Chris d

SOMEONE ASKED - "Please someone explain something, I don't understand this first resurrection and second resurrection, I thought after death judgement follows, then what's this resurrection of a thing again after death?"

Thanks, I think you are correct - essentially there is no second resurrection. I will explain what I understand on the matter to the best of my understanding from the Word.

The second resurrection gets confused with two things. First, there is a first and second death, and the two get conflated, but they are different. The first and second need to be defined (and are very significant); I will discuss them briefly below. Secondly, there is the very important matter of the captives. The first resurrection is to be regenerated and birthed into heaven. The captives are those who were trapped in false heavens by the evil leaders who had taken over for a very long time in the spiritual world in the darkness before Jesus was born. These were released and liberated by Jesus' great work of redemption. There is much to understand about this (and the process is described on this site in posts about the Captives, and the Harvest, and Christs' descent to hell).

The release of the captives was profoundly looked forward to for a long time; it was a great liberation and rejoiced over by the angels immensely. Their release and entrance into heaven was called by some the 'second resurrection' because of the special circumstance, but it is really the same as the first resurrection. It is their entry into heaven. There is no mention of 'second resurrection' in the Bible. Scripture reads:

"Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years" (Revelation 20:6).

Clearly one refers to Man's resurrection and the other to the second death.

There are many scriptures that refer to the captives. The parable of the wheat and the chaff, which Jesus himself explains to His disciples, gives the overall picture of the story. The 'souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God' symbolizes people whose belief had been rejected by religious leaders caught up in falsities hatched out of their own intelligence. The good people were deceived and held in communities that were false heavens (in the spiritual world), but inwardly these people worshiped the Lord and lived in accordance with His commandments in the Word. The captives are also described as ones 'not worshiping the beast or its image', and 'not receiving its mark on their foreheads and hands'. This means symbolically that inwardly they rejected the false doctrine of faith alone and other false doctrines the leaders were fixated on. The captives liberation is referred to by 'living and reigning with Christ for a thousand years' which means symbolically that they were conjoined with the Lord and affiliated with angels in heaven. Their great and long awaited liberation by Christs divine work of 'descending into hell' is nevertheless the same as the 'first resurrection', for it is their joyous entrance into heaven just as it is for others who have lived well and loved the Lord in good faith.

The resurrection of Man means salvation and eternal life. The important distinction is that the words, 'first resurrection' symbolize that there is 'one resurrection', or, one salvation and eternal life. So there is but one resurrection to life. There is no second one. Consequently nowhere is a second resurrection mentioned in the Word. Once a person is bonded with the Lord, people remain conjoined with Him to eternity in heaven.
As mentioned the so called second resurrection gets confused with the first death and the second death. (There is a post on this site you can look up that deeply explains the process and meaning of the first death and the second death.) In short, the first death is when we die, when our body passes away and we enter the spiritual world. The second death is when one has rejected the Lord and His angels because we have not lived a life in accordance with His divine order, and consequently enter hell. A person's soul takes its form from the way they lived in life, especially by what they loved and believed. Our quality of Love is the bottom line determining factor of our soul. If one has inwardly loved harm, and deception and cruelty to others, and rejected God, the form of their soul at death is bound for hell and it cannot be changed. Thus they are in hell for eternity and this is the second death. (The process of how this takes place, and why they cannot leave hell is explained in the post on the second death on this site).