but “formed it to be inhabited” (Isa. 45:18).
The song of the saints (Rev. 5:9-10): “We shall reign on the earth.”
The Lord’s Prayer:“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Zechariah promises “the Lord shall be king over all the earth” (Zech. 14:9), and that His capitol city will be Jerusalem: “He shall choose Jerusalem again” (Zech. 2:10, 12). Jesus Himself called Jerusalem the “city of the great King”—would it be His city if He never touches the ground? (Matt. 5:35).
Matthew 25 reads: “When the Son of Man comes in glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him. And He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you’” (Matt. 25:31-34). This setting does not place the faithful in heaven and the wicked on earth, but places them together.
Jesus is also pictured in Revelation 14 as standing on Mt. Zion with 144,000 faithful ones. This statement assumes that the Judgment has already been completed, for these are described as “having his Father’s name written in their foreheads,” and being “without fault before the throne of God.”
Psalm 37 makes several references to the righteous remaining on the earth:
“For evildoers shall be cut off; But those who wait on the Lord, They shall inherit the earth” (v. 9)
“But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace”(v. 11)
“The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell in it forever” (v. 29)
“Wait on the Lord, and keep his way, and he shall exalt you to inherit the land” (v. 34).
You say “the unsaved will be destroyed by His coming brightness.” It seems that you might be alluding to 2 Thess. 1:7-9 where the Lord, upon His coming is pictured as “in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God” and punishing them “with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.” The thought does not seem to be that the brightness of His coming will destroy them but that the wicked will be punished by being eternally excluded from His glory and from the blessing that will be given to the faithful.
Jesus will, at the Judgment, separate the faithful from the unfaithful, the “wheat” from the “tares” (Matt. 13:29-30), and the earth will become the Kingdom of Christ; and His saints and all who live will enjoy the blessings of peace, prosperity, health and happiness (Isa. 32:17-18).