Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Question:

I had difficulties as to the passage of which you write (Revelation 20:4); comparing it with other passages, such as 1 Corinthians 15:54, etc, which disappeared in seeing that the first resurrection does not describe a period of time, but a class of persons having this characteristic name.

Answer:

In the passage (Revelation 20:4), you will find three classes named.

1. — “I saw thrones, and they sat upon them and judgment was given them.”

2. ― “And the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God.

3. ― “And those (οιηνες) which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark in their foreheads, or in their hands.”

The first division is general, embracing all who reign with Christ, taken up at the Rapture. He not only sees thrones (as Daniel 7:9, where for “cast down” read “set”), but sitters on them; they are now occupied.

The second class are those slain under the fifth seal. See chapter 6:9-10, 11.

The third class are martyr victors under the full power of the beast. See chapter 15:2.

The two latter classes who seem to have lost the earthly blessings of the kingdom by death, are specially named as having gained by dying a place in the heavenly glory, with those who will then reign with Christ.

The first of these ― the sitters on the thrones ― have been raised or changed at the Rapture; and the other two are said, in company with them, to “live and reign with Christ a thousand years,” and are all then technically named “The first resurrection.”

My chief difficulty was, how that Isaiah (25:8) used the words, “He will swallow up death in victory” ― referring to the resurrection at the end of the tribulation and deliverance of the remnant of Judah; while Paul used the same passage, quoting it in 1 Corinthians 15:54, with reference to those caught up before it begins, and when Christ comes, whether raised or changed. [I may here remark that Isaiah 24:21, gives the judgment of the hosts of the high ones on high ― Satan’s power (Revelation 12), and the Kings of the earth upon the earth (Revelation 19). Then, after that, in chapter 25, in the details of the deliverance to the remnant of the Jews, and the removal of the vail of idolatry from the nations, he uses this passage: ― “He will swallow up death in victory,” with reference to what happens at the end of the tribulation.]

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul quotes and applies it to those who are taken up ― raised or changed ― before the tribulation. This seemed strange; but the moment you understand that the “First resurrection” is a class of persons running all through the crisis, or time of judgment, from the rapture of the saints, until Christ’s appearing, it is readily seen how the prophet Isaiah, and the apostle Paul, legitimately use the same words, having a similar class before them, which are split up into sections, as I may say, in Revelation 20:4, and are technically named “the first resurrection,” though not raised and taken to heaven at the same moment of time.