In the last session we considered the first phase of the resurrection, called by Paul “Jesus the first-fruits.” We saw how exactly and completely the account of Jesus’s resurrection given in the New Testament fulfilled the prophetic typology of the ordinance of the first-fruits as ordained for Israel in the Old Testament.

  We shall now go on to consider the second main phase of the resurrection – that which Paul refers to as “those who are Jesus’s at His coming” (1 Cor. 15:23).

  Marks of True Believers  

  Notice carefully the exact phrases which Paul uses concerning this second phase of the resurrection. 

First, the Greek word here translated “coming” is parousia. This is the word mainly used throughout the New Testament to denote that aspect of Jesus’s second coming which primarily concerns the church – that is, Jesus’s coming as the Bridegroom to take His bride, the church, to Himself.

  Second, we must notice how carefully Paul specifies those who will take part in this second phase of the resurrection. He says, “Those who are Jesus’s.” This phrase indicates possession. It is equivalent to saying “those who belong to Jesus.” This certainly does not include all those who make a profession of faith in Jesus. It covers only those who have so fully and unreservedly yielded themselves to Jesus that they are entirely His. They are no longer their own; they belong to Jesus.

Paul describes a double “seal” that marks those who fulfill this requirement.

  Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of Jesus depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19).

  In the last resort, only the Lord Himself knows exactly who are those that belong to Him. In outward conduct, however, all such believers have one feature in common: They “depart from iniquity.” Any who lack this second, outward seal are not among those whom the Lord acknowledges as His.

  In Galatians Paul gives a further mark by which such people are distinguished.

  And those who are Jesus’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (5:24).

  Professing Christian’s who lead careless, carnal, self-indulgent lives will not be numbered among those whom Jesus will receive to Himself.

  Jesus is coming, it is true, “like a thief,” but He certainly is not coming to steal. He will take to Himself only those who are already His own.

  With this warning in mind, let us consider what will take place at this second main phase of the resurrection. Since Paul states that it will take place “at Jesus’s coming,” it is clear that this second phase is directly associated with the return of Jesus.

The return of Jesus is one of the main themes of biblical prophecy. Someone has estimated that for every promise in the Bible concerning the first coming of Jesus, there are at least five promises concerning His second coming. This shows how great a part the theme of the second coming of Jesus plays in the total revelation of Scripture. For this reason it is outside the scope of our present studies to discuss in detail every question related to Jesus’s second coming.

It is, however, helpful to point out that, in the eternal counsel of God, the second coming of Jesus is ordained to accomplish a number of different purposes. These purposes are in some sense distinct from each other, yet all are interrelated in God’s overall plan. Each of these purposes constitutes one main aspect of Jesus’s second coming, one main part of the total event as foretold in Scripture.

  Five Purposes of Jesus’s Second Coming  

  Briefly, we may mention the five main purposes for which Jesus will come again.

  1. Jesus will come for the church. He will come again as the Bridegroom to receive to Himself all true believers as His bride. They will be united with Jesus, either by resurrection or by instantaneous change in their bodies while still alive. Jesus promised His disciples:

  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also (John 14:3).

  2. Jesus will come for the national salvation of Israel. The national remnant of Israel that has survived the fires of the great tribulation will acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and thus be reconciled to God and restored to His favour and blessing. This is foretold in the promise of God through Isaiah, quoted by Paul.

  And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:

  “The Deliverer will come out of Zion,

  And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;

  For this is My covenant with them,

  When I take away their sins” (Rom. 11:26-27).

  3. Jesus will come for the overthrow of AntiJesus and of Satan himself.

  And then the lawless one [the AntiJesus] will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming [parousia]
(2 Thess. 2:8).

  4. Jesus will come for the judgement of the Gentile nations. He Himself gave this prediction:

  When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats (Matt. 25:31-32).

  In the verses that follow, Jesus describes in detail the procedure of judgement.

  5. Jesus will come for the establishment of His millennial kingdom on the earth. This is included in the passage in Matthew 25 and predicted in Isaiah.

  Then the moon will be disgraced

  And the sun ashamed;

  For the Lord of hosts will reign

  On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem

  And before His elders, gloriously (Is. 24:23).

  It is also predicted in Zechariah.

  The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name (14:9, NIV).

  The period of time for which Jesus will thus reign is given in Revelation 20:4, where it speaks of the martyrs of the tribulation period:

  And they lived and reigned with Jesus for a thousand years.

  (Millennium is a Latin word meaning “a period of a thousand years.”) Thus we may briefly summarize the five main purposes for which Jesus will come.

  1. Jesus will come for the church, to receive all true believers to Himself.

  2. Jesus will come for the national salvation of Israel.

  3. Jesus will come for the overthrow of AntiJesus and of Satan himself.

  4. Jesus will come for the judgement of the Gentile nations.

  5. Jesus will come to establish His millennial kingdom upon earth.

  While there is general agreement among Bible believers concerning these main purposes of Jesus’s second coming, there has been much discussion and controversy concerning the details and the precise relationship of each to all the rest. Some of the main questions that have been asked are: Will all these purposes of Jesus’s return be accomplished together as one single event, or will there be definite intervals of time between some of them? If so, in what order will they take place? Is it possible that some will partly overlap others?

  In our present study we shall avoid entering unnecessarily into these controversial questions, and we shall confine ourselves to that particular aspect of Jesus’s return which is directly associated with the resurrection of the righteous.

  Resurrection and Rapture of True Believers 

Paul describes how  professing Christian’s will be resurrected to meet Jesus at His coming.

  But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Jesus will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words (1 Thess. 4:13-18).

  The primary purpose of Paul’s teaching here is to comfort Christian’s believers concerning other  professing Christian’s – relatives or other loved ones – who have died. These  professing Christian’s who have died are described as “those who have fallen asleep,” or, more precisely, “those who sleep in Jesus.” This means those who have died in the faith of the gospel. Paul’s message of comfort is based on the assurance that these, and all other true believers, will be resurrected.

  The actual picture which Paul gives of this phase of the resurrection is as follows.

  First, there will be three dramatic sounds to herald it. The first sound will be the shout of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as He Himself had predicted.

  All who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation (John 5:28-29).

  It is the voice of Jesus alone that has power to call the dead out of their graves. However, at this particular moment He will call forth only the righteous dead – only those who have died in the faith. The calling forth of the unrighteous dead will be reserved for a later phase of resurrection.

  The other two sounds that will be heard at this point will be the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God. The archangel here referred to is probably Gabriel, since it appears to be his special ministry to proclaim upon earth impending interventions of God in the affairs of men.

  All through the Bible, one main use of the trumpet is to gather the Lord’s people together in any special time of crisis. The sound of the trumpet at this point will be the signal for all the Lord’s people to gather together with Him as He descends from heaven to meet them.

  Upon earth two great events will occur in swift succession. First, all true believers who have died in the faith will be resurrected. Second, all true believers alive on earth at that moment will undergo an instantaneous, supernatural change in their bodies.

  Then both these companies of believers – those who were resurrected and those whose bodies were changed without dying – will together be swiftly raised by God’s supernatural power from the earth up into the air. There they will be received into clouds, and within these clouds they will be reunited with their Lord and with each other. Thereafter the Lord and His redeemed believers will forever be united in unbroken harmony and fellowship.

  There is special significance in two of the Greek words that Paul uses in this passage. Where he says “we shall be caught up,” the Greek verb translated “to catch up” is harpazo. This denotes a sudden, swift, violent grab. It is used four times in the New Testament to describe people being caught up to heaven.

  In addition, it is used in Acts 8:39, where we read that “the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away” from the Ethiopian eunuch. It is used by Jesus in John 10:12 to describe the wolf “catching” the sheep. It is used by Him also in Matthew 13:19 to describe the birds snatching away the seed sown by the wayside. It is used in Jude verse 23 to describe people being pulled out of the fire.

  Traditionally, Bible commentators have rendered harpazo by the word rapture – either as a noun or as a verb. Rapture is derived from a Latin verb which means precisely the same as harpazo – “to seize, to snatch away.” Throughout the rest of these studies, rapture will be used in this sense as the equivalent of harpazo.

  Paul’s use of harpazo is deliberately intended to give the impression of one single, swift, sudden, violent act. Indeed, it suggests particularly the act of a thief. In this respect it is in line with other scriptures which compare this aspect of Jesus’s coming to that of a thief.

  Behold, I am coming as a thief (Rev. 16:15).

  Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into (Matt. 24:42-43).

  Notice the suggestion of violence in the statement that the house is to be “broken into.”

  We may say, therefore, that the coming of Jesus for His church at this point will be like that of a thief in the following respects. It will be sudden, unexpected, without warning; it will culminate in one single, violent act of snatching away. Furthermore, that which is to be snatched away will be earth’s most valuable treasure – the true  professing Christian’s. However, as we have already said, Jesus’s coming will differ from that of a thief in one extremely important respect: He will take away only that which is already His by right of redemption.

  First Thessalonians 4:17 contains one other significant Greek word. Paul says that we shall meet the Lord “in the air.” The Greek word used here is aer.

This is one of two Greek words normally translated “air.” The other word is aither. The difference between these two words is that aer denotes the lower air in immediate contact with the earth’s surface; aither denotes the higher, rarer air, some considerable distance above the earth’s surface. Since Paul uses the word aer in relation to the Lord’s return, he indicates that the Lord’s gathering together with His raptured saints will take place in the lower air, quite close to the earth’s surface.

  Paul refers again to this same moment of resurrection and rapture in 1 Corinthians.

  Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (15:51-52).

  Paul here unfolds “a mystery” – that is, a previously unrevealed secret of God’s plan for the church. The secret thus revealed is this: All true believers will be raptured together at the Lord’s coming, but not all those to be raptured will have died and been resurrected.

  Those who are alive at the Lord’s coming will not die at all but will simply undergo an instantaneous and miraculous change in their bodies. By this change their bodies will be rendered exactly like those of the other believers who have been resurrected from the dead.

  In the next verse Paul briefly summarizes the nature of the change that will take place.

  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:53).

  Instead of being mortal and corruptible, the new body of each believer will be immortal and incorruptible.

  Does this account given by Paul constitute a complete picture of the resurrection of all believers before the establishment of Jesus’s kingdom in the millennium?

To this question the answer would appear to be no. For it would seem that at least two further stages in the resurrection of the righteous are recorded in the book of Revelation.

  Witnesses and Martyrs  

  In Revelation 11 we read the account of God’s two witnesses during the tribulation period and of their eventual martyrdom “by the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit” – the Anti Christ.

  Then those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead bodies three and a half days, and not allow their dead bodies to be put into graves . . . Now after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet . . . And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them (Rev. 11:9,11-12).

  The account makes it plain that this was in the fullest sense a resurrection. Although their bodies had not been buried, these two martyrs had been dead for three and a half days. Then, in the open sight of their enemies, their bodies were resurrected, and they ascended into heaven. It is interesting to notice that their ascension into heaven is similar to each of the other cases that we have already considered in that it takes place in a cloud.

  It seems clear that this resurrection of the two witnesses is distinct from the resurrection of  professing Christian’s described in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. It is not associated with the descent of Jesus from heaven, nor is there any mention of other accompanying features, such as a trumpet or the voice of an archangel.

  If we now turn to Revelation 20:4-6, we find the account of what appears to be a further stage in the resurrection of the righteous.

  And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgement was committed to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshipped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Jesus for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection (20:4-6).

  The people whose resurrection is described here are those who were beheaded as martyrs of Jesus during the period of the AntiJesus’s rule. These tribulation saints are shown as being resurrected at the close of the great tribulation, just prior to the establishment of Jesus’s millennial kingdom. They thus share with Jesus Himself, and with all other resurrected saints, the privilege of ruling and judging the nations on earth during the millennium.

  Some commentators believe that these tribulation martyrs are included in the resurrection of  professing Christian’s described in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. Others view it as a distinct and subsequent stage in the resurrection of the righteous. There is little to be gained by making this a subject of controversy. John closes the account of the resurrection of these martyrs with the words:

  This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection (Rev. 20:5-6).

  By these words John apparently indicates that “the first resurrection” is now complete. All those who take part in this resurrection are called “blessed and holy.” That is to say, they are all righteous believers. (Up to this point, none of the unrighteous has been resurrected. The second resurrection, in which the unrighteous have their part, is described by John in the latter part of Revelation 20.)

If we now combine the revelations given by Paul and John, we may offer the following summary of the resurrection of the righteous.

The total resurrection of the righteous, from the moment of Jesus’s own resurrection down to the resur

rection of the tribulation martyrs just prior to the millennium, is called by John “the first resurrection.” All those who take part in this resurrection are “blessed and holy”; that is, they are all righteous believers.

  However, within this total resurrection of the righteous we may discern at least four distinct events.

  1. “Jesus the first-fruits” – that is, Jesus Himself and those of the Old Testament saints who were    resurrected at the time of Jesus’s resurrection.

  2. “Those who are Jesus’s at His coming” – the true  professing Christian’s who are ready to meet Jesus at His return, together with those who died in the faith – all these together being caught up in clouds to meet Jesus in the air.

  3. The “two witnesses” of the tribulation period, who are left dead but unburied for three and a half days and are then resurrected and ascend to heaven in a cloud.

  4. The remainder of the tribulation martyrs, who are resurrected at the close of the tribulation period in time to share with Jesus and the other saints in the privilege of ruling and judging the nations on earth during the millennium.

  Such, in brief outline, is the New Testament picture of the resurrection of the righteous.

  In the next session we shall go on to consider the third and final phase of the resurrection.