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There are three locations in the Thess verse you posted:

Earth, the air and heaven.

In the rapture, Jesus never reaches the earth.

That is why a plain, literal, normative reading of the Bible is crucial.

There is really no need for magic-Augustinian-allegoric-reading-glasses or for semi-Reformed-with-one-foot-in-Romanism-Post-It-note interpretations.

That was what John Nelson Darby was attempting to bring to the forefront.

The foundation of Darby’s thought is really in his first paragraph where he explains Ephesians 1:9:

from Darby:

“The 9th verse of the 1st of Ephesians affords a leading declaration of Scripture on this subject: “Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance” (v. 10).

Now this is in no way applicable to the present dispensation. He is to gather together in one all things which are in heaven, and which are on earth. This the present dispensation does not assume to do: it is a dispensation in which Satan is the prince and god of this world - in which he sows tares among the wheat, and is in high places. In this, God visits the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name.

This is indeed a dispensation of another gathering (as we shall see presently), in which angels minister and devils oppose - anything but a gathering into one things in heaven and things on earth; for we must be absent from the body to be present with the Lord, and absent from the Lord to be at home in the body; and we “groan” waiting. Indeed, there is ample demonstration in the above passage, that the present dispensation does not and was not meant to do this.

The passage declares that God has made known this to us, as that which should happen in the fulness of times, of which we have the earnest under the present dispensation until the redemption. This is not merely “going to heaven,” because, as we see in the passage itself, God is to gather together in one all things in heaven and on earth in Christ. That which we have under the present dispensation is an earnest merely of that which we are to have; which is not a going to heaven, but a dispensation in which all things are gathered together in heaven and on earth.

In a word, the passage declares a gathering, which cannot mean the church in the present dispensation, or in any dispensation; for the church, as applied to believers, in no dispensation comprehends all things in heaven and on earth; and that which comprehends and gathers all into one (all things in heaven and on earth) is manifestly not the church; for the church, even here, is gathered out of the earth, and does not gather all things on the earth into itself, and as a dispensation of the assembled saints in heaven, it has none of the things of the earth in it at all.

Indeed, except from the force of habitual prejudice, it is just as fairly inferred from this passage that all the things in heaven will be gathered in the earth, as that all on the earth will be gathered in heaven. If we do not acknowledge a common gathering of all things both in heaven and on earth under the authority of Christ (as is also written elsewhere), it is manifest we must force this passage into some previously assumed sense, and then it may mean anything we like. Chapter 3 of John’s gospel might throw light on this, if the reader is disposed to enquire.

But as it is manifest that the church is no such gathering actually, so it is equally manifest that to say that the assembly of the saints in heaven is a gathering of all things in heaven and on earth into one, is a plain perversion to suit previous ideas; for the saints are not all things, if the position taken were otherwise tenable: and it is thinking that they are so (in self-complacency) which is one grand source of error, for thus His glory is marred and shortened, by whom and for whom all things are created.

I affirm (though it be the manifestation of God’s wisdom) that the church of God’s saints is only a part - a small part - of the glory and purposes of God, as fulfilled: a part worthy, indeed, of all admiration, as it is; but one which, if we take the comeliness that God has put upon us, and make our boast as if it were all God’s glory, He will shew us it is as nothing in His sight calling the things that are not as though they were.”