THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

250 The Hope of Israel: What Is It?
ond death has no authority; but they shall be priests
of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand
years." The antithesis in this passage between
"the first resurrection" and "the second death" makes
it further evident that if the latter does not mean
bodily death the former does not mean bodily resurrection.
It should be recalled in this connection that in the
New Testament the unconverted are regarded as existing
in a state of death and of servitude to sin. (Indeed
the teaching of the Bible throughout is that death
is not the extinction of man's being, but is a state of
being.) At conversion man's natural condition is reversed;
he lives and reigns. The first thing that happens
is that he passes from death into life. This much
of the doctrine is relatively easy to grasp; but more
than that, instead of being, after conversion, under
the rule and authority of sin, he himself shares the
authority of Christ.
also reigns with Him.
He not only lives with Him, but
That the N. T. clearly teaches
this two-fold truth as to a man's change of condition
at his conversion, will be clearly shown in what follows.
Further it will be shown that both the living with
Christ and also the reigning with Him are in another
sphere; not in the realm of the natural, but in that
of the spiritual. Our life is not here; it is hid with
Christ, in God (Col. 3:3). So likewise, our reigning
is not here ;
for manifestly we are not seated on thrones
in this life. But just as we live with and in our risen
Lord in the heavenlies, so likewise do we reign with
Him there and now. The fact that our true life is in
the unseen world, while we continue here in the flesh,
makes it easier to lay hold of the companion truth that