called the "First Principles." Included in those doctrines is the teaching of resurrection from the dead. Nearly everyone has believed that those who have died physically will be resurrected, but many have not understood that process. Some believe that the literal graves in the cemeteries will open up, and the bodies that are placed in those caskets will come forth. However, that is really not what the Bible teaches. Those in that type of resurrection will have physical bodies, but with less glory than those who came into immortality without experiencing physical death. Those involved in the first resurrection will have physical, immortal bodies. They will not experience physical death! The last enemy death will be put under the feet of this people. According to I Corinthians 15:54, "...this mortal shall put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed in victory."
THE DAY OF THE LORD IS NOW
We must understand that resurrection is a Person. It is also a realm, a state of being, and an awakening of God, that is completely relevant to this "Day of the Lord" that we have entered into now. God is lifting this doctrine of resurrection out of a First Principle understanding, where it is no longer something futuristic, but a truth that is being experienced in a people now.
Dawning of a New Day
Jesus often referred to the day of resurrection. The prophets prophesied of a day of resurrection. The importance of it is the fact that Hosea 6:2 records, "After two days will he Revive us; in the third day he will Raise Us Up, and we shall Live in his sight." The raising in the third day speaks of God resurrecting a people in the "Day of the Lord."
In II Peter 3:8, God gave Peter some wisdom concerning time, in the sight of God. "A day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day." We are at the end of the second one thousand year day since Jesus Christ came and initiated the new covenant, and we are at the dawn of the third day. Anyone with spiritual understanding knows that something new is dawning in the realm of the Spirit! The significance is made even more clearly as we understand that God's day begins at Night; that the evening and the morning were the first day. Therefore, God's new day always begins in the nighttime of the day before.
We are living in an overlapping; transition period. That is why there is so much conflict in Christendom at large; that is why there is conflict in the world at large; that is also the reason there is conflict in us right now. There are things in us that do not bespeak an End, but bespeak of a beginning; and many times it is hard for us to relate, when there are feelings and emotions that are coming to an end in us. But for those who are beginning to walk in the dimension of Spirit, realize that a New Day is dawning. With that new day comes a new mentality; a new way of thinking, and they are allowing God to raise their level of consciousness to that new day, so they can begin to Walk in the Reality of it.
RESURRECTED BODY - WHAT IS IT?
Contrary to what men have understood about resurrection, it is not some instantaneous moment of time when the literal graves open up, and the bodies which were buried in them will come forth. That is what the church has taught. However, if we want to come into real truth, we must put away childish things. Resurrection has nothing whatsoever to do with the opening of literal graves out of those "dark cemeteries." There is never going to come a time when the dead bodies of those who have been placed in caskets and vaults [six feet under the ground], are going to come forth in the same bodies that went into the grave.
In I Corinthians chapter 15, verses 34 and 35 we read, "Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. But some men will say, how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?" Here they were asking the question, what kind of body will those who have died be resurrected with? Then in Verses 36 through 38, Paul begins to answer their question. “Thou fool that which thou soweth is not quickened except to die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed His own body.”
Jesus Christ is not coming back in the same body in which He went to the cross. He can take on any kind of body He desires. In fact, following His resurrection, He did just that. There was only one recorded time in which they knew Him in the body of His crucifixion. That was when Thomas who doubted the Lord, asked to see it, and Jesus showed him His body with the holes. Every other time He revealed Himself in a different looking body. He appeared to Mary as a gardener; He appeared to His disciples as a strange foreigner, walking down the Emmaus road. As recorded in John chapter 20, the disciples were fishing while Jesus was on the shore, and they failed to recognize Him. He can appear in any kind of body He desires. That is not saying that He could not appear in the body in which He went to the cross with; but people are limiting Him to that kind of body, when God wants to find a Greater Expression than that.
The reason Jesus went to the cross and the reason He died, beyond the fact that humanity needed their sins forgiven, was so that He could be raised up in Spirit and then pour Himself into them; therefore He created a larger manifestation of Himself in Many People. In I Corinthians 15, Paul gives the principle that once something is sown into the ground, it does not come back in the same form in which it was sown. Resurrection denotes an advancing.
ADVANCING TO A HIGHER REALM
The word "resurrection" [ANASTASIS - Greek], means an uprising, rising to a state of highest advancement. It also means a reversal and a recovering of spiritual truth. It means to collect ones faculties. The word "first" which appears in Revelation 20:5, as it speaks of the first resurrection, is [PROTOS - Greek], means foremost in time; and it comes from a root word [PRO], meaning superior.
There is a difference between the general resurrection and the superior, or the great [first] resurrection. There is a difference for those who have died in their physical bodies, and those who experience the great resurrection. Anyone who dies physically will go into resurrection, a state of advancement in the Spirit realm. II Corinthians 5:1 "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." This particular passage of scripture has been very popular at funerals, but God has a higher realm of interpretation for this scripture. It is true however, that when one dies physically, there is another body, or house which houses the spirit; from there they advance on into God.
The point is, resurrection has nothing to do with the literal graves in the cemeteries opening up and the dead bodies coming forth. Verse two of that same passage says, "For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven." In other words, His desire was to see the realm of Spirit from within, come without, and envelope our entire being. To desire to be clothed with our house from heaven means to desire to be clothed with the house from the realm of Spirit! It means to have Spirit released into conscious awareness and then into our Physical Bodies. It means to give outward expression to that which we are inwardly. Verse four tell us, "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be Unclothed, but clothed upon, that Mortality Might Be Swallowed Up of life.” This is what the great and superior resurrection is; it is putting on the Spirit! It is not just Christ In us, but on us.
Colossians 1:27 "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you the hope of glory:" In this scripture, the hope is not the Glory. Glory is when the Christ In us manifests outwardly. It is when we give outward expression to that which we are inwardly. This is being clothed with our house which is from heaven, or from the realm of Spirit.
Company of Overcomers
The resurrection in Revelation 20 has to do with those who will experience it while still in physical bodies. Everyone experiences resurrection, but not everyone is in the first resurrection. The first resurrection or superior resurrection has to do with a people who are laying hold of the present truth that is coming forth today, and are becoming God's availability in the earth. It will not be for a people who are seeking to escape. It will not be for a people who are seeking to be "raptured away" in some natural catching away. But it is for a people who are seeking to be "caught up" into a dimension of Spirit, so Spirit can find expression through flesh, and the kingdom of God can come upon earth. The first resurrection is for a people