"The Resurrection of All Mankind"

OT Background

Isaiah 26:19

“Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.”

Hosea 13:14a NIV

"I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?”

Daniel 12:2

“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

Competing Beliefs

1 or 2: Dan. 12; 2 Enoch; cp. “just and unjust,” Acts 24.15

Gills’ Exposition

“It’s certain the Jews are divided in their sentiments about this matter; some of them utterly deny that any other shall rise but the just.”

•No “afterlife” at all: Sadducees.

•National, universal? Ezek. 37; cp. Baruch; Esdras.

•Physical, “spiritual”? 1-2 Enoch.

 

 NT Background

Jesus, John 5:24-30: 

The Father who raises the dead gives His Son the same power.

v24: spiritual resurrection; 

v25: literal resurrection;

v28: timing, “the hour is coming” = parousia, Mat 24.42-44; in a “blink,” 1Cor 15.50-57; cp. Luke 20:34-36.

 

  Paul, 1Cor 15:20-23

•1st “Christ, the first fruits”;

•2nd Christians at the parousia;

•3rd “The rest of the dead,” cp. Rev 20.5, 7. 

 

1Thess 4:13-18:

•v14 Christ brings those who have died "in the faith of Jesus,” Arabic version;

•v16 “the dead in Christ will rise first,” cp. 1Cor 15.20, “first fruits”;

•v17 the rest of the Christians who are alive.

Phil 3.10-11 Latin Vulgate

“I may attain to the resurrection, which is from* the dead.”

* Oldest mss. “the resurrection from (out of ) the dead.”

The Prophet Times, v3, p 142f.

“Greek writers, lexicons, critics, and the Greek NT everywhere and continually assign to the office of expressing out of, from, from among, and invariably use it before a genitive signifying a whole from which a part is taken [Acts 3.23; 1Cor 5.13; Acts 19.33; Heb 5.1, etc.].”

Of Jesus: Mat 17.9; Mar 9.9-10; 12.25; Luke 20.34-36; Acts 4.1-2; 26.23; Gal 1.1; 1Cor 15.12, 20; 1Pet 1.3; Rom 1.4.

Of Christians: Mar 12.25 [Mat 22.31 “of the dead”]; Luke 20.34-35.

The Wider Hope: Revelation 20

•vv.4-6: Doesn’t mean only the martyred are raised!

•vv.3, 5, 7: The Millennium will end!

•vv.20.4-5: “beheaded souls….came back to life”: NET Bible

The phrase “of dead persons who return to life become alive again: of humans in general Mt 9:18; Ac 9:41; 20:12; Rv 20:4, 5.”

•Personification, e.g. Abel’s blood “cries out”: Gen 4:8-10.

•V.10: “eternal torment”? Cp. Rev 18:7-8 Babylon is “tormented”;

•The wicked will eventually be “annihilated”: Ps. 92:7; Isa 66:24; Job 20:7-9, 26, 29; Isa 66:24; Mark 9:47-48;

•v.15: “The Lake of fire” = “the second death.”

Spiritual Rebuttal

‘But Revelation is apocalyptic language, and should not be taken literally.’

So what else would “this is the first resurrection” and “the rest of the dead” mean?

Rev 20:6

“Blessed and holy is the one who takes part in the first resurrection; the second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will rule for a thousand years” 

Word and Meanings

Resurrection, anastasis, 40x in the NT, usually means a physical resurrection from the dead.

Except..?

Luke 2.34

Simeon: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel…”

John 11.25

“I am the resurrection and the life.

The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.”

Summary

• OT background: a unique resurrection belief of both good and wicked people: Dan 12.2;

• NT background: further Revelation, the nature of “rewards, punishments,” i.e., a Wider Hope: Rev. 20;

• The 2nd adam, the Messiah, is introduced as the executor of this endeavor at the parousia because God the Father “has given all judgment to the Son”: John 5.22;

Endgame: Acts 3:13-26