By Tyson Thorne

July 23, 2014
 
 

QandA large

A few readers of this site wrote and asked if the Bible itself made a distinction between raing the dead and resurrecting the dead. Congratulations to them for thinking like Berean! In fact, the Bible does make such a distinction in the language it uses. The clearest distinction is found in Matthew 27.52-.53. I’ll quote the passage below replacing the English words with the Greek to illustrate the difference.

And tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had died were egero. (They came out of the tombs after his egesis and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.)

The word egero is the Greek word for “raised” and egesis means “resurrection”. In Greek these two words are distinct, one is not a different tense, or form of the other. Egero is used in other ways such as raising a banner or a child. Egesis is always used in the sense of resurrection of a body in religious terms.

Furthermore, the word egero is used in other passages where a person is raised from the dead (Matthew 9.25, Luke 7.13-.15) while egesis is never used in such passages.

The evidence in the source language is clear that these two events are different, and we see the difference even in the end result. People who are raised are still imperfect sinners who die again, the one person so far who has been resurrected and who is the firstfruits of resurrection has a body of a very different nature, one that is incorruptible.

A second question came up about part one of our series on death, and that is if it appointed unto a every person to die and then judgment, what about those who never died. For those not familiar with these two men, Enoch and Elijah have not died but instead were taken to heaven. It appears that these two men were judged and welcomed into heaven without having to die first.

It is generally accepted among Christian scholars that they will both have their turn to die, and the event takes place during the tribulation. The witnesses are never named but are described in Revelation 11.1-.14. It is unclear if these men are raised or resurrected as the language used favors a Hebrew description of breath being returned to them. Such language is used of two men in the Old Testament who were raised, however, causing some to believe that this is also a raising of the dead. Others argue that the men being brought back to life in roughly the same time as Jesus (three days) implies a resurrection takes place. The language John uses is too imprecise to dogmatically hold either position. The point is, however, that if these two witnesses are indeed Enoch and Elijah then they will die some time before the Judgment Day, fulfilling the mandate of death and then judgment.

Great questions and I hope more of you will email your inquiries to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. If you do write please also state if it is okay to use your name in the answer. If you do not state your permission clearly your name will not be used. Tomorrow we return to our study of the book of Acts.

 

 
 
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