Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 117:468 (Oct 1960)
Article: The Relation between Living and Resurrected Saints in the Millennium
Author: J. Dwight Pentecost

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BSac 117:468 (Oct 60) p. 331

The Relation between Living and Resurrected Saints in the Millennium

J. Dwight Pentecost

[J. Dwight Pentecost is Acting Professor of New Testament, Dallas Theological Seminary.]

There has been general confusion, even among the premillennialists, concerning the relationship that would exist in the millennium between the resurrected and translated saints of the church age, the resurrected saints of the Old Testament and the living saints from among both Jews and Gentiles who are to be included in the period. There has been no clarification of the positions these various groups would occupy, their spheres of activity, their relation to the rule of the King, their relation to the earth, nor their relationship to each other. It has been recognized that the church would reign as a bride with Christ. The Old Testament saints, it is agreed, are to be resurrected and rewarded in that age. The saved Jews, who are found to be righteous at the judgment on Israel, together with the saved Gentiles, who are declared righteous at the judgment on the Gentiles at the time of the second advent, are to be subjects of the King in the millennium. But there has been little said concerning their specific relationships

One writer ridicules the whole premillennial position by saying: “Another question…emerges from the assertion that during the supposed millennium, resurrected and raptured saints will mingle freely and do business with those still in their mortal bodies. It is presumed that the resurrected saints shall rule the earth and enforce the laws of Christ during the millennium. Here again premillennialism makes no provision for the reconciliation of such irreconcilables as resurrected saints and mortal sinners in the same society…. Premillennialism blends together the two classes without regard to the fact that one has gone through the process of death and resurrection, and the other has not, and that, therefore, their organisms are adapted to two different modes of existence—one material, and the other spiritual. In fact, premillennialism suggests a perfectly normal society made up of these different elements during the millennium, and also anticipates that during this period the earth’s population will greatly increase. This is bewildering when we remember

BSac 117:468 (Oct 60) p. 332

that, according to premillennialism, the earth’s millennial population will consist of vast numbers of resurrected saints, and that Jesus Christ plainly stated that there is no marrying or sex life in the resurrection…. If the resurrected saints are like angels, how can it be imagined, much less asserted, that for one thousand years they shall mingle freely with men and women still in their carnal and mortal bodies, and live together und...

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