Both from Isaiah and from Joel you quote the passages which treat of the harvest and the vintage. I need not insert these quotations here. But who can fail to note their connection with “the harvest” in Matt. 13, which our Lord declares to be “the end of the age” —the harvest and vintage in Rev. 14, where “he that sat on the cloud (like unto the Son of man) thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped;” while “the winepress trodden without the city” is said, in Rev. 14:15,15And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. (Revelation 14:15) to be trodden by the One who comes forth from heaven, followed by “the armies which were in heaven,” to his victory over the beast, the false prophet, and their armies. On this coming and victory there follows, as foretold in the much-controverted chapter 20, the reign of the saints with Christ. To your remarks on this, I now turn.
Your first observation is, that in the Apocalypse “life and death, and rising from the dead, stand for the enjoyment, the loss, and the recovery of corporate or political existence and power.” It is thus you interpret ch. 11 and other portions of the book; and you infer that these words are to be so understood in ch. 20. But with whatever weight this argument may apply to numerous pre-millenarian expositors of the Revelation, you are not unaware that there are those who look for the fulfillment of ch. 11. in the sackcloth testimony, martyr-death, and triumphant resurrection of two individual men, yet to appear on God's behalf in the crisis which is probably at hand. And should it even be conceded that the terms life, death, and resurrection, are in some parts of the Apocalypse used figuratively, it would not follow that they are to be so understood throughout the book. Much less can it be justly inferred from such premises that these terms are to be understood figuratively in passages of ch. 20, which certainly seem to be literal explanations of the symbolic scenes which the Prophet of Patmos beheld. “This is the first resurrection,” and, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years,” for no part of John's description of the vision which he beheld, but would appear to be a literal statement of what that division was designed to represent. So that if life, and death, and living again, were to be understood figuratively in John's statement of what he saw, it would by no means follow that they are to be understood thus in his explanatory statements; and it is in these that the proof of the doctrine of a pre-millennial resurrection of the saints is found.
You say “There is a very obvious reason for the distinctive epithet first, in the first resurrection which the world is to witness.” It is, that “as the resurrection of an individual saint at the last day is, as it were, seminally contained in his spiritual life, in his being quickened in time; so it is with regard to the entire mass.” “They have their part,” you observe, “in the mystical body of Christ, which, when triumphant in every part of the world, has that triumph denominated by a resurrection, not of this or of that people, but generally by a first resurrection.”
But if this be so, how can “the rest of the dead” consist, as you represent, of “the rest of the wicked, slain as a party, having no corporate, acknowledged existence” till Satan is loosed, when “they do live” again, in Gog and Magog's rebellion? Let the prophecy be understood as treating of a literal, bodily resurrection, and the language is intelligible and appropriate. Righteous and wicked are both alike dead in the sense of bodily dissolution; and it might, therefore, with the utmost propriety be said, after naming the resurrection of the saints, “the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.” Both form one aggregate of dead ones, of which part after the abstraction of another part, can properly be termed “the rest of the dead.” But if the risen and reigning martyrs do but represent the triumph and ascendancy of the church during the 1000 years, and the resurrection of “the dead” the revival of wickedness at the close of that period, with what propriety, either as to language or facts, could this phrase, “the rest of the dead,” be so used? As to language, I say: for surely the pre-millennial non-existence of the righteous as a party, and the millennial non-existence of the wicked as such, cannot make the two at any time appear, as one aggregate of dead ones, of which it could be said, that part of the dead rise, and “the rest of the dead” rise not again for 1000 years. The very idea carries absurdity on the face of it. Then the phrase is just as inappropriate as to facts. Do you really mean that prior to the millennium, truth and righteousness are to be so extinguished from amongst men, that the saints, “as a party,” have no “corporate acknowledged existence?” If not, from what state of death do they emerge, rendering it in any sense proper to term the millennially non-existent wicked party “the rest of the dead"? No; the attempt to set aside the literal import of the words, “first resurrection” and “rest of the dead,” involves all who make it in difficulties and confusion, with which the alleged difficulties of premillennialism bear no comparison whatever.