What is the second resurrection?

Question 10098.

If the first resurrection is the raising of the blessed, the second resurrection is its opposite number. It is the raising of everyone who has died without saving faith in Jesus, and it takes place at the end of the thousand year reign, for one purpose. They stand before the Great White Throne to be judged.

This is not a subject anyone enjoys, and I have no intention of handling it flippantly. But it is in Scripture, Jesus taught it plainly, and a ministry that never mentions it is not being kind. It is being unfaithful.

Where Scripture teaches it

Revelation 20:5 says the rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended, which implies a second raising after the interval. Verses 11 to 15 then describe it: a great white throne, the dead standing before it, books opened, and each judged according to what he had done.

Jesus taught the same two outcomes long before John wrote. An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgement (John 5:28-29). Daniel says it too, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

So the second resurrection is not an obscure inference from one verse. It is the settled teaching of Scripture that the unsaved dead are raised, bodily, for judgement.

Paul says the same thing before a hostile governor, and it is striking where he says it. Standing trial before Felix, he declares his hope in God that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust (Acts 24:15). He calls it a hope, which tells you he regarded the certainty of a final reckoning as good news rather than a threat, at least for those in the right.

Who is raised in the second resurrection?

Everyone who died apart from saving faith, from every century and every culture. The sea gives up the dead in it, and Death and Hades give up the dead in them. No one is missed, whatever became of their body, and no one is excused by obscurity.

Hades is not their final destination but the intermediate state where the unsaved dead have been held. What happens between death and resurrection is a real question, and the answer is that consciousness continues. The second resurrection is not the beginning of their awareness. It is the end of the waiting.

Believers are not present as defendants. Their judgement, the Bema, concerned service and reward and took place long before. The judgement seat of Christ and the Great White Throne are two different courts with two different dockets.

Jesus described that intermediate condition in the account of the rich man and Lazarus, where the rich man is in torment, is fully conscious, remembers his brothers and can hold a conversation. Whatever one makes of the details, the picture is not of sleep or suspension. The second resurrection therefore does not awaken people who knew nothing. It brings to public judgement those who have already understood their situation for a long time.

What happens at the throne

Books are opened, and another book, which is the book of life. The plural books appear to be the record of deeds, and the judgement is explicitly according to what they had done. That is a striking detail, because it means the standard applied is one people have effectively chosen for themselves by refusing grace.

There is no defence offered in John’s account. No advocate speaks, no plea is entered, no evidence is disputed. The silence of that courtroom is one of the most sobering features of the passage. Everything is simply read out.

And then the verdict. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:15). The one book that could have changed the outcome is the one that is checked last.

Consider what the presence of the book of life implies. If judgement were purely a matter of deeds, that book would be unnecessary. Its appearance in the courtroom shows that there was another basis available, a name written rather than a record earned, and that those standing there had not availed themselves of it. The second resurrection is not the moment their fate is decided. It is the moment it is announced.

There is a further sobering detail in the phrase according to what they had done. Everything is included. Not simply the public failures but the private cruelties, the words said in anger behind a closed door, the quiet dishonesty nobody noticed. Nothing is lost from the record, and the second resurrection brings all of it into a courtroom where the standard is God’s own character rather than the average behaviour of the neighbours.

Are there degrees of judgement?

Scripture indicates that there are. Jesus said it would be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgement than for the towns that had seen His miracles and refused Him. The servant who knew his master’s will and did not do it receives a severer beating than the one who did not know.

That is why the second resurrection involves an examination of deeds rather than a bare verdict. Justice is calibrated. Nobody will be able to say they were treated unfairly, and nobody who received more light will be treated as though they received less.

It also means that the common idea of hell as a uniform experience is not quite what Scripture describes. The destination is the same. The measure is not.

This also disposes of the idea that hell is a place where the worst are gathered and the ordinary are excused. Scripture does not grade people into acceptable and unacceptable sinners. What it does is measure light received against response given, which is why the second resurrection involves books rather than a single verdict pronounced over an undifferentiated crowd.

Why the second resurrection is bodily

People sometimes assume that judgement is a matter of disembodied souls, but Scripture will not have it. The dead stand before the throne. Jesus warned about the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. The resurrection of the unsaved is as physical as the resurrection of the redeemed, though to a very different end.

That fact underlines something about human dignity. God does not deal with people as evaporating spirits. He made us embodied, He judges us embodied, and the permanence of that arrangement runs both ways.

Notice as well that Death and Hades are themselves thrown into the lake of fire after the second resurrection has emptied them. The instruments of the curse are disposed of along with those who chose it. Paul’s promise that the last enemy to be destroyed is death is fulfilled here, not as a metaphor but as a described event (1 Corinthians 15:26).

Handling this doctrine rightly

I have known preachers who seem almost to enjoy this subject, and I have known others who have quietly dropped it. Both are wrong. Paul said that knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, and Jude speaks of snatching people from the fire. The right response to the second resurrection is neither relish nor silence but urgency.

There is also comfort in it, oddly enough, for those who have suffered injustice. Every abuser who died respected, every tyrant who was never called to account, will stand at that throne. Nothing is unresolved. The books are complete.

I would add that this doctrine ought to make us gentle rather than fierce. If you believe that the people around you are heading towards the second resurrection unless something changes, contempt becomes impossible. You cannot despise someone you are genuinely trying to rescue. Where I find harshness in my own heart towards unbelievers, it is usually a sign that I have stopped believing this properly.

There is a further reason for handling it carefully. Some people come to this doctrine already carrying a picture of God shaped by a harsh father or a frightening church, and they hear cruelty in it whatever we say. With them, start somewhere else. Start with the cross, with what it cost God to make a way out, and let the justice of the judgement be understood in the light of the lengths He went to in order to spare them from it.

So, now what?

If you have never trusted Jesus, this is the doctrine to weigh before anything else in eschatology. The question is not whether you will be raised, since everyone is. The question is which resurrection you are in, and that is settled now rather than then.

If you are His, then let this move you towards the people around you rather than into fear. Names are written in the book of life while there is still time to write them. Whose name are you praying into it at the moment?

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.

Revelation 20:12 (ESV)