'The rest of the dead lived not again'.

This last reference which directs us to the judgment of the Great White

Throne warns us that a special company is envisaged.  It is composed of

believers, who together with those who were martyred, formed one company, and

no others are in view.  The wicked dead of all ages will have their judgment,

but that is not contemplated here.  One company and one only are before us,

and that company is divided into two portions: (1) the overcomers, (2) those

who were not overcomers, or briefly 'the rest'.  The overcomers live and

reign during the thousand years.  'The rest' do not live again until the

Millennium is over.  They do not forfeit 'life' necessarily, but they have

lost the 'crown', a doctrine not confined to any one dispensation as 1

Corinthians 3:10 -15; Philippians 3:11 -14 and 2 Timothy 2:11 -13 will show.

This is the first resurrection; the 'former' of two, as we have seen earlier.

These overcomers are called 'priests of God and of Christ'.  There

seems a need to discriminate once again between the restored nation, which

will be a priestly nation on the earth, and this company of priests which

exercise their priesthood in the Heavenly City.  Let us see.  At the foot of

Mount Sinai, the whole nation were given the terms by which they could become

'a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation'.  Those terms none have ever kept;

with those conditions no one has ever complied (Exod. 19:5,6).  Isaiah,

visualizing not the old covenant, but the 'everlasting covenant' (Isa. 61:8)

looked down the age and beheld Israel restored, having the oil of joy instead

of mourning, rebuilt and raised up and repaired (Isa. 61:3,4), and named 'The

Priests of the Lord: men shall call you the Ministers of our God ... the seed

which the Lord hath blessed' (Isa. 61:6 -9).

Just as the restored earthly Jerusalem will have a resemblance to the

Heavenly City, with its foundations of sapphires, and its gates of agates

(Isa. 54:11,12), so we find at the close of Isaiah 61 this restored priestly

nation likened also to a bridegroom or to a bride.  This must not lead us to

confuse this company with the Bride of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7), for Isaiah 54:6

-8 makes it clear that Israel as a 'woman forsaken' and a 'wife of youth' who

had been refused, is in view, whereas the Bride, the Lamb's wife, is not the

nation of Israel, once divorced but now restored, but a company of overcomers

whose seat of authority is not the earthly but the heavenly Jerusalem, a

company that had never known divorcement.  When we open the book of the

Revelation the first company of the redeemed we meet with are those who say:

'Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood,

and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father' (Rev.

While all, whoever they may be, and whatever their calling, must have been

cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, there seems some special reason why it

should have been introduced here.  The word 'washed' is the Greek lousanti,

but the best texts read lusanti which means 'loosed'.  Again, redemption sets

free, and employs a number of words derived from luo, 'I loose'.

Nevertheless the way in which the word luo is used in the book of the

Revelation makes us suspect that something more is intended here in

Revelation 1:5,6, than purely evangelical salvation.  Let us assemble the

occurrences of luo which are seven in number.

'Loosed us from our sins in His own blood'.