CHAPTER VIII.

RESURRECTION OF ALL THE WICKED AT THE COMING OF CHRIST.

I HAVE shown that the whole Church of God will be simultaneously "made alive" at the second advent. I now proceed to show, that at the same time a like process shall pass upon the opposite class.

PROPOSITION SEVENTH:

ALL THE WICKED WILL RISE FROM THE DEAD, OR BE MADE ALIVE," AT THE COMING OF CHRIST.

In establishing this, let us first observe the arguments which have been brought to prove two separate resurrections, the one at the beginning, and the other at the end of the millennium.

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And here, one cannot but be struck, at the outset, with the character and the amount of the evidence offered us in proof of such a position. One direct information of a first resurrection," and one only, is alleged to exist. And where is that one plain statement? In confessedly the most difficult book of Scripture, the most symbolical in its structure and figurative in its style; and, I may add, in that part of the book on the precise sense of which there has been, perhaps, the greatest diversity of opinion. Additional evidence is, indeed, alleged to exist in favour of a first resurrection, though only, it is admitted, confirmatory, and but for the plain revelation of it in this one passage, scarcely sufficient to rely on.

As Mr Bickersteth somewhere says, "This (in the book of Revelation) is the seat of the doctrine."

Hear their own estimate of the character and amount of the evidence they have to offer us for a "first resurrection."

"But the first resurrection," says the candid and acute Mr Birks, "offers a still severer trial to the faith of the Christian. We cannot here appeal to innumerable texts where it is plainly revealed. The analogy of Scripture, however decisive in its favour, appears at first sight obscure and ambiguous. In maintaining this doctrine, therefore, we have to rest only upon the Word of God, and chiefly on this one prophecy.—(Rev. xx.) Why, then, should a doctrine, in appearance so disputable, and beset with such difficulties, be now pressed on the attention of the Church? The answer is very plain. Grant for one moment that the doctrine is true, and you must feel that it is one of deep interest to ourselves." *

Of course; but grant what has just been admitted as to the evidence for it, and its truth cannot but appear suspicious. No doubt, God has a right to reveal truth as he pleases; but we observe God's way of revealing truth to be very different from this. We do not find such grand and delightful, such stirring and influential truths, wrapt up in mystic folds, reserved for apocalyptic disclosure, apparently negatived by all those passages which we might expect to be the

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very

"seats"

of those truths, and only peeping, by their own account, obscurely and ambiguously" through a few passages and expressions. And we say that this constitutes a prima facie presumption, of the strongest nature, against the doctrine. of a "first resurrection," literally understood.

Waiving, for the present, the direct passage, let us look at those which are thought to confirm this expectation. They are of two classes:

(1.) Such as, while treating formally of the resurrection of believers, make no mention at all of the resurrection of the

* Lent Lectures for 1843, pp. 155, 156.

Some, thinking that Mr Birks has here admitted too much, have tried to show that the doctrine is directly expressed elsewhere; but their attempts to show this are the best proof to the contrary.

180 RESURRECTION OF BELIEVERS PECULIAR TO THEMSELVES.

wicked-a thing natural, it is alleged, supposing each to have a time of its own, but difficult to account for if both classes rise together. In this class, 1 Cor. xv., 1 Thess. iv., and Luke xiv. 14, are usually adduced.

The wicked are ex

The answer to this is very simple. cluded from these passages, not because they will not rise at the same time with the righteous, but because they will not rise on the same principle. They will not rise as represented by and entitled to life in Christ. When He said to his disciples, “Because I live ye shall live also," he enunciated a principle under which the wicked do not stand, and spoke of a life which they will never taste. The character of that life, the grounds of it, and the subjects of it, are all restrictive. What have the wicked to do with a resurrection which Christ secured for his people by his meritorious righteousness, as the second Adam-a resurrection of which his own was the blessed pledge? In such a train of thought as in 1 Cor. xv., the resurrection of the wicked had been out of place. Raised on a different principle, they are set aside, and do not once come into view. It would but have clogged and diluted an argument whose force depends on points applicable exclusively to believers, to have connected with them the case of the unbelieving, and massed up together the objects of the new covenant and the victims of the old. "He that hath the Son hath life: he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: he that believeth not the Son SHALL NOT SEE LIFE, but the wrath of God abideth on him.”—(1 John v. 12; John iii. 36.) When any thing common to both is spoken of—such as the judgment -then we have the resurrection of both classes at once, as we shall soon see expressed in the most unequivocal terms. But when the subject in hand is something peculiar to believers, the exclusion of the wicked from such passages is just what

* Mr Birks, misrepresenting me as saying that "there is no common principle in the two cases," goes on to characterize my theology as "erroneous and antiscriptural" (p. 218).

we expect. It does, indeed, imply that believers rise ALONE that is, on a principle peculiar to themselves, and in a company amongst whom the wicked are not found. But it does not imply that no others rise contemporaneously with them,—that in a company by themselves, and on a principle of their own, the wicked will not rise at the same time.

It may strengthen these remarks, and be interesting to some to know, that the extreme Socinians and the Socinianizing party of the Dutch Remonstrants employed these very passages to prove-not that the wicked would not rise at the same time with the righteous, but that they would not rise at all. And how were they answered by orthodox divines? They were answered precisely as I have answered the premillennialists-by showing that the resurrection treated of in the passages adduced was a resurrection peculiar to believers, with which the wicked have nothing to do.*

I have only farther to add on these passages, that the reason I have given for the exclusion of the wicked from them,

* "Enimvero," says MARCKIUS, in an elaborate treatise on "The Expectation of the Future Glory of Jesus Christ "—" magis ab adversantibus urgeri solet, quod resuscitatio passim spectetur ut privilegium seu peculiare bonum piorum et fidelium, in quo hinc impii et infideles partem non habeant ullum. [He then refers to Luke xx. 35-37; to Luke xiv. 14, "The resurrection of the just; " to John vi. 39, and xiv. 19, "Because I live ye shall live also;" and to 1 Thess. iv. 14—as the passages on which the adversaries founded.] Verum quam parum adversus fidem nostram obstent ista omnia et similia forte plura, jam supra audivimus ex Socinianorum quorundam ore proprio; ubi ipsi nobiscum observant, Resuscitationem et Resurrectionem sæpi sumi strictius, pro Beata et læta ad Beatitatem Æternam, de qua nemo dubitet quin ista sit piis propria, et ex unione arctissima cum Christo unice fluens; dum heic latiori sensu vocem capimus de qualicunque hominum restitutione ex pulvere in vitam, uti hanc vox illa simpliciter dicit. Eodem modo, quo solemus nos ex Scriptura Vitam æternam vindicare solis piis, dum Mortem Eternam tribuimus impiis; neque sic negamus impios revicturos, ut etiam deinde vivere non desinant unquam inter dolores ineffabiles, quidquid optarent. Illud autem inter ista duo est discrimen ; quod Eternam Vitam nunquam tribuamus impiis, quia illam phrasin nusquam tam late Scriptura usurpat, sed constanter piis, vindicat," &c.-(Expectatio Gloria Futuræ Jesu Christi Illustrata, lib. ii. cap. xii. 4.) See also DE MOOR, Comm. xxxiv. § 15, &c.

*

is that which commentators generally assign. The customary term applied to Christ is death; to believers, sleep.-(1 Cor. xv. 3, 6, 18, 20, 51.) Very sweet, by the way, is the distinction noticed by BENGEL-not more distinguished for critical acumen than for spiritual unction—when commenting upon these words of the apostle (1 Thess. iv. 14), "If we believe that Jesus DIED and rose again, even so them also that SLEEP in Jesus will God bring with him." Yes, His was another death from his people's. "He tasted DEATH for every one" of them (Tig avròs, Heb. ii. 9), "that they might SLEEP in Him."† (ὑπὲρ παντὸς, Considerable stress is laid on the following passage belonging rather to the next class, but to be explained by the principle now stated. I mean,

Phil. iii. 11: “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."

"Scriptura "-says BENGEL, on 1 Cor. xv. 22-" ubicunque cum fidelibus agit, de ipsorum resurrectione agit primario; 1 Thess. iv. 13, s. de impiorum resurrectione, incidenter."

a sort

On verse 23, after saying, as quoted before, that Christians are of appendix to the First-Fruits," he adds, "The wicked rise at the same time, but they come not under this blessed category."

"They that are Christ's at his coming," Paul (says he) does not call it the judgment, because he is treating of believers.

† I am surprised that a man of Mr Birks's judgment, should say that "the topic of consolation which the apostle suggests" to the Thessalonians here "is one of priority in time. We who are alive (the apostle says) shall not be beforehand with them that sleep'" (p. 174); and from this raise an argument in favour of a first resurrection of saints in general before that of sinners. The apostle, wishing to assure them that their departed brethren would lose nothing by being in their graves when the time for Christ's coming shall arrive, communicates to them a special revelation which he seems to have had on the subject, namely, that the sleeping portion of Christ's people shall rise before any change passes upon the living; in order that they may be "caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so be (as one body) ever with the Lord." That the analogy of the judgment (Matt. xxv.) and other analogies are in favour of the righteous being first "made alive," and then the wicked, has been I believe universally the mind of the Church. But such a priority of saints to sinners, as of dead to living saints, forms not the slen. derest argument, in my judgment, in favour of a thousand years' interval between the two.