Question: When do the O.T saints rise?
Answer: The O. T. saints as well as those dead of the New rise at Christ’s coming (ver. 23) (the living being then changed, 51, 52). “They that are Christ’s” is surely comprehensive enough to embrace both. Rev. 20:4 adds the rising of the Apocalyptic martyrs, too late for the rapture but just in time to he raised and reign with the previously risen saints, before the kingdom of Christ and of His saints over the earth begins. For in that verse we have, in the first class already seated on thrones, the saints of the Old and New Testament, whom the Lord translates to heaven at His coming (the twenty-four elders of Rev. 4. & 5.); then the souls of those beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God (Rev. 6.); and lastly those who worshipped not the beast or his image (Rev. 13.): which two classes, having been killed, needed to live, in order to reign with Christ, like the enthroned ones. “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?”—(1 Cor. 6:2)—not the church merely, but “the saints.” The reason why these two classes of sufferers are carefully shown to have part in the First Resurrection is because Christ had come and received to Himself the first and general company. Otherwise, being slain afterward, they might seem to have been too late for that blessed part. Here they are assured of it.