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"For if the first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for
a second."
Or again, Heb. 12: 7:--
"For he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."
In neither of these passages does "place" bear the idea of physical or material locality,
and the same applies to Rev. 20: 11.
Satan's rebellion and the present Creation.
The heavens and the earth that are now will have run their appointed course by the
time that the great white throne has been set up. They began as a result of Satan's first
rebellion, suggested though not stated in Gen. 1: 2 when the first earth perished in the
water. They will end when Satan's last rebellion has come to its inglorious close, and not
with a flood of water but with a lake of fire:--
"By the word of God . . . . . the world that then was, being overflowed with water,
perished: but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word laid up in store,
kept for fire for the day of judgment and destruction of impious men . . . . . in which the
heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with a fervent
heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up" (II Pet. 3: 5-10).
In spite therefore of the words of a great commentator on Rev. 20: 11, "To seek a
literal sense in such a passage would be quite a superfluous undertaking", we believe that
we have here as literal a cosmic movement as in Gen. 1: 2, the Deluge, the terrors of
Sinai, or the rending rocks and opened tombs at the crucifixion of the Saviour:--
"And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God" (Rev. 20: 12).
Unless one had actually heard it denied, it would hardly seem necessary to say that
"the dead" who thus stand before this throne are raised and living again.
The rest of the Dead.
There are two items in this very chapter that necessitate the resurrection of all those
that were not raised at the commencement of the millennium.
(1). The First Resurrection.--We observed earlier that the word "first" means "former",
"the former of two", and implies a second or later resurrection to follow.
(2). The rest of the dead lived not again until . . . . .--"Lived not again until" necessarily
means that when the limit set by the word "until" has been reached, those others
called "the rest" shall "lived again".
This company called "the rest of the dead" are included in I Cor. 15: 22, 23:--