The Bible teaches such a resurrection of the righteous prior to that of the wicked. Thus the Psalmist says of them: "Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them, and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning." But of himself he says: "But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave," Psa. 49:14, 15. Of the wicked Isaiah testifies: "They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise," _i.e._ with the righteous; but to Zion he says: "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out her dead," Isa. 26:14, 19. To the same import is the prophecy of Daniel, respecting the time when Michael shall stand up, and "thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some, [the awakened, shall be] to everlasting life, and some, [the unawakened, shall be] to shame and everlasting contempt," Dan. 12:1, 2. Such, according to Prof. Bush, is the precise rendering of the original.
The New Testament also teaches a resurrection of the just, in distinction from that of the wicked. Paul says, while all are to be made alive, that it will be "every man in his own order," or band--"Christ the first fruits; afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming," 1 Cor. 15:23. None others are spoken of as being raised at that epoch. When the Lord descends from heaven with a shout, at the trump of God, not the entire mass of the dead, but "the dead in Christ shall rise first," before the righteous living are changed, 1 Thess. 4:16. In accordance with this priority in the resurrection of the righteous, Paul teaches that the worthies who died in faith "accepted not deliverance, that they might obtain _a better_ resurrection," (Heb. 11:13); and himself, he says, counted all things loss for Christ, "if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead," (Phil. 3:11); which is "the resurrection from among the dead"--it being a resurrection to which some will not attain. Thus also the Saviour taught: while "they that have done good shall come forth _at_ [as it is literally] the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil at the resurrection of damnation" (John 5:29), the two are not co-etaneous; for the righteous shall be "recompensed at the resurrection _of the just_," Lu. 14:14. That must be the resurrection of which those are the subjects who receive the kingdom; for "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," 1 Cor. 15:50. While "the children of this world marry and are given in marriage," "they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection _from_ the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection," Lu. 20:34-36.