Two Resurrections Or Three?
Q. Thank you for your wonderful web site. I am encouraged daily by it.
I firmly believe in the pre-trib rapture and have studied much of your teaching on the subject. I have one area that I am still uncertain about. It is about the resurrection of tribulation saints. In your article “Defending the Pre-Trib Rapture (Again)” and in your answer “Resurrection of Old Testament Saints” you explain that Rev. 20:4-9 shows that tribulation saints are resurrected at the same time as Old-Testament saints, at the end of the tribulation and before the millennium.
I can see you are correct from passage, but what proof do we have that these saints are not simply the church age saints who died in the tribulation? That is what post-tribbers insist. I often hear the argument that a pre-trib rapture can’t be right since it makes it necessary for there to be three resurrections. They claim there would have to be one at the pre-trib rapture, a second for O.T. and trib-saints at the end of the tribulation, and a third for those who died outside of Christ at the end of the millennium. It does seem that way from the Rev. 20 passage, and verse 5 does refer to the tribulation saint’s resurrection as “the first resurrection”.
A. The post trib view on this doesn’t make sense. If Jesus was the first fruits of the first resurrection, and if at least some Old Testament saints were resurrected then too (Matt. 27:52-53) and if Tribulation saints who are resurrected at the end of the Great Tribulation 2000 years later are still part of the first resurrection (Rev. 20:4-5), why wouldn’t the raptured church also be part of the first resurrection?
It’s obvious that not everyone in the first resurrection is raised up at the same time. If He wanted to, the Lord could have resurrected some believers every year for the last 2000 years and they’d all be part of the first resurrection, because the first resurrection is for those over whom the 2nd death has no power (Rev. 20:6), not those who come out of their graves at a certain time.
