There are two resurrections: the “first resurrection” when Jesus returns and the “Great White Throne” resurrection a thousand years later. The first is for all believers, both living and dead, and is not a rise to judgement but to rewards for serving the Lord in this life.
However, those who believe can have a spiritual resurrection now! “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you!” This first verse of Isaiah 60 encourages us to “arise” spiritually, rather than allowing the gathering darkness on earth to enclose, as happens to those who refuse to believe that Jesus died to save them from their sins.
We’re now in the End Time and great darkness is beginning to envelop the earth, as we observe day by day; but this is no reason for us to ‘sleep in’ as if nothing is going on around us.
I have a collection of DVDs on the development of the Space Shuttle and love viewing them blast off — especially when a shuttle’s booster rocket falls away, leaving it to power upward into space, free from any downward pull of gravity. (“Would you please turn the sound down?” shouts Lorraine over the roar, as household objects rattle.)
While looking forward to going onward and upward in the first physical resurrection (as distinct from the spiritual one that we now enjoy) we shouldn’t think of it as a mass of believers floating softly upward into the sky, but rather as being pulled upward instantly to meet the Lord in the clouds.
The apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:10 of his desire to know “the power of [Christ’s] resurrection” in his Christian experience, and prays that the church at Ephesus would perceive the transcendent — over and above — power of God as seen in the resurrection and glorification of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus (Ephesians 1:20).
One of my maxims as a young man was “When you wake up, get up!” (These days, I sit up and then roll out.) No problem though with rising in the First Resurrection because we’ll be up and away — “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye”! Gone before we know it and arriving before we realize we’ve left! I’m readying myself to go when the time comes, which, given the signs of the Lord’s coming, might well be any day or any moment — are you?
Do not be left behind — backward and downward!