When He comes in glory with His angels all people will have to give an account of themselves to Him at that point. He will not do that until the end of this temporal age when eternity is ushered in.
You are forgetting that Paul wrote to
his first-century readers, saying, "...they are written for
our admonition,
upon whom the ends of the ages have come."
(1 Cor. 10:11).
Hebrews 9:26 said the same thing about those first century days. "But
NOW once
in the consummation of the ages hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." This was the same thing that Peter wrote about in 1 Peter 4:7, saying "the
END of all things is
at hand" for the time in which Peter was writing.
There was an "end of the ages" and an "end of all things" that was then taking place in the first century. Other ages followed that end, as Paul also wrote about
"the ages that are coming" in Ephesians 2:7, but this did not detract from the fact that God was bringing a conclusion to a set of ages back then in the first century. And that particular end of those ages would include Christ's second coming return and a bodily resurrection and judgment.
I'm saying he gave Peter, James and John a preview or taste of His future coming in glory with His angels. And that is exactly what He did and that is what He was talking about in Matthew 16:28.
No, that is NOT what Matthew 16:28 wrote. You are misquoting Christ. He did NOT say He was going to give a so-called "preview" of His future return before some of those He personally spoke to had died. He said He would actually return in the glory of His Father with His angels, to give rewards to all according to their works before some of them had died. There is a world of difference between your made-up "preview", and His stated purpose of actually returning before some of them had died. You were not there in the first century to be an eye-witness of what happened or did not happen in that generation. So your denial that Christ fulfilled His promised return back in the first century is useless.
What you are not even considering here is that He said no one knows the day or hour of His coming in glory with His angels, so how could He say that He would come in glory with His angels before some standing there died? He would not have known that He would come before that because even He didn't know the day or hour of His coming. It makes far more sense that He was saying He would give some standing there a glimpse of how He will appear at His future coming in glory with His angels.
For Christ to have put a limit on His own knowledge of the
day and hour of His return did not mean He had no knowledge at all of the approximate season for it. Indeed, He scolded the Pharisees for not being able to discern the times surrounding His return, even though they could read the skies to predict the weather. Even the devils knew the approximate time of their own judgment, and asked Christ if He had come "before the time" to punish them.
Christ in the Olivet Discourse told the disciples the particular signs that would occur before His first-century coming return. He gave the entire list of ominous events in Luke 21:8-35, and then announced to the disciples that they were to "watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape
ALL these things that are ABOUT TO come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man." And that
INCLUDED His own coming return at the end of the list of ALL things that were "ABOUT TO come to pass". Just as soon as Christ's final ascension in Acts 1, the persecution of the early church believers would begin. Matthew 24:8's record of the Olivet Discourse called the beginning of all these ominous events "the beginning of sorrows" for the disciples in that first-century generation.
No, Christ was NOT ignorant of the season for His first-century coming return that would come "
immediately after the tribulation of those days", since He knew about the escalating series of persecutions and tribulations that immediately preceded His return.
Christ was not as clueless as you suppose He was.
Because Christ's resurrection itself was the first resurrection (Acts 26:23).
Yes, that WAS the "First resurrection" of "Christ the First-fruits". But don't forget those whom Christ brought out of the grave on that same day - the Matthew 27:52-53 resurrected saints. There were 144,000 of those "First-fruits" saints who participated in that same "First resurrection" event the same day as Christ had arisen from the dead. They shared Christ's same title of being the "First-fruits" because they shared the same "First resurrection" event in AD 33.
The order of bodily resurrections unto bodily immortality that Paul gives is Christ's first and "then, when he comes, those who belong to him". ALL of those who belong to Him.
Paul was speaking about ALL of the saints who had died up to that point in time in that first century when Christ had promised to return. These would compose the next, second group resurrection event. But human history would continue to flow forward in "the ages that are coming" following that first century "consummation of the ages" that Paul and Peter wrote about.
Why are you so irate about Christ staging three resurrection events over time instead of your assumed once-and-done resurrection event, which scripture does not even teach? Why should it bother you that all those saints who had died up until Christ's first-century return should already be "raptured" and enjoying resurrected eternal life with God in heaven before you yourself get to arrive there? That's a rather myopic view, and a self-centered one at that. The whole of human history and prophetic scripture does not revolve around our own current generation. You and I get to join those already-resurrected and raptured saints in the next resurrection event coming in our future.
James 5:7-9 wrote about the coming of the Lord,
which at that time had already "drawn near", with "the judge standing before the door" at that time. James urged the believers to be patient, comparing Christ's coming to a "husbandman" who waited with great patience until he received
both the "early" and the "latter" rain. This was harvest language that any Jew understood - that there were
three main harvests in Israel: the barley harvest at
Passover, the wheat harvest at
Pentecost, and the
"feast of ingathering" in the 7th month at the end of the agricultural year. The rainy seasons of the "early" and "latter" rain formed the foundation for all the OT harvest feast celebrations. God was going to resurrect and "harvest" the bodies of His saints out of the dust of the grave at the same time of year when each of those 3 agricultural harvest feast festivals were scheduled.
The Passover "First resurrection" occurred for all the "First-fruits" in AD 33 with Christ and the Matt. 27:52-53 saints resurrected on that same day.
The Pentecost second group resurrection event occurred, as Christ promised for that first-century generation, in AD 70 on that year's Pentecost day (Daniel's 1,335th day).
The Feast of Tabernacles' third group resurrection is in our future, at the culmination of fallen mankind's history on this planet.
