The Physical Resurrection: One Event or Two?

The predominant eschatology among American evangelicals is premillennialism (which has different forms, but that isn't the issue here). One particular way in which premillennialism differs from other schools is in making literal the description of two resurrections (Revelation 20:5-6). According to the premillennial interpretation, the godly dead will be resurrected, then a period of a thousand years will elapse, at the end of which the wicked dead will be raised. Then the premillennialist denies the literal interpretation of other passages that point to a single resurrection.

As I describe here, comparing scripture to scripture gives us good grounds for taking the First Resurrection in a non-literal sense, to refer to regeneration of believers.

So, what of the references to a single, general resurrection?

We can start with Job 14:11-12: "As waters fail from a lake and a river wastes away and dries up, so a man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake or be roused out of his sleep." Without distinguishing between the types of people, he places resurrection at the end of this physical creation, not a thousand years before the end.

And what of the words of Jesus in John 6:40: "This is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." Not only does Jesus place the resurrection at the end of history, not a thousand years before the end, but He explicitly tells us that this is the resurrection of the godly, whom the premillennialist claims will have been resurrected for a thousand years by that time.

The premillennialist view in general, and specifically regarding the resurrection, depends on a literal interpretation of a highly-figurative passage, and then forces that interpretation on other, clearer, not-at-all figurative passages in order to maintain its peculiar doctrine. That is just bad hermeneutics, which depends on the clearer passage to interpret the more obscure.