Mat 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Alternative: And he sends his messengers with the great sound of a war-trumpet and gathers his chosen from the four quarters, from highest point to the furthest part of the universe.

If we simply translated the Greek, this phrase becomes less miraculous, saying that Christ will send his messengers out to gather his followers from everywhere. The introduction of the idea of "angels" comes from our idea of messengers from God, which covers almost every reference to messengers in Matthew. In Mat 11:10, the same word is translated as "messenger" when used to quote scripture referring to John the Baptist.

This verse also offers a good example of one of the many ways Christ uses the term "heaven" to mean something much different than our conception of heaven as the afterlife. While I suppose you could make the case that Christ is describing the gathering of his followers from different parts of the afterlife, it certainly makes more sense to use the more general sense of the word as meaning the entire "universe," which could mean both the material universe as well as the spiritual.

This verse also offers a little insight to how the verbs of the New Testament, written in Koine, do not show tense, person, or number in the same way that classical Greek verbs can and how those ideas have to be taken from context.

For example, the word apostellô can be translated as the past tense ("sent" as in Mat 10:40) , present tense ("send" as in Mat 10:16) or the future tense, as it is here. It can be translated as the first person ("I send," again Mat 10:16) or the third person as shown originally here. It can also be translated as singular, as it is here, or plural, as it is, for example, in Mat 14:35 where it is rendered as "they sent." The elements of tense, person, and number are all taken from context.

Since this chapter is translated as a prediction of the future end of the world, all the verbs are rendered in the future tense.

However, we get the third person here from the word "autos," which in the NT is always translated as "his" or "her," never "my," for which a different word is used (mou). Since the possessive pronoun is third person, we translate verbs in the third person as well even though Christ is clearly referring to himself as the "son of man."

"Send" is the Greek, apostellô (apostello), which is our source of the word "apostle." It means "to send off," "to send away," or "to dispatch."

"His" is from autos, which means "the same," "his," "her," "its," (but not "my') "myself," (but not translated that way in the NT) "yourself," "itself," "oneself," "himself," and "herself."

"Angels" is from aggelos, which means "messenger" and "envoy."

"Sound" is from phônê, which means "sound," "voice," and "the faculty of speech."

"Trumpet" is from salpinx (salpigx), which means "war-trumpet."

"Gather" is from episunagô, which means "to collect," "to bring in," "to accumulate," and "to count up."

"Elect" is from eklektos, which means "picked out," "select," "choice," and "pure."

"Winds" is from anemos, which means "wind," "cardinal point," and "quarter."

"One end" is from akron, which means "highest or furthest point," "mountain top," "cape," or "end."