“You need to clarify some things in your last post,” says a friend. I promised him I would do so this week. This pledge prompted me to use this post to do some tidying up. I will address the two items he mentioned and then sort out some points I have made in the last four posts.
Two Clarifications
My friend’s first item deals with my updated definition of the first resurrection. How do those who die during the messianic age relate to what God did in the AD 30–70 generation?
This is a good question because John said, “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years” (Rev 20:6). I take Jesus’ thousand-year reign to be his rule during the messianic age. So how does one have part in the first resurrection that started that reign?
Typology helps answer this question. Israel’s Exodus from Egypt under Moses was a type of our more significant Exodus from sin and death through Jesus (cp. 1 Cor 10:6, 11 YLT). I have documented this in my post Typology and Inmillennialism and in my book.
Hundreds of years after Moses died, the prophets spoke to Israelites of their generation as if they had experienced the Exodus. For example, through Micah, God said, “I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery” (Mic 6:4). The Jews of Micah’s generation had a part in the Exodus. How? Because their physical birth made them members of the nation God redeemed from slavery.
The same is true for us spiritually. God gives each of his elect a birth from above (John 3:3 YLT). This enables them to enter the kingdom of God (John 3:5) and makes them members of the holy nation Christ redeemed (1 Pet 2:9). Each person’s spiritual birth gives them a part in the Exodus he accomplished.
The Scriptures also use resurrection imagery to describe our lives in the kingdom. Paul, for example, says, “When we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:5–6). This is the first resurrection. Jesus says how we have a part in it: “As the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will” (John 5:21). Our personal resurrection gives us a part in the first resurrection that God accomplished in the “last days” of the Mosaic age. “Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years” (Rev 20:6).
My friend’s second clarification request deals with my interpretive approach. In one place, I said, “The apostles taught us to use the New Testament to determine the meaning of the Old Testament Scriptures.” But in another place, I said I am using four Old Testament passages “to help interpret 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17.” So, my friend is asking, which is it? Does the New Testament interpret the Old or vice versa?
Touché! Good point! I am committed to the principle of interpreting the full meaning of the Old Testament from a New Testament perspective. I should have made it more evident that I was talking about understanding prophetic imagery, not an overall interpretation of any prophetic passage.
For example, Ezekiel 37 uses resurrection imagery to describe the restoration of Israel. Therefore, that the New Testament does so should not surprise us; it sometimes uses resurrection imagery to mean something other than physical bodies rising from the ground. However, we must interpret Ezekiel’s vision through a New Testament lens: the nation of Israel comprises those with Abraham’s faith, etc.
I have made this point regarding cosmic collapse imagery. The Old Testament prophets used it to describe God’s judgment of a nation or city like that of Babylon (cp. Isa 13:1, 9–11). Jesus used it the same way to show the temple’s fall in his generation (cp. Matt 24:1–3, 29, 34). The Old Testament’s use of this figure informs our understanding of it in the New Testament. Still, we must allow Jesus and the apostles to tell us what it means when they use it—the end of the Mosaic age and the full inauguration of the messianic age.
To make my meaning clearer, I have updated my post with the following language: the four Old Testament passages “help us understand 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17.”
A Summary
My friend’s clarification request provides a convenient segue to the last part of this post. As I said, my previous four posts dealt with Old Testament passages that use resurrection imagery. I want to show how they help us understand Paul’s use of it when he says,
The dead in Christ 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. (1 Thess 4:16–17)
The following list summarizes key points from resurrection passages in Isaiah 26, Ezekiel 37, Hosea 13, and Daniel 12.
- These prophets foretold the Messiah’s bodily resurrection (Isa 26:19).
- They linked a resurrection of Israel to the Messiah’s resurrection (Isa 26:19; cp. Ezek 37:5, 11–12).
- They linked Israel’s messianic birth pains to the Messiah’s resurrection that would precede them (Isa 26:17–18, 20–21).
- They linked Israel’s messianic birth pains to a general resurrection that would follow them (Hos 13:9–14; Dan 12:1–2, 7).
- They linked the Messiah’s resurrection to the glories of the messianic age that would follow it (Isa 27:6; cp. Hos 14:5–6).
- They said God would gather his people under their King in the messianic age (Ezek 37:21–22).
- They used prophetic foreshortening, placing events distant from one another in time side-by-side in their prophecies.
Conclusion
Jesus said he would return to destroy the temple during the “great tribulation” in his generation (Matt 24:21, 34). This would end the Mosaic age and fully establish the messianic age (Matt 24:1–3). These events would show his parousia (presence) with his people in the new age (Matt 24:3, 27, 37, 39 YLT; cp. 1 Cor 15:23 YLT).
The Thessalonians were concerned about the status of their loved ones who had died before the temple fell. Would they be at some disadvantage during Christ’s parousia (1 Thess 4:15 HCSB)?
Paul’s answer in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11 is definite—No! “Our Lord Jesus Christ … died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him” (1 Thess 5:9–10). None of the elect will be at a disadvantage in the messianic age.
To establish his answer, Paul draws extensively from Jesus’ Olivet Discourse. And he uses thought patterns the prophets had used before him. He knew some of what they foretold had already happened: the Messiah (Jesus) had risen from the dead, and the elect had risen with him. Paul knew the messianic birth pains were in his immediate future. They would give way to the glories of the messianic age that would culminate in the general (bodily) resurrection.
In next week’s post, Lord willing, I will show that Paul had this complex of ideas in mind when he wrote this “rapture passage.”
