who, whatever may be the increase of his wrath (comp. chap. xii. 12), has yet been overcome by another far mightier than himself. 2. The second difficulty demanding notice is presented by the words of ver. 5, "The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished." Who are these called "the rest of the dead," and in what sense did they "live"? The term "the rest," applied to persons, occurs in the following passages of the Apocalypse in addition to that before us: chaps. ii. 24, ix. 20, xi. 13, xii. 17, xix. 21. In every one of these cases it refers to the remaining portion of a class mentioned, but not exhausted; and it cannot be extended to any class beyond them. Here, however, no class has been spoken of except _the righteous_, or rather the "souls" of the righteous, described by various particulars both of their character and their state. "The rest" of the dead must therefore belong to that class, and to it alone. They cannot be the general body of mankind, both good and bad, with the exception of those previously mentioned. Again, what is meant when it is said that the rest of the dead "lived"? The same word had occurred in the immediately preceding verse, and it must now be understood in the same sense. "If," says Dean Alford, who has been quoted with great confidence against the present writer (Reynolds, _u.s._, p. 23), "in such a passage the first resurrection may be understood to mean _spiritual_ rising with Christ, while the second means _literal_ rising from the grave, then there is an end of all significance in language; and Scripture is wiped out as a definite testimony to anything. If the first resurrection is spiritual, then so is the second, which I suppose none will be hardy enough to maintain" (on Rev. xx. 4-6). Now that is exactly what is here maintained. The "lived" of ver. 4 is spiritual; the "lived" of ver. 5 is also spiritual. The "rest of the dead" then are the Old Testament saints of chap. vi. 9, who, by the completion of the Lord's redeeming work, were brought up to the level of the New Testament Church (comp. p. 101). The meaning of chap. xx. 5 may thus be said to be that, the New Testament Church having had _first_ bestowed upon it a complete redemption, the same white robes were afterwards given to the Old Testament Church, the succession being again one of thought rather than time. In this way _all_ the members of Christ's body are marked out as having been "dead" before they lived, thus identifying them with their Lord in chap. i. 18; the position of the words at the close of ver. 5, "this is the first resurrection," is rendered more natural by their thus following what is wholly a description of the condition of the blessed, instead of having a sentence interposed of an entirely different character; and, finally, to say nothing of the contextual considerations already referred to, the full Johannine force of the word "lived" is preserved.