Bully's Blog

…let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching… you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: “For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry.”
(Hebrews 10:24-25 and 36-37)

The resurrection that the New Testament writers were looking forward to occurred in the first century. They refer to it as being imminent. Jesus said some who heard His words would see His coming before they died. John would remain alive until Jesus came in judgment. It was the saints receiving the kingdom and being resurrected. Now the church governs the world from heaven, and its heavenly ‘Temple’ pattern is being measured out on the earth.

That was the first resurrection. The rest of the dead (the wicked) won’t be resurrected until the last day, after the ‘millennium’, the gospel age. Then the second resurrection will take place. This all follows the Garden, Land, World pattern set down in Genesis. Jesus was resurrected in the garden (Adam); the firstfruits (a key word) church resurrected from the Land (Cain), and we wait for the final resurrection of the no-compromise ‘sons of God’ from the world (Gen. 6).

I see this threefold division in 1 Corinthians 15:

“But each one will be raised in his proper order:Christ, first of all; (AD30)

then, at the time of his coming (parousia), those who belong to him. (AD70: see Matthew 10:23)

Then the end will come; Christ will overcome all spiritual rulers, authorities, and powers (during the gospel age), and will hand over the Kingdom to God the Father. For Christ must rule until God defeats all enemies and puts them under his feet. The last enemy to be defeated will be death.”

3REZ