When the Dead Rise

"Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain" (Isa. 26:19-21). Here we have a prophecy from Isaiah about the first resurrection at the second coming of the Lord back to this world. Now that may sound a bit trite on the surface, but there are some really powerful and integral truths in this prophecy that dispel some very dangerous untruths that are so popular today, and that will become more popular in the future. The first verse in our text makes it abundantly clear that the righteous dead will rise bodily, even as Jesus rose from the dead bodily: "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s AT HIS COMING [not comings, as plural] (I Cor. 15:20-23). To be certain that the faithful will rise from the dead bodily, we have the apostle Paul, who said, "Who [Christ] shall CHANGE our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself" (Philip. 3:21). Next in the second verse of our text passage we see that God will hide his elect in their ‘chambers’ until "the indignation is overpast." Some teach that this verse bears witness to ‘the rapture’ doctrine that almost everyone adheres to, but what do the scriptures confirm about this verse? "So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!" (Job. 14:12,13).

So the truth is that the passage of scripture from Isaiah about God’s people being hidden in their chambers is simply talking about the state of the righteous who are dead, as Job plainly states. Also it is at the Lord’s second coming that the heavens [will] be no more because the scripture tells us that when Jesus comes again “the heaven [will depart] as a scroll when it is rolled together” (Rev. 6:14). Not only so, but the fact of the matter is that is the only possible meaning of the verse when taken in context of the passage it is part of. The last verse in our text passage just plainly and emphatically confirms that the dead, who have been hidden from the indignation, are raised WHEN “the Lord comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,” at which time “the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.” So the end of the passage is saying the exact same thing that the beginning of the passage says; that being that “the earth shall cast out the dead,” meaning of course the dead who died in faithfulness to the Lord. So first of all the whole ‘rapture’ theory is debunked by the plain scriptural truth that the faithful dead will be raised WHEN the Lord comes from heaven to “punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,” or “AT HIS [ONE] COMING.” In order to teach the rapture, we must teach that there are plural second comings of Jesus, or a second AND third coming, neither of which are found in the Bible. Secondly the ideal that the dead will not rise in their original bodies, howbeit changed to immortality; gives place to the old, lethal doctrinal poison of “the resurrection is past already” (II Tim. 2:18). When one believes that there is a ‘rapture’ before the actual and ONLY second coming of Jesus, and/or that the elect will rise only in spirit, and not in body; that is where the overly spiritual apostate doctrine of “the resurrection is past already” can slip in, especially in the end time. It also gives place to another apostate teaching which is that Jesus did not rise from the dead in the body he died in, but rather in a spiritual body, which is actually to deny his resurrection altogether.

Jesus addressed the issue of his coming back being only one coming when speaking of his second coming and of the time before his coming, in his end time sermon from Matthew 24: “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also THE coming of the Son of man be” (Mat. 24:23-27). If we are to be ‘raptured’ before the second coming as so many believe, then why did he warn us of being deceived ABOUT his second coming? You may also note that he spoke of only ONE second coming. He did not divide this integral understanding into a two or three part second coming like so many in the body of Christ today in effect teach and believe in one form or another. Neither did he or any of the other writers of the scriptures do that anywhere else in their writings. Scriptures have to be taken out of context, and have man’s ideas added to them in order to come up with a ‘rapture.’ No my friend, as the Bible clearly shows, those who die in faith and holiness will rise from the grave bodily with immortality at THE second coming of Jesus back to the earth [I Cor. 15:51-54]: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain [unto THE coming… - vs. 15] shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord ( I Thess. 4:16,17; Mat. 24:29-31). It really is as simple as that. God bless.