Dispensationalism and the ‘First Resurrection’

Dispensationalists and Pre-Millennialists hold that the "first resurrection" in Revelation 20 is to be understood as a literal physical resurrection. "This notion that the resurrection of the righteous is to occur a thousand years before the end of the world is contradicted by Jesus who on four different occasions, said He would raise up those who believe in Him at the last day. (John 6:39, 40,44, 54). Clearly there can be no other days after the last day." (The Millennium p. 169).

"The glory and happiness of this thousand years reign of the saints is to be understood, not literally but spiritually and figuratively according to the common style of the book. It could not consist with the happiness of the saints to leave the heavenly mansions and live in bodies needing meat and drink, nor if their bodies were raised spiritual and incorruptible would they need any such thing. The dead in Christ are also represented as all rising together at the last day. And a proper resurrection is never in Scripture represented as a reviving or living again of the soul but of the body. The resurrection of the martyrs’ and confessors’ souls here spoken of must therefore mean, not the resurrection of these deceased persons, but the remarkable reformation, deliverance, comfort and activity of the church in their successors. As Elijah is represented living in John the Baptist and Anti-Christian Rome is called in the Revelation. Sodom, Egypt and Babylon on account of her likeness to them in luxury. cruelty, pride and idolatry, so the ancient martyrs will live in the Christians of this period, being united to the same Head, members of the same body and of the same temper, faith, patience, zeal and fortitude and professing the same Gospel truths." (Prof. John Brown of Haddington).

"The visible kingdom of satan shall be overthrown, and the kingdom of Christ set up in the ruins of it, everywhere throughout the whole habitable globe. Now shall the promise made to Abraham be fulfilled that ‘in him and in his seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed’; and Christ now shall become the desire of all nations, agreeable to Haggai 2:7. Now the kingdom of Christ shall in the most strict and literal sense be extended to all nations, and the whole earth. There are many passages in Scripture that can be understood in no other sense. What can be more universal than that in Isaiah 11:9 ‘For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’ As much as to say, as there is no part of the channel or cavity of the sea anywhere, but what is covered with water; so there shall be no part of the world of mankind but what shall be covered with the knowledge of God. It is foretold in Isaiah 45:22, that all ends of the earth shall look to Christ, and be saved. And to show that the words are to be understood in the most universal sense, it is said in the next verse, ‘I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.’ So the most universal expression is used (Daniel 7:27) ‘And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High God.’ You see the expression includes all under the whole heaven." (Jonathan Edwards)