Revelation’s 1st Resurrection And 2nd Death
(December 2000; Modified April 2004)

My dear brothers and sisters in The Lord! For so long, you and I both have sat back and received teaching and preaching of Church leaders and so-called scholars as absolute and final without really searching the Scriptures for ourselves. You and I have been immoral in behaving in such a manner while believing we each have God’s Holy Spirit within us – The Holy Spirit who puts a "yes" or "no" quickening in our spirits to that which comes through our spiritual ears. The time is now that we must get past that and dig deeply in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Old Testament, comparing them to doctrines that we have received from others.

You and I are guilty of going with doctrines that have always been taught but the time is now to allow light to shine upon them, thus revealing any and all untruths in them. Remember that each of us is responsible before God for our walk in life, and with no excuses. God will bring the truth our way, one way or another, but it is up to us to receive it and walk in it, and with no excuses. This means that, as hard as it may be to turn our backs on errant doctrines and or teachings we have believed for years and years, we have to put God first in the decision to reverse and go the other way – Christ’s way.

The above lead-in brings me to share how I have moved from one position to another on the doctrine of the Rapture. As more Scriptural light was shed on the doctrine through careful and deep study of The Bible, I have The Lord to thank for taking me "precept upon precept; line upon line; here a little, and there a little" (Isaiah 28:10) in bringing me to where I stand on my belief today. The Rapture doctrine has gone as follows with me:

The above was stated in preparation for you to understand that we will not get new bodies and be Raptured out of this world in the 1^st Resurrection. Before giving the evidence for this, there must first be given the knowledge of who we are or how we function as human beings.

Resurrection means raised to life again, or to rise from the dead, and death is the cessation of the breath of life. With mankind being a triune being, death occurs when the breath of life departs the human being, thus leaving the spirit to return to God while the soul goes out of existence and the fleshly body returns to dust.

On account of man having been made from dirt or the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7), and man sins against God, going all the way back to the garden in Genesis, the Word of The Lord to man is

This perpetual process was handed down by God and is not, yes, is not going to change. That along with the rest of the punishment of pain and misery in the life of every human being is never going to change until there is a new heaven and earth and God The Father and God The Son are both dwelling here. So dear Saints, the belief that we will all receive brand new bodies at the Rapture is a falsehood. The flesh is liable to corruption that will not be reversed because it is not promised immortality. Fleshly incorruption and fleshly immortality are simply not Scriptural. Jesus spoke of the resurrection of the dead and how they cannot die anymore because they are like angels (spirits), meaning that only the spirit of a person continues to live on (Luke 20:34-38). The flesh or the body, once dead, does not come into being again. When the breath of life is gone from the body/flesh, the body and the soul both go to the grave. Life beyond this present life is not that of a resurrected immortalized body, but is that of the spirit.

The Bible sometimes interchange the word soul with spirit while the soul and spirit do have a connection as dwelling in one’s body, they function very differently in one’s life. A human being is a "living soul" as long as he has the breath of life in him (Genesis 2:7), which means, the soul is the life of the whole human being while the breath of life is in him or her. The soul is the "living breathing creature." The living soul is comprised of (1) a body/flesh, (2) the soul itself (mind, will, emotions), and (3) a spirit thus making one a triune being. Jesus said in Matthew:

It is seen from that Scripture that life is eating and drinking which sustains the body, even though our Lord’s point is that there is more to life than eating, drinking, and clothing one’s body. The point to be made from this is that your whole being is your living soul – your life.

The Triune Being In Operation

      Body/Flesh Conjoined TwinsSoul                          Spirit

                                 

          
              - these two go together like bread and butter
              - these two war against the spirit

The soul is what brings the spirit into rebellion when one is tenacious in living unholy or breaking God’s Law. It is the behavior of the soul that sends one to hell or one’s spirit to eternal damnation, which is why salvation of the soul (I Peter 1:9; Hebrews 10:39) is spoken of in the Scriptures.

Because God’s Word, His high holy standard of living, redirects us from hell, God is kind enough to lay up His Word in our hearts (spirits) and our souls (Deuteronomy 11:18). If we obey His Word we are thus able to love Him with our hearts/spirits and souls and live holy. By God laying up His Word in our souls, this gives the soul the responsibility of living a sanctified life or a life of holiness so that when the living soul does depart from this world, the spirit part of the living soul or human being will live forever either in the presence of The Lord or damned to the lake of fire and brimstone. Remember the spirit is always willing to do right by God, but has the conjoined soul and flesh working against him.

Why so? Because the spirit of a spirit-filled Believer not only intercedes for the saints according to God’s will, but because one’s spirit is always willing to do God’s will if allowed to when not subject to the flesh and soul . Since the spirit has a mind of its own, at judgment, it can recollect all that transpired in the life of one when there was also a soul and flesh/body.

Christianity speaks of us dying and then being raised from the dead, FIRST because God tells us that He is the God of the living.

When Jesus spoke those words, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were long since dead in the natural. For God to be their God, they had to somehow or another yet be living – living in the spirit because God is Spirit and the only way we can be in His presence is in the spirit. God is the God of the living – those living in the spirit, whether walking in the spirit in this life, or in the spirit in life after physical death. SECOND, Christianity speaks of us dying and being resurrected and we know it to be so because Jesus was the first to be resurrected.

Christ is our hope in the resurrection (I Peter 1:3), and by faith in Christ, we all shall be resurrected from physical death being that we are the children of the resurrection (Luke 20:36-38).

As a Pharisee, Paul believed in the resurrection of the dead, but his take on it is different from that of our Lord Jesus. Yes, one may call it a revelation, but why so far-fetched from what Christ spoke about the matter? Look closely at what Paul wrote.

Christ never said anything about changing our bodies, but He did speak about our hearts/spirits and souls being changed. This is not the first and only time Paul preached something that was contrary to what Jesus Christ spoke. Church, please keep in mind the words of Jesus spoken in the Gospel when He said:

That means no one is sent with a teaching that is apart from what He taught. It’s odd that before that verse He warned us of false Christs and prophets, which includes teachers and preachers who come with a gospel that is not parallel to His. He said, even the elect (Believers) can possibly be seduced. Saints, I know this is a "hard pill to swallow," especially since you have for so long placed Paul’s teachings above Jesus’ but, Jesus never told us that our mortal bodies/flesh would be changed or not see corruption as His body did not see corruption.

The Psalmist was speaking of Jesus Christ and not himself, nor of any other human being. It is Jesus who is spoken of because He was buried for three days and His flesh was made immortal so that it did not suffer corruption or return to dust as do all human beings.

From the above two Scriptures, we can see that Jesus was not in the grave long enough to return to dust, and how He now with flesh and bones had as well become fleshly immortalized and is at the right hand side of God The Father. Because Jesus is the Son of God and was sinless while on this earth, His flesh therefore did not return to the dust of the ground. Jesus’ body was resurrected in the state of immortality or incorruption because some 2000-plus years later He is to rule and reign over people who will still be clothed in their fleshly bodies. In order for those people to look upon Him, the King of kings and Lord of Lords during His Millennial reign, He must be in the flesh and not in the spirit. Flesh can’t look upon God and live? Incorruptible and immortal flesh was for Christ only – not for us. Saints, that wasn’t promised to the rest of mankind. Christ never said that after death we would be reunited with our bodies, we would receive new bodies, nor that those of us left alive when Jesus comes back would cloth immortality in the flesh. At death the body begins the corrupting process of going back to dust. In exhuming a body after so long in the grave, you will find nothing but the skeletal remains because God has kept His Word "until dust shalt thou return." The sum of it is, you’re never getting a new body and nor will your body last forever without decay, for this is unscriptural.

Dear Saints of God, there is nothing original about Paul’s eschatological teachings in I Corinthians and I Thessalonians: it came straight from the teachings he’d received as a Pharisee – from the apocryphal/pseudepigraphal writings. (Pseudepigraphic is where the prominent name of an Old Testament figure is taken on by some unknown writer.  Pseudonymous writings are deceptive and therefore God is not in it; thus it is unacceptable in The Church.) Yes, some of those Jewish writings may not have been given over to paper until the first and second centuries or even later, even so those writings had been taught orally for centuries by the Jewish teachers particularly in the 400 years (between Malachi and Jesus) when God did not speak to Israel because of her backslidden ways.  (The question remains: if God wasn’t speaking to Israel, who was?  There are only two voices in this world.)  Yes, the eschatological writings in Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch 49-51) and 4 Ezra (6:24-26) to name a couple amongst others of those Jewish writings, most certainly parallel Paul’s teachings and you must not walk away with the idea that perchance the Jewish writers copied from Paul the Christian. Without a doubt it’s the reverse. Paul got his teachings from those Jewish writings that had been entrenched in him before his conversion – not Holy Spirit revelation because the Holy Spirit would never contradict God’s Word; second, God is never changing; and third, Jesus did not and never will give Paul or anyone else a revelation that counters what He preached.

Jesus did come out of the grave and to have done so, life was given Him as the Father quickened Him so that He wasn’t left to rot. He was raised from the dead and it is the hope of the Christian to not be dead forever, but to have the spirit-man resurrected from the dead as was our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Christian belief in being resurrected from the dead is one of the required elements in this way of life. There is no hope in life after death if there is no resurrection from the dead.

Jesus resurrected and is alive because He Himself said that He would be at the Father’s right hand side. He was the first to be resurrected but His resurrection is not considered the 1st Resurrection even though the Bible speaks of  two resurrections. The two resurrections of the dead in The Bible are (1) the resurrection that occurs shortly before Jesus’ return for His thousand-year reign, which is tied into the so-called Rapture doctrine; and (2) the resurrection at the end of the thousand-year reign just before God The Father comes to dwell in the New Jerusalem.

The dead people who rose at the time of Jesus’ expiration on the cross were not the first to be resurrected (Matthew 27:52). Yes, they did come alive and they went into the holy city and appeared unto many, but nothing was said about them having met Jesus in the clouds. Did they put on immortality? Where did they go? Even though the Bible doesn’t say, it clearly was not the 1st Resurrection of the Saints. The 1^st Resurrection is to come, and will not include all of the Saints that have died since Jesus’ resurrection, just like Matthew 27:52-53 did not include all the deceased Saints up to that point in time. Saying it was "many" is not saying it was "all."

As the above Scripture states that "many" came out of graves after Jesus’ resurrection, the Word of God also tells us that in the end time (Revelation 20:5) there will be many to "resurrect" from the dead as well, but not all. It must be said here that Apostle Paul’s gospel says that when Jesus comes again, He’s bringing those who sleep in Him (I Thessalonians 4:14). One would gather "all" who died as Christians will be in the 1^st Resurrection or Rapture. Do you believe Jesus or Paul?

Here is how we know that those resurrected from the dead when Christ first died (1) were not the 1st Resurrection, and (2) all that died in Christ until this time are not included in the Rapture of the dead or the 1st Resurrection even though Paul says otherwise.  Beginning with Revelation 20:4

It is these souls that are raised from the dead at the sound of the trumpet and are in the clouds who according to Apostle Paul only, and not Jesus,  precede those yet living in Christ Jesus – The Rapture (according to I Thessalonians 4:14-17). It is there that souls who during The Tribulation

• do not worship the Beast;
• do not worship his image;
• do not receive the mark 666 on the forehead nor hand; and
• end up being beheaded.

After Revelation 20.4 described these souls as being "the 1st Resurrection," it is according to Revelation 20:5 that we know it is they.

The rest of the dead includes all of the Saints that died long before the Tribulation including before the 1^st Resurrection or Rapture of the dead, but did not die as martyrs during the Tribulation period. Only the people that died by beheading during The Tribulation were raised from the dead – Raptured spirits, not bodies.

Again, it says of those who were beheaded or martyred during The Tribulation

this is the first resurrection (Revelation 20:5).

Looking at Apostle Paul’s revelation about those alive being Raptured, he says:

Verse 17 of that Scripture "Then we which…" does not line up with what John The Revelator wrote in Revelation 20:6. Above that, Christ Jesus never anywhere spoke such a thing.

The question now is, will those left alive really and truly get caught up in the clouds – RAPTURED? I don’t think so!

The Living Saints Raptured?

All of His holy angels will be with Him, does not mean The Church will have been made immortals, Raptured, and return with The Lord when He comes to rule and reign a thousand years after the great Tribulation period. This of course is as written above but is after Jesus has fought the Battle of Armageddon, and on Tabernacles, he sets foot on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah) and the Jewish people will look upon Him whom they pierced.

There is no Rapture of the living True Church. The Saints that are alive in their fleshly bodies remain here on earth in the midst of the nations, and at that time Jesus will separate them from the non-Believers – the sheep from the goats. As the rest of Matthew 25 reads:

Inheriting the Kingdom will be the fleshly living Believers - actually possessing the Kingdom that Daniel 7:18 speaks of.  Church, The Father will not have come to earth at this time, for this is the time for His Son, Jesus to rule and reign, and His subjects will be mortals – flesh and blood Believers. To back that up, verse 41 reads:

"All nations"  up in Matthew 25:32-33 means all of the people left on earth after The Tribulation. For Jesus to separate them all, sheep from goats, means there will be Saints still here on earth that make up the nations, and I don’t mean because they were "left behind" but because they never went anywhere in the first place. Sheep are God’s people – the Saints – the Church. The Saints never leave the earth with the exception of those beheaded during The Tribulation. Daniel 7:14; Micah 4:1-4; Isaiah 2:2-4 all support this.

The Beast and False Prophet are cast into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 19:20), but Satan will only be bound in prison (bottomless pit) for the thousand years of Jesus’ early reign (Revelation 20:2). At the end of the thousand years (Revelation 20:7), Satan will be let loose from the bottomless pit. Judging from this, the Lake of Fire and the bottomless pit are two entirely different places. Satan will be loosed to deceive the nations made up of fleshly, free moral agents, some of whom will follow him and ultimately make war against the beloved city where Jesus reigns and is the camp of the resurrected Saints (Revelation 20:8-9). From reading Zechariah 14:16-17, one can conclude that during the thousand-year reign of Christ Jesus there will be some imperfect human beings. There will be some disobedient ones because some of the families will not go up to Jerusalem to worship the king. If a person is already in Satan’s palm why should Satan go out to deceive that person? Sorry to say, but Satan will deceive some of the living righteous Believers that fall back into their fleshly desires.

Adam and Eve were holy obedient people when Satan deceived them. These people left on earth will be people who go up to Jerusalem to worship Messiah once a year, but yet, they will be deceived by Satan in going against the camp of the Saints (those who were beheaded and now rule and reign with Christ). Jealous! That war, the final conflict, which Satan of course loses, results in him finally being cast into the Lake of Fire where the Beast and False Prophet will already be making their permanent home (Revelation 20:10). After all this, the time comes for the New Heaven, New Earth, and New Jerusalem, and God The Father and The Son both reigning on earth.

As additional proof that "all" of the dead are not raised in that 1st Resurrection, Revelation 20:11 shows the great white throne and God The Father sitting there for final judgment of mankind. Here’s what happens:

Lake of Fire and Brimstone is permanent. It is the 2nd Death and "overcomers" are not hurt by it (Revelation 20:14). Those in the 1st Resurrection (the Raptured beheaded dead), the 2nd Death/Fire & Brimstone has no power over them. In other words, those Saints will have already been judged and given their rewards as Kings and Priests to rule and reign with the Lord.

Those who the 2nd Death will have power over because they will have chosen the life of indulging in sin are listed in Revelation 21:8:

The 2nd Death is final, but what is the "1st Death"?

Naturally there has to be a 1st  Death before there can be what Revelation 20 refers to as a "2nd Death." The 1st Death is somewhat double-barreled or having two elements in it.

This is death in one’s life to the ways of the world when the Saints, you and I, choose to love and serve God with our whole hearts, minds, souls, and with all our strength. In that very same Psalm 116:13, we are told in simplicity what this element of death means, and that is salvation.

The Psalmist continues by saying,

This is a person who has surrendered to God and God has begun to set him or her free from sin – free from the tricks of Satan so that they can love Him and serve Him without hindrances. Thus, the first element of the 1st Death is being "Born Again" (John 3:3-5). However, being Born Again extends beyond saying the sinner’s prayer. You must continue on the daily journey of (1) living a righteous and holy life obedient to God’s Commandments/His Word; and (2) walking in complete faith/trust in The Lord.

Element one of death and its processes must all occur before the second element of the 1st Death can take place, which is physical death. Reason being is for the sake of judgment and reward by God or the determinant of which side of the gulf a person’s spirit will be assigned to. The gulf, where did that come from? Remember Lazarus and the rich man?

Remember Jesus on the cross telling the former malefactor who repented of his sins, while alive, that

Abraham’s Bosom or Paradise is on one side of the gulf and it comes into play after one’s physical death.

Death is both an event and a place. There are gates and doors to death (Job 38:17) which indicate it being an event or place. Element Two of the 1st Death has two compartments:

Abraham’s Bosom or Paradise for the Wheat/Sheep/Believers 
                        ↕


                       
                        ↕

Hell or the pit for the tares/goats/unbelievers

Both compartments or places are intermediate holding places for spirits between death and resurrection however long that may be.

The pit or hell is in the earth where the wicked go upon death. Moses in Numbers 16:28-30 spoke of  rebellious Korah, Dathan, and Abiram meeting death by being swallowed up by the earth and them then going down quickly into the pit. The Psalmist in Psalm 55:15 is crying out to God about his back-stabbing friend being suddenly taken by death and then quickly going down into hell. One can see from these Scriptures, and countless others, that the Old Testament Hebrews believed in an underworld or spirit world called "hell" or "pit" (Hebrew word sheol) where souls (spirits) went after death or separation from the body. But what about Heaven immediately upon death? Is Abraham’s Bosom or Paradise the same as Heaven? Upon death, do spirits go to Heaven? Will they ever go to Heaven. (I personally don’t believe so.) What do you think?

Before going on, Abraham’s Bosom/Paradise needs to be further looked into. As has been written, Abraham’s Bosom/Paradise is a holding place for the spirits of those who have lived in obedience to God. Going back to the Scripture of the former malefactor on the cross with Jesus, Jesus said to him

 

1. "Today" or "this day" of our death was what Jesus spoke of.
2. Jesus did not immediately return to Heaven after His death, but it was three days later.
3. Where was Jesus for those three days? Answer: He was in the belly of the earth. Jesus said Himself,

4. What was Jesus doing in the heart of the earth? Answer: Jesus was preaching to the spirits.

The New Testament world of the dead until resurrection is called hell (Greek word Hades). More often in the New Testament hell is seen as the permanent place for future punishment, but it is not. The book of Revelation reveals that the Lake of Fire and Brimstone is the permanent place and hell or the pit is a temporary holding place for the wicked. Saints, what do you think?

Saints, eventually there will be no more death, sorrow, tears, pain and all else that goes with being a living soul, which means that at that point there will be nothing but spirits in existence. (All flesh will have returned to dust as God said it would.) Keep in mind that this doesn’t happen until God The Father brings about the New Heaven, the New Earth, and the New Jerusalem, and He is dwelling with men on earth (Revelation 21:1-3). That does not take place until after Jesus’ thousand-year reign, which means, the breath of life will be in humans who will be around during His reign which was the whole purpose of Him receiving His glorified body so that the fleshly humans could look upon Him as He sits on His earthly throne. Those fleshly people will be the ones who did not get the mark of the beast and nor were they beheaded during the great persecution or Tribulation. However, they cannot remain in those fleshly bodies when The Father comes to earth because no flesh can see God The Father and live to tell about it and The Father certainly has no intentions of putting on a fleshly body. Saints, you are not getting new bodies and you don't go to Heaven when you die. If anything, after Jesus' thousand-year reign, you'll become spirit so that you will be able to look upon God The Father when he reigns at the end of Jesus' thousand-year reign.  Amen!

 

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