Will There Be Two Resurrections?

The Bible names a first resurrection once, in Revelation 20:5, and says of everyone else that they "lived not again until the thousand years were finished". A first implies a second, and a thousand years sits between them. Read on its own, that passage teaches two resurrections.

Read on its own, so does the rest of the New Testament teach one. Every other passage on the subject describes a single event covering the righteous and the wicked together. That is the tension, and it is real rather than manufactured. Nobody holds their position because they have not noticed the other set of verses.

The passage that implies two

But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Revelation 20:5

The sentence does two things at once. It marks off a group who are alive and reigning, and it dates a second group's living to a point a thousand years later. If both instances of "lived" mean the same thing, there are two bodily risings with a millennium between them, and premillennialism follows almost automatically.

That "if" is carried by one Greek verb used twice, ezēsan, and it is examined on its own page: what the first resurrection is. What matters here is the shape the verse gives the future, and how it fits with everything else.

The passages that sound like one

Four texts do most of the work on the other side.

Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. John 5:28-29

One hour. One voice. All that are in the graves. Two destinations, but no gap between the two comings forth.

Alongside it stand Daniel 12:2, where many that sleep in the dust of the earth awake, "some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt"; Acts 24:15, where Paul tells Felix there shall be a resurrection "both of the just and unjust", in one breath; and John 11:24, where Martha speaks of rising again "at the last day" and Jesus does not correct her.

Four passages, one pattern: the just and the unjust named together, no interval mentioned.

The premillennial reading

Two bodily resurrections, separated by the thousand years. The martyrs and the faithful dead rise when Christ returns, reign with him, and the rest of the dead rise at the end for the great white throne judgment of Revelation 20:11-15.

Its strongest argument is that Revelation 20 is the only passage in the Bible that discusses the order of the resurrection at any length, and it is the one that puts an interval in it. The other texts state that a resurrection of the just and the unjust will occur. None says the two happen at the same moment, and a text that supplies detail is not contradicted by texts that supply none.

On John 5:28-29 the reply is specific. The word for hour is hōra, and three verses earlier Jesus uses it of a stretch that has already lasted two thousand years.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. John 5:25

If an hour in verse 25 covers the whole period from Christ's ministry to the present, an hour in verse 28 can cover a thousand years. Wayne Grudem, a premillennialist writing from a Reformed position, makes this point about how elastic the word is in John. The passage names two outcomes; it does not date them against each other.

The difficulty premillennialists have to carry is that the reading rests on a single chapter, and on one disputed verb inside it. If Revelation 20:4 describes souls entering heaven rather than bodies leaving graves, the two-resurrection structure has nothing else in Scripture holding it up. It is also fair to say that a first-century reader of John 5:28-29, without Revelation in hand, would not have guessed at an interval.

The amillennial reading

One bodily resurrection, at the second coming, of the just and the unjust together, followed by the last judgment. The first resurrection of Revelation 20 is not bodily at all: it is either the believer's spiritual rising with Christ at conversion, on the strength of Ephesians 2:5-6, or the soul's entry into Christ's presence at death, which is the reading B. B. Warfield and later Meredith Kline developed.

Its strongest argument is the plain shape of John 5:28-29 and its three companions. Everywhere the New Testament teaches on the resurrection outside Revelation 20, it names both groups in one sentence and gives no hint of a thousand-year interval. If the future genuinely contains two risings a millennium apart, the silence is odd, particularly in a discourse where Jesus is deliberately setting out what will happen at the last day.

A second point is worth stating. Revelation 20:6 promises that the second death has no power over those in the first resurrection. If that resurrection is bodily and future, the promise reaches only the martyrs. If it is the believer's present standing in Christ, it reaches every Christian reading the verse, which fits the beatitude form John gives it.

The difficulty amillennialists have to carry is verse 5. The same verb describes both groups' living, two verses apart, and the second instance is bodily on almost everyone's reading. Taking the first as spiritual and the second as physical asks one word to do two jobs inside a single sentence pair.

The postmillennial reading

On the resurrection itself, postmillennialism agrees with amillennialism: one general resurrection at the second coming, both groups together, followed by the judgment. The first resurrection of Revelation 20 is read spiritually, usually of the departed saints reigning with Christ.

What differs is what precedes it. Postmillennialists expect the millennium to be a future era within ordinary history in which the gospel succeeds on a scale not yet seen, and the second coming closes that era rather than opening one. So a postmillennialist and an amillennialist can hold identical views of the resurrection while disagreeing sharply about the state of the world before it.

The difficulty is the one amillennialism carries, plus the burden of showing from Scripture that the golden age is coming at all.

Where dispensationalism counts higher

Dispensational premillennialism keeps the two-resurrection framework but subdivides it, because it separates the rapture of the church from the second coming by a seven-year tribulation. That separation forces the risings apart.

Three future events, not two. Dispensational writers keep the biblical language by grouping the first three under "the first resurrection" and calling it a resurrection in stages, with the last as the second. Historic premillennialists, who place the rapture and the second coming at the same moment, have no need for the middle split and hold to two events.

The passage that describes an order

One text speaks directly about sequence, and both sides claim it.

But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father. 1 Corinthians 15:23-24

"Order" is tagma, a military term. It names a rank, a division, a body of troops drawn up in formation, each unit in its assigned place. Paul is not saying "in an orderly way" as a figure of speech; he is using the word for a company in the line.

Premillennial readers press two things. Tagma implies distinguishable groups rather than one undivided mass. And the two adverbs, epeita for "afterward" and eita for "then", both mark succession, with epeita already used in verses 6 and 7 of appearances separated by real intervals. If "then cometh the end" is a further stage rather than the same instant as the coming, an interval sits in the sentence.

Amillennial and postmillennial readers answer that Paul names only two ranks of people, Christ and those who are his, and gives the wicked no tagma at all, which is a strange way to teach a resurrection order if the point were an interval. On their reading eita introduces the end that arrives with the coming.

What is actually being decided

Notice what the disagreement is not. Nobody is arguing about whether the dead will rise, whether the wicked will be judged, or whether Christ will return bodily. All four positions affirm all three.

What is being decided is whether the resurrection is one event or a sequence with a gap in it, and that turns on a handful of words: ezēsan in Revelation 20:4 and 5, hōra in John 5, tagma and eita in 1 Corinthians 15. Each has been argued over for centuries without a knockdown result.

Which is a good reason not to take any of it on report. The verses are short, the case on each side fits in a page, and the difference between them changes the whole shape of what you expect after you die.