Having in our study entitled “The Church under the Abrahamic Covenant, not the New Covenant” considered those who will participate in the Resurrection of Life, i.e. the Church, the great company and the Ancient Worthies, we will now consider those who will take part in the Resurrection of Judgement. Now as you recall in our previous posts we had mentioned some who would survive Armageddon, not only the “holy remnant” of Israel, but of other nations as well.
The question then is asked,
What resurrection if any do these survivors fall under? Since they never physically died; do they even need a resurrection?
It is quite understandable that one might ask such a question as one would naturally imagine that the dead would need to be resurrected, but
If you’re still alive why would you need to be resurrected?
This all goes back to what we were discussing at the end of our previous post concerning the dead living again and who precisely the dead are. We of course naturally consider the dead to be those who have died and gone to the grave, but the Scriptures speak of the dead as both those in the grave and those still walking about, (and no we are not referring to Zombies).
The Pastor when asked to explain the following text sheds some much needed light on the subject.
"For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." (1 Peter 4:6)
Who are the dead referred to in the question?
They are the same kind of dead ones that Jesus referred to when one came to him and said, "When my father is dead I will become your disciple" and our Lord answered saying,
"Let the dead bury the dead; go thou and preach the Gospel."
What does that mean ‘let the dead bury the dead’?
That means that from God's standpoint all mankind, being under the sentence of death, are counted as dead. Unless you have the Son of God you have no life in you. No one has even reckoned life unless he is in conjunction with the Lord Jesus as the great giver of life. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life."
So then, the whole world is dead in this way, and the Apostle says, “For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” That is to say! That you and I, although we are dead with the world by nature, are counted alive, reckoned as having passed from death unto life, and then have our trial here (now during the Gospel age) for life everlasting.
How would we have a trial?
According to men, they would think we were still in the flesh, but according to God, we would be considered as new creatures. And so we recognize each other. But the world knows us not, and the world still thinks of us as a part of the world, and still judges us according to the flesh, but we are judged by the Lord according to the spirit. Now, says the Apostle, that is the reason the Gospel is preached to those dead ones that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” (Q287:2)
So then even though there are survivors of Armageddon both in Israel and in the rest of the world, nevertheless in the eyes of the Lord these are still considered dead and thus in need of a resurrection to bring them back to life again.
Now the “holy remnant” of Israel will be the first to take a step in this direction when they are caused to “look upon him whom they pierce and mourn” (Zech 12:10), then shall follow the rest of the world as they begin to see the blessings of the New Covenant (restitution and restoration) coming to the Jew.
So then what precisely does a resurrection entail?
When the Lord raised Lazarus from the dead was that a resurrection?
We shall endeavor to answer these questions in our next post.
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