I’m reading the Navarre Bible Commentary on St John’s Revelation. It is a very good little volume and I highly recommend the Navarre Commentaries.

One point of clarification that the Revelation Commentary makes is the concept of the “first resurrection” and the “second resurrection” in Revelation. There is a right way and a wrong way to understand this.

The erroneous interpretation follows the premillenial school (e.g. that which is presented in the Left Behind series). Those of this school actually posit two different literal physical resurrections. The first is for the righteous and occurs at the Second Coming of Christ. The second physical resurrection is of the unrighteous at the end of a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth with the saints.

The correct approach follows the amillenial school of thought, which understands the millenium of Revelation chapter 20 as a symbolic length of time spanning from the death of Christ to His Second Coming. Accordingly, the “second resurrection” refers to the true physical resurrection at the end of time at His Second Coming.

The first resurrection is understood sacramentally. The Revelation read this way:

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

This should be read in the context of St Paul’s words:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom 6:4-6)

The first resurrection refers to that reality of the regenerate soul. That which has died with Christ and risen with Him. Baptism confers the grace of the Christ’s resurrection.

I bring this up because you can see how the dispensationalism of Left Behind spins out of control with its spurious interprations. By not discerning the cosmos sacramentally, the dispensationalist/fundamentalist is forced to hold teachings that end up confusing the Scriptures. There can not two resurrections at the end of time. The only sound interpretation is to understand the first resurrection as the sacramental reality of the resurrection applied to the soul of the believer and the second resurrection as the eschatological reality of the resurrection accomplished in the body of the believer.