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First Resurrection
According to
hegumen Varsonofy (Khaibulin)
1
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
Лк 8, 31.
Откр 1, 18.
2
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
2 Пет 2, 4.
Иуд 1, 6.
Откр 12, 9.
3
And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
4
And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands;
and
they lived (καὶ ἔζησαν)
and reigned with Christ (καὶ ἐβασίλευσαν μετὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ)
a thousand years.
Дан 7, 9, 22.
Дан 8, 17.
Мф 19, 28.
1 Кор 6, 2.
2 Тим 2, 12.
Откр 6, 11.
5
But the rest of the dead lived not again (οὐκ ἀνἔζησαν)
until the thousand years were finished.
This
is
the first resurrection (ἡ ἀνάστασις ἡ πρώτη).
6
Blessed and holy
is
he that hath part in the first resurrection ( ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει τῇ πρώτῃ): on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
Ис 61, 6.
Откр 1, 6.
Откр 21, 7.
Battle of the 2nd half of the 19th chapter of the Apocalypse
11
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse;
and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
12
His eyes
were
as a flame of fire, and on his head
were
many crowns;
and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
13
And he
was
clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God ( και καλειται το ονομα αυτου ο λογος του θεου).
14
And the armies
[which were]
in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
15
And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and
he shall rule them
( αὐτὸς ποιμανεῖ αὐτοὺς)
with a rod of iron:
( ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ);
and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
16
And he hath on
his
vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.
Откр 17, 14.
Откр 19, 12.
17
And I saw an angel standing in the sun;
and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
Иер 12, 9.
Иез 39, 17.
18
That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all
men, both
free and bond, both small and great.
19
And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
20
And
the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet
that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image.
These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Rev 20:10.
21
And
the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which
sword
proceeded out of his mouth:
and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.
This battle ends “the midst of the week”
(Rev 19:11).
Here, some descent of Heaven is coming, because the angels of heaven follow the shepherd. A terrible defeat is inflicted on beasts and militant beast-worshipers. After this comes a vision of an angel coming down from heaven, who bounds the dragon, the Devil. The first resurrection of all Christians who did not bow to the beast takes place. They came to life and co-enthroned themselves with Christ. There comes a period that the apostles called the “Sabbath-Day for the People of God” “σαββατισμὸς τῷ λαῷ τοῦ θεοῦ”
(Heb 4:9).
St. Irenaeus of Lyons and his unanimous early fathers called it the
“sanctified seventh day”.
Apocalypse denotes this period as a “thousand years”, i.e. the day before the Lord, the day of God's creative influence on the surrounding non-being.
There is the eternally real existence of God, and around — only nothing. When the Lord creates, out of this nothingness He creates the world. The creative action of God is creation out of nothing. This symbol (1000 years = a day before the Lord)
indicates that Christianity is suffering a terrible destruction, that the Church has to be recreated as if from nothing. A terrible crisis, but behind this crisis are the greatest victories, the greatest triumph.
Unbelief in the coming «Sabbath Day» and «First Resurrection»
The victory of the
"beast 666"
over the
entire
people of God — a circumstance, as a rule, not noticed by exegetes — is possible only through the invasion and deep defeat of the religious consciousness. With the appropriate permission of God, such an impact is feasible only for “spirits of evil in high places”, but not for “flesh and blood”
(Eph 6:12).
“Beasts” are the seed of the ancient serpent,
and the seed (Heb.
זֶרַע “zera`”)
in the language of the Biblical writers has a double meaning: that with which our consciousness is inseminated, and that which is born as a result of this insemination with the consent and participation of our freedom.
In the people of God, the power of darkness of the “Sixth Day” that conquered them is implanting a paracentric ecclesiology and defeatist eschatology, disbelief in the coming “Sabbath day” and “first resurrection”.
Hegumen Varsonofy (Khaibulin)
Опознание времени
Газета «Православная Кубань»
№1 (36)
март 2010 — №4 (38)
ноябрь-декабрь 2010
So, the promised “millennium” is that fullness of time which St. Apostle Paul predicted as “the Sabbath day of the People of God”
(Евр.4:8-9).
“The consecrated seventh day, tranquility”
are synonyms for the “thousand-year” Sabbath of those Christians who, at the end of the “half-week of times”, come to life in the “first resurrection”
in the conditions of complete paralysis of the seductive energy of the devil, the seven-headed and ten-horned dragon
(Rev 20:2-3),
and forever reign with the ever-reigning Christ. The promise of the “millennium” establishes time limits not for the Kingdom of Christ and not for the co-reign of the participants in the “first resurrection” with Him, but for the reign of the ancient serpent that deceives the entire universe
(Rev 12:9).
Subjected to five “measures of restraint” (“taken”, “bound”, “thrown into the abyss”, “imprisoned”, “sealed”), he cannot deceive the nations, “until the thousand years are over”
(Rev 20:2-3).
In the promised “millennium”
the “first resurrection” of God's Israel will take place
So, in the promised “millennium” the “first resurrection” of God's Israel, first of the New Testament, then of the Old, will take place, which the Apostle of tongues predicted with the words “life from the dead”
(Rom 11:15).
The essence of the “first resurrection” is the rebellion from “extreme exhaustion” and “general mortification” of the end of the “half week of times” to the charismatic abundance of the first days of Pentecost,
which in subsequent times will not be scarce and the immediate result of which will be the conversion of the Jewish people to Christ. Both Israel will be reunited into one People of the Saints of the Most High, eternally co-reigning with the Heavenly Man and Bridegroom of the Church.
The spiritual core of this eschatology is the faith of the prophets, apostles and most glorious martyrs and teachers of early Christianity on the (“thousand-year”)
«the hallowed seventh day»,
“Sabbath day of the people of God”, in which he will come to life in the “first resurrection”,
healed from the mortal wounds of hard times
"half a week of times."
Now we have to understand why our official theological school is still dominated by a completely different eschatology, which Professor-Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev rightly calls “one of the darkest”, because it instills in the church people “the conviction of the inevitability of the historical defeat of Christianity”, eschatology, in which perspective is
not the “first resurrection”, not the “Kingdom-Sabbath of the people of God”,
but the “universal dominion of the Antichrist”?
Two mutually exclusive interpretations of the promised time
It remained unresolved even in patristics. The patristic tradition conveys to us two mutually exclusive interpretations of the promised time.
The first is found in the writings of St. Irenaeus of Lyon and four of his associates: Sts. Papias of Hierapolis, Justin the Philosopher, Hippolytus of Rome and Methodius of Patara. These saints found a parallel to Daniel's promise in the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian, where this time is indicated by the symbol “a thousand years”
(Rev 20:2-6).
Just as in the book of the prophet Daniel, the promised “millennium”, according to Revelation, will come at the end of the “half-week of times”. This hard time is depicted in the Apocalypse in even darker colors than in the book of the prophet Daniel. The Apocalypse also predicts the defeat of the “saints”, i.e. of
all the people of God
from the “seed of the ancient serpent”, which is contemplated by the Seer John in the form of the first beast of
chapter 13 (v. 7),
bearing the numerical name 666
(v. 18).
(In Daniel's visions, the victor and oppressor of the “saints” is the “little horn of the fourth beast”
(Dan 7:8,21,25)).
Those of the Christians defeated by the beast 666, who retain enough spiritual strength not to fall into “beast-worship”, are killed by “beheading”
(Rev 20:4)
the deadly energy of the speaking image of the conqueror
(Rev 13:15).
In the promised “millennium” the slain come to life in the “first resurrection” and reign with Christ.
It is difficult for those who read our synodal translation of the Apocalypse to notice this parallel between the book of the prophet Daniel and the Apocalypse of John, if only because this Russian text predicts the “thousand-year”, i.e. temporary, co-reign with Christ of the participants in the “first resurrection”
(Rev 20:4).
Thank God, the Church Slavonic translation helps to reconcile this prophecy with the promise of Daniel and understand the logic of the early Christian saints. The “millennium” is the time of the beginning of the co-reign, and not the co-reign of Christ, who came to life in the “first resurrection.”
Rev 20:4
should be translated: “they came to life and begin to co-reign with Christ a thousand years.”
Rev 20:6:
“… and they shall со-access with Him a thousand years” (See
Prot. S. Bulgakov,
"Apocalypse of John"). The “first resurrection”, according to the early Christian saints, will take place at the Second Coming of Christ.
...
So, according to the teachings of the early Christian saints, the apocalyptic “millennium” is “the consecrated seventh day, rest”, the Sabbath time of those Christians who, at the end of the “half-week of times”, come to life in the “first resurrection” and,
under conditions of complete paralysis of the seductive energy of the devil, forever reign with the ever-reigning Christ
(Rev 20:2-4).
And apparently, the “millennium” predicted in the Apocalypse, all the Apostles, together with St. Paul was expected and foretold as “the Sabbath day of the people of God”
(Heb 4:8-9).
...
St. Irenaeus and his like-minded people (according to the testimony of St. Justin the Philosopher,
"sane Christians throughout the world")
saw that what the prophet Daniel predicts as the acceptance by the people of God of the kingdom, unlimited in time and the expanse, the Seer John contemplates how the reign with Christ of those who have come to life in the “first resurrection.” This union with the Lord is predicted by the Apostle Paul, using the verb συμβασιλεύσομεν (Greek)
— “Let us reign together”
(2 Tim 2:12).
...
What does the “revival” of God's people in the promised “first resurrection” mean
(Rev 20:4-5)?
What happens at the turn between the “half week of times” and the “thousand-year Sabbath”: the coming of the Ancient of Days
(Dan 7:22)
or the Second Coming of Jesus Christ “to judge the living and the dead”?
Can these Comings be identified?
Why didn’t the early Christian Fathers notice that at the end of the “thousand-year Sabbath” the very last days of the “present evil age” will come, which in the book of Daniel are predicted by the Aramaic
idon
(Dan 7:12),
and in the Apocalypse of John as a “little time” of the last uprising of hell on the Church, revived in the “first resurrection”, the time of the movement of Gog and Magog
(Rev 20:3,7)?
There is no satisfactory answer to these questions in the writings of early Christian saints.
See also
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