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“The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection.” Revelation 20:5
I watched a video that was sent to me by a friend who asked me my thoughts about it. It was a teaching by a minister named David Asscherick. He has a very hyper-frenetic style of preaching that was hard to listen to. But that aside, his topic was the Millennial Kingdom – it’s description and nature. He made quite a few incorrect assertions but the one I’m going to focus on is that there will be no living mortals during the Millennial period.
His basis for saying that there will be no living people is the verse above. He said all of the righteous (ever) will be resurrected at Jesus’s return, and all of the believers who are alive at that time (who survive the Tribulation) will be ‘translated’ up to meet Jesus in the air. This is not true.
He also said all of the wicked who are alive at His return will be slain. This much is true (Rev. 19:15, 21).
What Asscherick did was declare that the resurrection in Rev. 20:5 is the same resurrection as 1 Thess. 4:14. This is something many Christians make the mistake of doing. He based that on the fact that Rev. 20: 5 says it is the ‘first’ resurrection, therefore it has to be the same resurrection as 1 Thess. 4:14. It follows, he asserts, that all of the righteous will be glorified and all the wicked will be dead, and thus there will be no mortal living beings during the Millennial.
To boil it down, Asscherick is saying that the rapture happens at Jesus’ return to earth (post-trib rapture). According to Asscherik, right before Jesus lands on the Mount of Olives all of the dead in Christ are raised and those believers who are alive at that moment are ‘translated’ or raptured, and meet the Lord in the air (and then do an immediate U-turn to follow Christ to earth).
The problem, however, is that Asscherick completely skipped over Rev. 20:4:
– “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of THOSE WHO HAD BEEN BEHEADED BECAUSE OF THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS and because of the Word of God, and THOSE WHO HAD NOT WORSHIPPED THE BEAST OR HIS IMAGE, AND HAD NOT RECEIVED THE MARK UPON THEIR FOREHEAD AND UPON THEIR HAND; and THEY CAME TO LIFE and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.”
This verse makes perfectly clear that the ‘first’ resurrection stated in verse 5 is the resurrection of the righteous who die during the tribulation (Rev. 6:9; 13:12-17; 14:9-11). All he had to do was look at the cross references in the margin of his Bible.
The context determines the meaning of ‘first resurrection’.
The resurrection in Revelation 20:4-5 is not the first resurrection EVER, it is the first resurrection in the context of the 2nd coming of Christ right before the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom. Clearly this is not the first resurrection. The first resurrection was Jesus Christ! So the context must define the statement. The second resurrection in this context is the resurrection of the unsaved dead (those whose names are not in the Book of Life) at the end of the Millennial Kingdom (Rev. 20:13).
He also completely overlooks Rev. 20:7-8 with regard to no living mortals during the Millennial Kingdom. These verses clearly point out that there will be ‘nations’ all over the earth whom Satan tempt and gather for war when he is released at the end of the 1000 years. Asscherik’s explanation for this is that these people are the wicked who are raised from the dead in Rev. 20:12-13. The problem is that this resurrection takes place AFTER Satan’s brief uprising.
It’s always amazing how doctrines and teachings can come about by taking things out of their proper context or chronological order.
See also my post ‘Eternal Torment or Eternal Destruction‘.
Dan Baker