The General Resurrection
How is it that all humanity
will be raised from the dead at the General Resurrection if their physical
death is due to the defilement of the body because of sin?
The only solution we are
able to come up with is that Jesus’ death and resurrection are not wasted
though a sinner rejects Jesus Christ. God secures His honor over HIs tainted
creation and He is able to enact perfect justice upon those who hate Him. For in
the General Resurrection there will be the real and concrete reversal of the
first death upon mankind.
We know from Romans 6:23
that the wages of sin is death and that this stems from what God warned Adam
about in the garden of Eden. That the day of which he partakes of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, “You shall die.”
We also know that every
human has sinned, except for Jesus, and that because we are all sinners each
one must die and that the very reason Jesus did raise from the dead was because
HE had never sinned.
How is it then that God will
raise every single person that has ever sinned from the dead?
|
All have died because all have sinned |
Jesus dies and yet because He has no sin He
is raised from the dead |
? |
All mankind are raised from the dead |
On what basis of justice is
God able to do this? Does God just do it because He is free to do what He
wills, as the Calvinist maintains? Or does God accomplish something to
the satisfaction of HIs own justice and so that the accuser of mankind is
silenced.
He will raise both the
righteous and the wicked, not just the righteous who are in Christ.
The conclusion is
unavoidable and demands for an effectual, and yet impersonal, universal
atonement for sin.
The
General Resurrection is the clearest proof that Jesus’ death and resurrection
is a universal and impersonal atonement for sin.
A person cannot be raised
from the dead unless there is atonement for sin and yet this atonement for sin
must be impersonal for those who ultimately perish.
Jesus will say to many of
those whom He will raise from the dead, “I never knew you.” The General
Resurrection does not require personal faith in Jesus and yet it cannot occur
unless sin is atoned for.
Only those born of the
Spirit, who have personalized Jesus’ death and resurrection in this life are
those who have entered into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The
wicked will be raised with as good of a body as God’s people except that it will
not have a righteous heart and soul and certainly will not be glorified. (Two
teachings by Jesus about the last judgment strongly imply that there will be no
visible difference between the righteous and the wicked. Matthew 25:31-33
refers to the separating of sheep from goats, which in Palestine they were not
so easily distinguished. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 is the parable of the Tares
and the Wheat. The word used for tares is a weed that looks like wheat)
It is solely because of the
second Adam, Jesus Christ, that every son of the first Adam shall be raised
from the dead, never to know the first death again. Each and every one shall by
virtue of Jesus Christ be raised with a body that will be indestructible and
wholly the body it should be without the infirmities and blights of sin.
All of those who are not of
God’s people shall be trapped in such a perfect body, which cannot perish, and
shall in this body be case into the lake of fire, and second death. By virtue
of Christ’s immortal resurrection all humanity shall inherit a body that will
not denigrate and they will either enjoy the pleasures of heaven or will suffer
the punishment that he or she deserves, for all eternity.
Ironically,
God’s perfect wrath is fully accomplished by means of God’s perfect redemptive
work in Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Never again, at any point,
after the resurrection, will God’s purpose to create mankind be obstructed by
physical death and never at any point will physical death obstruct the
necessary punishment of those who have rejected God’s creational purpose.
Perfect justice requires the sinner to be punished in his self-same body for
eternity, for his sins done in the body, and therefore it must be raised and made
immortal, so that it can fulfill an eternity of punishment. (Steven L.
Hitchcock, Recanting Calvinism: For A Dynamic Gospel [Xulon Press,
2011], 335-37)
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