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New Defender's Study Bible Notes

20:5 lived not again. This phrase clearly indicates bodily resurrection after bodily death. The unsaved dead obviously will not live again spiritually, for they are in hades and will ultimately be in the lake of fire. In fact, the term “resurrection” itself occurs over forty times in the New Testament, and always refers to the resurrection of the body.


20:5 finished. Jesus had referred to “the resurrection of life” and “the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28-29), and so had Daniel (Daniel 12:2) but here it is revealed for the first time that the first resurrection will be completed a thousand years before the second. The word “is” does not appear in the Greek. The sense probably is that “this completes the first resurrection (note I Corinthians 15:22,23; Matthew 27:52-53; Revelation 11:11).


20:6 second death. The second death must be a bodily death, imposed after the second resurrection on all those who still are spiritually dead in their sins and trespasses (note Ephesians 2:1; Revelation 20:13-14).


20:6 priests of God. The resurrected saints will be both kings and priests (Revelation 1:6), exercising both judicial rule (I Corinthians 6:2) and religious ministries in relation to the growing human populations on earth. They may be ministering to those who had died or been raptured while still “babes in Christ,” either infants physically or spiritually. These somehow must be brought to full maturity in Christ, both physically and spiritually, and the already-matured saints could conceivably be participants in their further growth.


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