Will you be resurrected after you die? If so, will that be the first or the second resurrection? Why does the Bible speak of two resurrections? One resurrection worked for Jesus. Do you get to choose between the two resurrections or do you have to be in one or the other or both or neither? Is one in the spirit and one in the flesh? Why did Jesus get both; spiritually and bodily resurrected? Do you get to go to heaven when you die even though your body goes to the grave? Will you get a heavenly body when you die or will you be happy in heaven without one? I’m going to try to answer at least some of these questions.

Revelation tells us that those in the first resurrection won’t be harmed at all by the second death. That sounds desirable. Sounds like I want to be in the first resurrection. Surely I don’t want to be in the second death. It sounds worse than the first death. Jesus went to His first Old Covenant death in order to to rescue His people from that first death. He died once to His Old Covenant life and He will never die a second death. After second death people don’t get resurrected. 

Jesus died once and was born by the Holy Spirit to a renewed life. But what did that change for Him? How was He different after His resurrection? Other than being relieved at being done with His mission to overcome their Old Covenant death, He wasn’t different. He had the same Holy Spirit in the Old Covenant. His position in the covenant was now different. He is the firstborn now because He took the place of Adam. The last became first (eschatos Adam became the firstborn), but it was His people who needed the change, not Him. Those stuck in the death of Adam now had options. They were widowed to the old man by the death of thee Eschaton Adam.

Yeshuah wasn’t in need of spiritual life in the flesh. He alone had spiritual life in the flesh and blood Old Covenant. His people on the other hand were spiritually dead in their flesh and blood body. The same Holy Spirit who joined Jesus at His baptism, rejoined Him at His resurrection. He suffered a Holy Spirit separation for His people, so He could send the Holy Spirit to them by way of a new arrangement. 

Yeshua’s resurrection was quite unique. He alone ascended from his resurrected flesh body into the true temple in heaven, as the final Old Covenant sacrificial payment for His relatives. The High Priest Of Heaven interceded for His people in the real Holy of Holies once and for all. Yeshua couldn’t even be a priest on earth according to law. He presented the final sacrifice in the true temple in heaven. We won’t have to do that when we die. God’s people have already been redeemed from their old sacrificial mode that ended with their final Jubilee. 

Jesus’ Old Covenant death on the cross sent Him to the place of the dead ones where He overcame the death of the firstborn. After His resurrection, the firstborn of the New Covenant was the only spiritually living human. His people didn’t start joining His spirit-realm resurrection until Pentecost. He presented the final sacrifice in the antitypical temple so they could join Him. Only Yeshua could overcome the typical death. Old creation humans had to be released from the death of the firstborn body. 

Our flesh body will indeed decay after we die. Even if we pay someone to preserve it, it still stays here. Like Adam, our first born body returns to the soil it was taken from. We don’t take it with us. And most of us will have old bodies when we die anyway. When Yeshua died and was resurrected He became the Firstfruit offering to guarantee the fulfillment of the new Jewish harvest. The new life was no longer typical (flesh and blood). Maybe that’s why He was resurrected on the Hebrew day of Firstfruit. He fulfilled their types right before their eyes. 

Fifty days after Firstfruit is when the Holy Spirit arrived at Pentecost. But that can’t be what people are calling resurrection number two (the Bible never actually says second resurrection). If it was then Jesus would be the only Hebrew in the first resurrection. He died and was resurrected by the Holy Spirit so He could send the same Holy Spirit to the 12 tribes gathered at Pentecost to continue to fulfill the Jewish harvest. Pentecost is the first resurrection ongoing, made possible by Firtsfruit. Jesus certainly never died before, and He will certainly not be the first in a second resurrection, because He will never die again. Who was in their second resurrection? Or will there be a second resurrection in our future? Will it be an Old or New Covenant resurrection?

The Hebrews, who gathered at Pentecost to celebrate their birth as a nation, were actually attempting their second resurrection as a flesh and blood nation. It was their second land occupation in the flesh mode covenant and it wasn’t going very well. Just like the first time they tried to enter the promised land, they were pretty much dead from the start. They even had to get a second betrothal prior to marriage with the land owner the first time around. Remember how Moses broke the first stone proposal after they were caught worshipping the beast they created? And even after Moses came down with the newly written proposal, they still all died in the wilderness for the next 40 years. 

Only the next generation, or you could say the regeneration of the nation, entered the promised land. The Israelites had to get a new body of flesh before they could even cross the Jordan the first time. That was their first national resurrection in the flesh. And we know it wasn’t permanent, because the Babylonians were eventually given the kingdom and the Jewish nation was removed from the land. Then after giving the land 70 years of Sabbath rest, they began their second resurrection in the flesh, when another new generation of Hebrews began entering the land. The Jews who chose flesh birth and rejected Spirit birth were still in their second resurrection attempt in the flesh mode when their one and only spirit realm resurrection was made complete. Those in the first spirit realm resurrection of the nation were not harmed by the second flesh death of the nation. 

Resurrection of a flesh body without a spiritual resurrection would just end in the flesh-body-death again; individual and corporate. The judgement to second death is never actually called a second resurrection, even though it does come after the first spiritual resurrection is complete. It also comes at the death of the second land occupation, which was a second flesh and blood resurrection of the Jewish nation. Those hold outs in the second resurrection never came to spiritual life, which was the one and only Holy Spirit resurrection. 

The tribe of Judah was making a second national resurrection attempt in the flesh, but there is no second spirit realm resurrection. If the Holy Spirit is sent from heaven to the 12 tribes in the land for a second time then the first time did not grant eternal life.  If those in the first resurrection died again them the resurrection was not permanent. It was the flesh and blood resurrection that wasn’t permanent. The second flesh and blood resurrection died in AD70. We don’t get flesh and blood bodies in heaven. We get heavenly born bodies that never die. Spirit born life doesn’t need two tries. Both old covenant resurrections in the flesh failed.

On Pentecost, eternal life was given to the Jews who were in their second flesh and blood resurrection. Their flesh and blood resurrection still failed. Those who received the Holy Spirit received eternal life while still in a mortal body. The resurrection didn’t end in death because it wasn’t a flesh and blood resurrection. Resurrection life was given to people who had flesh and blood bodies. If it was a flesh resurrection then the resurrection failed. 

The high priest only took the sacrificed soul into the most holy place. The flesh of the animal was not taken into the Most Holy Place. The soul was represented on earth by blood. Jesus laid down His old covenant soul for His people. He was the perfect imager even in the old covenant and so He was resurrected by the Holy Spirit, and so He arrived to the real most holy place alive. He sacrificed His old covenant life and was then resurrected by the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit life was given to His mortal body of flesh and blood. He then entered the antitypical most holy place in the new covenant. He alone would have ascended to the antitypical most holy place at 70 years of age, from the old covenant. Instead He laid down His soul only to take it up again. Jesus took the perfect old covenant sacrifice to the real most Holy Place. The perfect sacrifice was His old covenant human soul. It was the resurrected firstborn soul of humanity that He took into the Holy of Holies in heaven. He was a living sacrifice. The animals that represented the Jews until Jesus weren’t even human. Jesus covered His people in perfect humanity. Animal sacrifice isn’t accepted in the real Holy of Holies heaven. The real mercy seat is forever covered with the eternal human soul.

The Jews who were born again on Pentecost, by the same Holy Spirit that resurrected Jesus from their Old Covenant death, were in their first spirit realm resurrection. They were enabled to stand in that spirit realm betrothal without falling to beast worship. They did marry up with the true humanity of Yahweh in His eternal marriage covenant. They didn’t need a second try. The first resurrection succeeded precisely because it remained spiritual. They refused to return to the flesh mode nation who was attempting their second bodily resurrection by way of temporary animal sacrifices. The temporary time of old covenant style forgiveness permanently ended. Jesus Himself alluded to the second 490 years of forgiveness when Peter asked how many times to keep forgiving his Jewish brethren for their repeated offenses. 

The ones still clinging to their flesh-body resurrection started persecuting the ones in the spirit realm bodily resurrection. But that would not be enough to cause the resurrection to fail. There was something new happening in the land. The new covenant only needed one resurrection to become the eternal covenant with Yahweh.

Thee Eschaton Adam had been divinely conceived and formed in a woman. In the first creation account it was Eve who came from Adam. And Adam had been taken from the world at large and placed into the land. But the final Adam came to reverse what Adam and Eve did. He came out of heaven and was formed inside the land in a betrothed bride. Since Marry wasn’t married yet, she didn’t have the image of a fallen old covenant humanity planted in her. Nor was Yeshua  taken from the unformed nations and placed into the land. He came down from heaven. His body of old covenant flesh and blood was formed inside the land so He could fulfill all the types of their flesh mode.

He was the first person able to overcome the fall of Adam from within the Old Covenant. Nobody else will ever do it. Jesus over-ruled Adam’s humanity in the flesh and then He over-ruled the fall in the spirit realm too. He became the unfailing exorcist. He cast the evil spirits out of His fallen and corrupted people. He never missed His mark. The Holy Spirit He sent to spiritually cleanse and inhabit His people eventually overflowed into all the nations. Those who chose the old covenant over the new died when the second old covenant resurrection failed. The only way to overcome the second death of the old covenant was in the One who overcame it. The first national old covenant death was by Babylon. The second was by Rome.

Jesus disciplined (discipled) Himself so well as Thee Eschaton Adam, that He was even able to take on their Old Covenant death, so he could be resurrected from their first born death and then send the Holy Spirit to the Hebrews in their new constitution. In the new covenant cosmos, the Holy Spirit wrote the rule of God on their Israeli hearts. That was His new covenant promised to them. That was their national resurrection that didn’t end in death. A resurrection that ends in death is not a permanent resurrection.

Jesus reluctantly agreed to put Thee Eschaton Adam to death, so the Holy Spirit could resurrect Him as the unfallen firstborn of a better creation. The Firstfruit resurrection was permanent. The old widowed nation engaged Him in the Spirit realm of Yahweh on Pentecost. It was the spiritual resurrection that led to the spiritual marriage, in the ‘air’. 

The Hebrews who gathered at Pentecost soon scattered and they took their spirit realm resurrection to the world at large. The typical curse was reversed when the Holy Spirit removed the language barriers imposed by Yahweh at the Tower of Babel. But the ones who insisted on staying in the Old Covenant were still cursed by the confusion of languages. They said that those who broke through the language barriers at Pentecost were merely drunk. There eyes could only see the fall of Adam. They didn’t see the death and the resurrection of the firstborn.

The Old Covenant Jews, who were in their second land resurrection in the flesh, rejected the Jews who were in their first spirit realm resurrection. They has to have resurrection in the flesh. They couln’t see it any other way. Those who tried to keep the land in the flesh were judged by their second resurrection of works in the flesh. Those who were kept by the Holy Spirit, were enabled by the work of Christ to stand for the duration of the old age, in the life of the Spirit. The church was still alive and well when the land occupation ended for the second time. However, the Jews still in the Old Covenant did not arrive to the age alive and well. Spiritual life to the age was only in Christ. 

The first time the Old Covenant ended, Yahweh promised to open the land to them again, after 70 years of sabbath rest, because they had missed 490 years of sabbaticals. The second 490 years of missed sabbaticals was being consummated in one of two ways: in the Lord of the Sabbath who never misses, or still in the flesh. In the 70th year of the Lord the Old Covenant flesh mode ended, for the second time. This was their second Old Covenant death. Those in the second flesh and blood resurrection died again. The second land occupation wasn’t nearly as successful as the first. Nevertheless they both ended in death.

Their second death coincided with their 1000-year Jubilee and with the 1000-year age of Adam. Jesus died and took Adam’s place so those in Adam could finish his 930-year age spiritually alive. Jesus also died to pay the price for the Jews before their 1000-year Jubilee arrived.  He was the rich relative willing to rescue them from their land debts so they could enter their final Sabbath rest permanently reconstituted. Those who rejected the offer, chose to arrive dead: D.O.A. Eternal life is concordantly interpreted, “life to the age”: alive on arrival. The second death was the second time the nation reached the age of 490 dead. The age we are in now is the never-ending-covenant age. Are we still counting on some typical old covenant years to be fulfilled or did we as humanity already complete the thousand years, dead or alive? Jesus told the Jews that all who believed in Him would never die. That sounds like believing in Him was the permanent resurrection. Jews were given their resurrection at Pentecost. That successful resurrection consummated on the marriage feast of Tabernacles. Those who received the Holy Spirit did not die the second death. 

The second (re) generation of people to enter the promised land were in their second national resurrection in the flesh. They were in the flesh mode of flesh washings, flesh on location, perpetual flesh sacrifices, flesh genealogies, keeping the law in the strength of the flesh, etc. The earthy nation died a second land death in AD 70. The Holy Spirit left the types to inhabit new covenant people. God’s Spirit left their temple and entered them personally.

Those Jews who did receive the Holy Spirit in the upper room of Jerusalem were given eternal life, for the first time, by the only immortal firstborn human soul. Eternal life by definition doesn’t need to be given twice. The first spiritual betrothal of the Jews succeeded. The true Jews aren’t waiting for a second spiritual resurrection or a third flesh and blood resurrection. 

It started with the resurrection of Christ who overcame the spiritual death of Adam. He will not die again and start a second spiritual betrothal to the Jews. The second death did not harm the Jews who were in the first Holy Spirit resurrection. The only first resurrection in the first century was the spiritual one. In fact the Jews who were in their second flesh and blood resurrection stopped persecuting the Jews who were in their first spiritual resurrection, in the 70th year of the Lord.

Jesus coming in judgement on the gospel rejectors gave relief to the Spirit born Jews and their proselytes. Even the Old covenant hold outs who survived the 3 1/2 year siege by the Romans ceased persecuting the Christians because the Romans took them for slaves.

The reborn Jews were indeed amazed the first time a Gentile entered their New Covenant by being born of the Spirit just as they were. But they couldn’t keep arguing about it, precisely because every Gentile convert also received the indwelling Holy Spirit, just as the Hebrews had. But then it became commonplace to accept Gentiles into the Jewish church, and then the Jews readily took the gospel to all the known nations. 

Before the 70th year of the Lord consummated the new Jewish marriage covenant, the wedding hall was filled with born again believers from all over the Roman Empire. At the marriage, the church inherited the eternal life of the new Firstborn Son of humanity. He owns all the lands. The Author Of Life Himself became a human in order to redeem Adam and Israel from the fallen flesh mode. If you have the Spirit of God you are not in the flesh. If you don’t have the Spirit you are not His. You have to be born into His spirit realm family to permanently live in heaven.

If you are born from above today you are simply added to the spiritual family of Yahweh by being born into the family. Yeshua long ago made a widow out of the Old Covenant bride to set her free from the fallen old man. The widow then married the New Covenant man. Neither one fell to the old age of 1000. The new mother of all the living is the New Covenant church. She can’t fall into naked realization again. She was covered by the final human sacrifice of Christ. The old church was temporarily covered by animal skins. Yeshua perfectly tamed the old covenant human body He was given and presented it in the true temple in heaven as the final passover lamb to eternally redeem the firstborn from Adam’s original fall. The firstborn was Adam as an individual and Israel as a nation. They have both been redeemed by the perfect Passover Lamb Of God. Jesus entered human skin to cover for them. Only He could flesh it out.

Be grateful you didn’t live when the first spiritual and second flesh resurrection were at war with each other. Be grateful you can now be born again into an already formed and eternal family. The New Covenant people of God never die and nobody is in the Old Covenant anymore. The Old Covenant hold-outs either joined the new or they continued in their second resurrection to their second spiritual death. The Holy Spirit left the old covenant temple for good. They didn’t have to die biologically in AD 70; that’s always everyone’s destiny.

It’s not bad news? God’s people go straight to heaven now and they leave their old body of flesh behind, for good. Only Yeshua could take his Old Covenant body to the real temple in heaven. Only He made an old covenant spiritual sacrifice. Everyone else spiritually died by personally falling under law or by inheritance. Our new heavenly bodies will never die by falling. Just as we inherited the death of Adam we inherit the life of Christ.

Why is that bad news? The sinless lamb of God gave up his blessed Old Covenant life so we could inherit His life in a New and Better Covenant. 

PS, If Jesus’ body literally kept ascending upward to heaven then it would have burned to ashes before leaving our atmosphere and not even the smell of the smoke from that final sacrifice would have reached the ‘nostrils’ of God. His flesh molecules would still be with us; in earth’s atmosphere. That is if you take his ascension scientifically. Typically the sacrifice was burned up outside the city and the high priest took the blood of the beast into the Holy Place. That blood was then sprinkled on the mercy seat representing the sacrifice of the animal soul. That blood was an Old Covenant sacrifice that did not contain human life. It wasn’t spiritual. Animal blood had to be continually shed as a reminder of the ongoing Old Covenant death of the soul that they were stuck in due to their own animal behavior. Jesus sacrificed the only unfallen soul. He had no animal soul in His blood. We got covered with 100% human blood. Only Jesus was fully human in the old covenant. Only He fleshed out the full image of God. The Word was made flesh in God’s image.

Hebrews chapter 13 – Please keep in mind this was written to the Hebrews during their covenant transition from the old to the new. This is the same Hebrew generation that evangelized the other nations before the consummation of the age.

Hebrews 13:11 For the animals whose blood is carried into the holy places by the chief priest concerning sin, of these animals the bodies are burned up outside the camp. 12 Wherefore Jesus also, that He should be hallowing the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. (That is outside the city of Jerusalem gate) 13 So now, we may be coming out to Him outside the camp, carrying His reproach. 14 For here we are not having a permanent city, but we are seeking for the one which is about to be.

Things on earth are analogous to the things in heaven. When Hebrews was written to the 12 tribes the old covenant temple still had standing. The flesh and blood Jerusalem was about to be replaced by the heavenly Jerusalem.

Christ’s Eternal Priesthood

The celestial Jerusalem could not extend from heaven to incorporate the Hebrews in the ‘air’ until The New and permanent High Priest went into the real Holy of Holies in heaven. The Hebrews were being called to leave their typical city behind and suffer the reproach that came with it, because the new spirit realm Jerusalem was being prepared for them. At the Old Covenant consummation, the spiritual people of God married up with the spiritual city of God. It still extends from heaven today to raise and incorporate God’s people. The spirit of Christ is on the mercy seat embodying true humanity to cover for His people.