Hebrews 11
GodbeyHebrews 11:36-39
15 THE BETTER . “Better” is not antithetical to bad, but to good. Hence the logical sequence follows that while there is a bad resurrection for the wicked, there are also two resurrections for the righteous — the good and the better, the first and the last. It is stated positively“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power, they shall be priests of God and Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” (Revelation 20:6)This Scripture, as well as others, settles the question of the two resurrections without the possibility of cavil. I am sorry this important revelation has been obscured by the spiritualization of the first resurrection. This is a gross and flagrant error, utterly untenable, as it breaks up and destroys the antithesis, doing away with the corporeal resurrection altogether, and plunging headlong into the Swedenborgian heresy. The Greek is ezeean in both cases, which simply means, “they lived.” If it is spiritual in one sense it is in the other, and physical resurrection is forever gone.
Hence we see the utter untenability of this construction and receive unequivocally the doctrine of the two resurrections. In the rapture described by Paul (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), we have another graphic account of the first resurrection, when the Lord shall come after His bride, preparatory to His millennial kingdom.
Philippians 3:11,“If perchance I may attain unto the resurrection which is out from among the dead.”The Old Testament saints were not ignorant of the glorious reality of the Lord’s bridehood. Therefore they suffered the most terrible tortures of martyrdom that they might have a place in the first resurrection; which will take place before the millennium, the last resurrection being postponed till the final judgment. It is certainly a glorious privilege to rise and shout o my grave a thousand years before the general resurrection, especially when we consider the glorious privileges of the bridehood to reign with Christ during the millennial ages.36-38. Here the Holy Ghost describes the terrible tortures inflicted by a wicked world and a fallen Church on the Old Testament martyrs. They shouted in the fires anticipating the glories awaiting them in the Lord’s bridehood and the first resurrection.39. “All these having received the witness of the Spirit through faith, obtained not the promise.”… While the Bible is flooded with thousands of promises, especially considering the synonymy of promise and commandment in the Greek and Hebrew, by which the number is doubled, the great Messianic promise of the Lord’s incarnation and the world’s literal and actual redemption by the bleeding Christ on the cross, his triumphant resurrection, glorious ascension and mediatorial coronation and intercession throughout the Bible is magnified as “the promise” by way of pre-eminence and exaltation.
While the saints of all ages lived in glowing anticipation of this wonderful prophetical fulfillment, and the realization of the Messianic promise, yet they all died without the sight. Contrastively with the verification of this promise, theirs was a dispensation of Christian imperfection.
Yet their stalwart and sanguine hope swept onward through the lights of type and prophecy into the personal experience of Christian perfection. This grand faith brigade lived, testified and shouted, in the realization of Gospel experiences many centuries in advance of their age and generation, while the rank and file of the Church barely reached perfection in the article of death, passing into eternity in a state of spiritual infancy, like the great bulk of the Gospel Church of the present day. Their case was apologizable, as they were in harmony with their dispensation, while the unsanctified millions of the Church of the present day, both clerical and laic, are blundering along amid the fogs of carnality, three thousand years behind the age.