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suggestive of a bodily resurrection. The seer does not speak of persons or bodies that were
raised up, but of souls which “lived” and “reigned.” And he calls their living and reigning with
Christ “the first resurrection.” Dr. Vos suggests that the words, “This (emphatic) is the first
resurrection,” may even be “a pointed disavowal of a more realistic (chiliastic) interpretation of
the same phrase.”[ISBE, Art. Esch. of the N. T.] In all probability the expression refers to the
entrance of the souls of the saints upon the glorious state of life with Christ at death. The
absence of the idea of a double resurrection may well make us hesitate to affirm its presence in
this obscure passage of a book so full of symbolism as the Revelation of John. Wherever the
Bible mentions the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked together, as in Dan. 12:2; John
5:28.29; Acts 24:15, it does not contain the slightest hint that the two are to be separated by a
thousand years. On the other hand it does teach that the resurrection will take place at the last
day, and will at once be followed by the last judgment, Matt. 25:31,32; John 5:27-29;
6:39,40,44,54; 11:24; Rev. 20:11-15.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY:
Does the Apostolic Confession speak of the resurrection of
the body, or of the resurrection of the flesh? How do you account for the change from the one
to the other? Do not all Premillenarians have to posit another resurrection of the righteous in
addition to those that occur at the parousia and at the revelation? How do Premillenarians
construe even Dan. 12:2 into an argument for a double resurrection? How do they find an
argument for it in Phil. 3:11? What is the principal argument of modern liberals against the
doctrine of a physical resurrection? What does Paul mean, when he speaks of the resurrection
body as a soma pneumatikon, I Cor. 15:44?
LITERATURE:
Bavinck, Geref. Dogm. IV, pp. 755-758, 770-777; Kuyper, Dict. Dogm., De
Consummatione Saeculi, pp. 262-279; Vos, Geref. Dogm. V. Eschatologie, pp. 14-22; ibid. The
Pauline Eschatology, pp. 136-225; Hodge, Syst. Theol. III, pp. 837-844; Dabney, Syst. and Polem.
Theol., pp. 829-841; Shedd. Dogm. Theol. pp. 641-658; Valentine, Chr. Theol. II, pp. 414-420;
Dahle, Life After Death, pp. 358-368, 398-418; Hovey, Eschatology, pp. 23-78; Mackintosh,
Immortality and the Future, pp. 164-179; Snowden, The Coming of the Lord, pp. 172-191;
Salmond, The Chr. Doct. of Immortality, pp. 262-272, 437-459; Kennedy, St. Paul’s Conceptions
of the Last Things, pp. 222-281; Kliefoth, Eschatologie, pp. 248-275; Brown, The Chr. Hope, pp.
89-108; Milligan. The Resurrection of the Dead, pp. 61-77.