The Key to the First Resurrection

The issue of the two resurrections is that of judgment, of when we are judged and delivered from sin.

As we mentioned previously, in order to attain to the first resurrection you must have been judged by the Lord, and found worthy to be with Him forever, in advance of the resurrection. The first resurrection is the sentence of the Court handed down, that you are to be raised, filled with eternal life and immortality, and assigned a place in the army of the Lord that will descend from the air and install the Kingdom of God on the earth.

Obviously it is not possible to be raised from the dead, filled with eternal life and immortality, and after that be judged.

If we are not judged before the time of the first resurrection we will have to wait until the thousand-year Kingdom Age has transpired. Then we shall be raised from the dead and stand before Christ and His saints at the great White Throne. We shall be judged fairly according to our behavior on the earth, exactly as described by the Apostle Paul.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (II Corinthians 5:10—NIV)

If Christ finds us worthy we will be admitted to His new heaven and earth reign. We will be given eternal life at that time, just as in the case of the sheep nations of Matthew, Chapter Twenty-five.

We must remember also there are fates other than the Lake of Fire that are reserved for the Lord's servants, such as outer darkness and lashes. How and when these will be administered we are not certain. However, it seems reasonable that outer darkness, the loss of our talent, salvation by fire, and lashes are not the same as that ultimate punishment—eternal incarceration in the Lake of Fire.

The Scriptures do not speak only of Hell and Heaven but of a diversity of possible destinies ranging from a position in the Throne of Christ all the way down to the Lake of Fire. According to the Scriptures, it is our behavior that determines our destiny, how we use our talents, whether we did the Lord's will, and so forth.

We can see from this that our contemporary teaching has removed grace from its proper role in the Divine redemption and is using it as a blanket amnesty, a huge screen that prevents God from seeing our conduct. The way we are using grace is making Jesus Christ the minister of sin, the destroyer of God's intention to make man in His image.

"If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not!" (Galatians 2:17—NIV)

No, the New Testament in numerous passages reveals that we determine our destiny in the Kingdom of God by our behavior today. To teach otherwise is to take a few verses, deduce "another gospel" from them, and ignore the bulk of God's Words to us.

The Lord is going to reward Christians, as well as all other human beings, precisely according to their works. Those who patiently practice righteousness will attain glory and immortality. Those who persist in wicked behavior will reap indignation and wrath. The Scriptures cannot be changed.

God "will give to each person according to what he has done." To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. (Romans 2:6-8—NIV)

We may read the above passage and immediately reject it because our perceptive processes have been violated by the current teaching of grace. We think it does not apply to us.

But the above stands true whether or not we have received Christ. The believers attain to eternal life by persistence in doing good. If this is not addressed to believers then we are saying the unbelievers can attain to eternal life by persistence in doing good. The truth is, God will reveal His Christ to those who persist in doing good, just as He did to Cornelius and his household.

We have said the resurrection in which we participate depends on the time when we are judged. If we are judged and accepted by the Lord Jesus prior to the first resurrection, then we are eligible to be raised and caught up to meet Christ in the air. If we have not been judged by that time we must wait for the resurrection that will take place before the White Throne. Sooner or later we will be judged!

You can claim "grace" all you want to. It is your future I am concerned about. If I should prove to be correct, and you do not make the effort to attain to the first resurrection from the dead, and wake up to find yourself before the White Throne, I won't even say "I told you so."

"But where will I be before I am awakened?" I don't know, probably in a place that accepts your kind of behavior would be my guess. We have a lot of mythology about what happens to us when we die but very little of it has clear scriptural support.

The issue is the point at which you are judged. The Bible says, "It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment." Therefore we know you will be judged after you die.

I would submit to you that the proper orientation to the Christian salvation, an orientation not always presented in our day, is our death and resurrection with Jesus Christ.

We have to count ourselves as dead with Him and risen with Him. Until we do this we are not a true Christian but merely a religious person.

I would submit further that God regards your profession of death as a real death, not a figure of speech—a death more real than physical death, which the Scriptures sometimes refer to as "sleep."

Most believers, it appears, are bent on saving their life. When we preach against worldliness, lust, and selfish-ambition they may appear to agree but they do not intend to go to such lengths in serving the Lord. They know they are going to continue in their worldly ways. They know there are lusts and passions in their flesh they are not going to renounce. They know they are going to follow their own path through life and not give all to Jesus.

They are not going to deny themselves, take up their personal cross, and follow the Lord wherever He leads them.

They are not going to lose their life in Him, they are going to save their life.

If you don't believe me, look around you. How many believers do you know who truly are denying themselves and carrying their cross behind Jesus? These are the only true Christians, the remainder are churchgoers.

The point is this: as soon as we die after this fashion, God is free to judge us, for it is appointed to people once to die and after this the judgment.

The fires of Divine judgment fall on our love of the world. We have to confess our love of the world, judge it as sin, and ask God to remove it from us. It is an eternal judgment of our love of the world.

The fires of Divine judgment fall on the lusts and passions of our flesh and soul. We have to confess these lusts and passions as the Spirit directs us, judge them as sin, and ask God to remove them all from us. It is an eternal judgment of the lusts of the flesh and soul.

The fires of Divine judgment fall on our personal ambition, our desire for achievement and importance, our lust for preeminence, our self-will, self-centeredness, self-love. We have to confess our self-seeking, rebellion against God's will, and stubbornness as sin. We have to ask God to burn them out of us. It is an eternal judgment of the core of our adamic nature.

We must through the Spirit of God put to death the deeds of our body. We do this a step at a time. Each day the Lord God presents us with a challenge concerning some area of our personality. Each day the Lord God gives us grace to overcome the evil. All the promises of power and authority in the Kingdom of God are made to the overcomers, the conquering saints.

If you will follow the Lord diligently and carefully through the program of eternal judgment you will then be ready for the first resurrection from the dead, the resurrection the Apostle Paul was pursuing.

To be among the Lord's firstfruits, to be raised from the dead in the day of His appearing, to be caught up to be forever with Him, are prizes well worth your seeking.

Notice the following verse:

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, "Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Yes," says the Spirit, "they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them." (Revelation 14:13—NIV)

"From now on" refers to the time begins when Antichrist and his image are worshiped. From that time those who "die in the Lord" will be blessed, for their deeds will follow them.

Our opinion of the meaning of this extraordinary verse is that when the pressures of the world order become too great for Christians (or anyone else) to resist, the only people who will be able to show forth deeds of righteousness will be those who have counted themselves dead with Christ and risen with Christ—I mean who really have done this. Many churchgoers will say they are dead with Christ and risen with Christ but they merely are making an assertion of belief, they are not truly living in such a manner.

Also please note:

. . . And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. . . . (Revelation 20:4—NIV)

Now, think about this. How many Christians have actually died by having their heads cut off? Numerous Christians have been tortured and then shot to death, or hung, or burned at the stake.

Why single out those who have been "beheaded"?

Many statements of the Book of Revelation, unlike the Epistles, are definitely allegorical. Notice below:

The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. (Revelation 9:1—NIV)

Stars do not carry keys and they are many, many times larger than our planet. So we know Revelation 9:1 is allegorical. There are several such examples of allegory in the Book of Revelation.

From our point of view, the reference to "beheaded" is allegorical and refers to the kind of death to which we have been referring. The greatest battle we have, when we decide to "die in the Lord," is with our mind. It is the mind Satan attacks when he sets out to deceive us.

The true servants of the Lord are blind and deaf to the world. They see what God is doing and hear what God is saying. They have died to the impulse to judge other people. Like their Lord, they judge as they hear from God. If you imagine waiting to hear God's judgment before you start evaluating people is not a real "beheading" you haven't tried it.

It is appointed to people to die once and after this be judged. If we are willing to reckon we have died with Christ and been raised with Christ, God will then begin to judge us. We refuse to live according to our adamic nature. We pray and keep on pressing ever closer to Jesus so our adamic nature might be rendered powerless and our new born-again Divine nature might prevail.

We continue on in this path, dying and living; being judged and having our sins forgiven and rendered powerless, the life being removed from them by God's very Presence. We never cease but are found at the time of our physical death walking in continual turning away from sin and embracing Jesus.

The Lord will accept absolutely nothing less than this from the candidates for the first resurrection, the resurrection out from among the dead.

The choice is yours. The ball is in your court. You are not going to be raised at the time of the Lord's appearing just because you took the "four steps of salvation." You have to present your body a living sacrifice. You have to take up your cross and follow Jesus. You have to count every achievement of your life as garbage that you may gain Christ. You have to learn to live by the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.

Having done all, stand in faith. When the Lord comes He will remove every vestige of sin and self-will from you, fill you with Divine Life, and give you an immortal body.

The first resurrection was the mark toward which the Apostle Paul was pressing with all that was in him. He invites you to join him in reaching for the prize, the heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus.

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained. (Philippians 3:15,16—NIV)

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