Introduction
This is Part 4 in our ongoing series examining the New Testament’s de-creation and resurrection language against both Kenneth Gentry’s partial preterism and Tim Martin’s Covenant Creationism. In Part 1 we established that the “heavens and earth” created at Sinai (Isaiah 51:15–16; Deuteronomy 32:6) and destined to pass away in AD 70 are the consistent referent of the “heavens and earth” language in Psalm 102, Hebrews 1 and 12, and Revelation 21. In Part 2 we demonstrated that the “heavens and earth” of 2 Peter 3 refer to that same old-covenant Mosaic order judged in AD 70, not the physical cosmos of Genesis 1. We showed that Gentry’s attempt to split the passage into two fulfillments collapses under the grammar, the Old Testament background, and the consistent testimony of Scripture, and that Martin’s insistence on reading Genesis 1–3 as the inauguration of a non-physical old-covenant world cannot be sustained. In Part 3 we answered Martin’s use of Matthew 23:35 (the blood of Abel) and showed that neither that text, nor Hebrews 11, nor 1 Corinthians 15:39–41 requires treating Genesis 1–3 as a non-physical “covenant creation.”
The present study turns to the whole of 1 Corinthians 15 and continues the same line of argument. Futurist interpretations of this chapter, especially those advanced by Kenneth Gentry in his ongoing critique of full preterism, rest on a series of foundational errors. They assume the resurrection-of-the-dead deniers at Corinth denied the very possibility of resurrection, including Christ’s. They force every occurrence of “body,” “death,” “sown,” and “raised” into a biological-casket framework. They ignore Paul’s present-tense verbs, his seed analogy of concurrent burial and death, his identification of “the death” with Adamic/Mosaic condemnation, and his explicit Old Testament echoes. The result is contradiction, special pleading, and a reading that turns the Corinthian “saints” into logical madmen.
Gentry repeatedly argues that full preterism is a form of neo-Gnosticism that denies a future physical resurrection. He insists that the “spiritual body” means a physical body governed by the Spirit (his frequent “Coca-Cola bottle” analogy), that the first-fruits logic requires our resurrection to be of the same physical kind as Christ’s, that continuity language (“this perishable must put on…”) demands the same individual body, and that “flesh and blood” merely describes the mortal condition of a still-physical body.[1] These arguments will be answered directly in the course of the exposition, with particular attention to his use of the Adam–Christ contrast.
A secondary but related error appears in Covenant Creationism (Tim Martin and associates). Its advocates claim that any consistent cosmic-covenantal (Covenant Body) reading of the chapter requires a formal covenant with Adam in the Garden. Without such a covenant, they argue, the Adam–Christ parallel collapses and Genesis 1–3 must itself be rewritten as the creation of the Old Covenant world. They further claim that when Paul draws on Genesis language in verses 35–49 he is treating Genesis 1–2 as a non-physical, spiritual covenant creation rather than the historical, physical creation—and that Adam was not literally formed from the dust of the ground nor the first historical man. They also press Matthew 23:35 (the blood of Abel) as proof that the covenantal world under judgment began with Abel and therefore with Genesis 1–3. Both claims were already shown to be unfounded in Part 3 and will be further refuted in the exposition of the Adam–Christ contrast and the illustrations of 15:39–41.
Before examining chapter 15 itself, it is essential to see how Paul has already prepared the ground earlier in the letter and in his other epistles. The coming of Christ and “the end” that the Corinthians were “eagerly awaiting” in 1:5–8 is the same coming and end that appear in chapter 15. The spiritual gifts were given to confirm the church until that eschatological arrival. That arrival is “that which is perfect” of 13:8–12, at which the partial gifts would cease. In 7:29–31 Paul declares that the appointed time has been shortened and the form of this world is passing away—language that points to the old-covenant world in their own generation. In 10:11 he states that the ends of the ages have come upon the Corinthians. In chapter 12 Paul has already introduced the corporate body concept at length: the church is one body with many members, and that body is Christ’s (1 Cor. 12:12–27). These texts form a consistent eschatological and corporate framework that reaches its climax in the resurrection discussion of chapter 15. The same “eager expectation” appears in Philippians 3:20–21, where the believers were awaiting the Savior who would transform the “body of our humiliation” (the vile body of the old-covenant order) into conformity with His glorious body. Gentry claims the miraculous gifts have ceased, yet he offers no coherent exegetical argument from these passages against continuationists; the full-preterist reading supplies one: the gifts were temporary confirmatory signs that lasted only until the AD 70 coming of Christ and the end of the old-covenant age.
What follows is an exposition of the cosmic-covenantal body view of 1 Corinthians 15, set within the larger eschatology of the letter and Paul’s broader corpus. The resurrection Paul describes is the progressive, spiritual, corporate raising of the Adamic/Mosaic body of Sin and Death into the spiritual body of Christ, consummated when the Old Covenant order passed away in AD 70. Remarkably, Gentry himself has conceded a spiritual, corporate resurrection in Daniel 12:1–2 that occurred in AD 70 during the Great Tribulation. James Jordan goes further, affirming that this included the raising of the righteous dead out of Hades/Abraham’s bosom into God’s presence. These admissions describe precisely the kind of resurrection Paul unfolds in this chapter. As in our treatment of 2 Peter 3 (Part 2) and the Abel argument (Part 3), we will show that Gentry’s partial-preterist splitting of the text and Martin’s Covenant Creation reading of Genesis cannot survive the grammar, the context, or the consistent testimony of Scripture.
The Eschatological Framework of 1 Corinthians Leading to Chapter 15 (and Parallel Language in 2 Corinthians and Philippians)
In 1 Corinthians 1:5–8 Paul thanks God that the Corinthians were enriched in everything, in all speech and all knowledge, “so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The spiritual gifts were confirmatory signs given to sustain the church until the revelation (ἀποκάλυψις) of Christ and “the end.” The Corinthians were “eagerly awaiting” this event because that is exactly what Jesus had taught would occur within their generation (Matt. 10:23; 16:27–28; 24:34). The same “coming” and “end” reappear in chapter 15 as the Parousia at which the dead are raised and the living are changed (15:23–24, 51–52). This is the same coming of the Son of Man and the end of the age already prophesied in Daniel 7, which would take place during the days of the fourth (Roman) empire, when the kingdom would be given to the saints of the Most High (Dan. 7:13–14, 18, 22, 27). Jesus and Paul are not inventing a new timeline; they are announcing the imminent fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy within the generation that was living under Roman rule.
This same horizon governs 1 Corinthians 13:8–12. Prophecies, tongues, and knowledge will cease or pass away “when the perfect comes.” “The perfect” is not the completion of the New Testament canon; it is the eschatological arrival of the full revelation of Christ and the mature state of the new-covenant order—the same “end” and “day of the Lord” already mentioned in 1:8. See my book on 1 Corinthians 13 and how and we the miraculous gifts ended in AD 7- here. Until that arrival the church saw “in a mirror dimly”; afterward, “face to face.” Gentry and other cessationists assert that the gifts have ceased, yet they supply no persuasive exegetical link from these verses to a first-century cessation short of the full preterist understanding that the gifts lasted only until the AD 70 coming of Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 7:29–31 Paul writes, “the time has been shortened… the form of this world is passing away.” The “appointed time” (καιρός) was short because the old-covenant world-order was already in the process of dissolution within that generation. This is the same appointed time of judgment and consummation spoken of in Deuteronomy 32:35 LXX (“in the day of vengeance I will recompense”) and in the time prophecies of Daniel 9:24–27 LXX and Daniel 12 LXX, where the end of the seventy weeks, the shattering of the power of the holy people, and the resurrection occur within a tightly bounded prophetic period that reached its climax in the first century. See my book on Daniel’s seventy weeks here. The same language of a world “passing away” reappears in the resurrection chapter when the mortal, perishable body is changed (15:50–54).
Likewise, in 1 Corinthians 10:11 Paul tells the Corinthians that the things that happened to Israel “were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” The goal and climax of the previous ages had arrived in their own lifetime. This “end of the ages” is identical to “the end” of 15:24 and the consummation of the mystery in 15:51.
In chapter 12 Paul develops the corporate body motif at length. “For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ… Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:12, 27). This corporate understanding of the “body” prepares the way for the resurrection discussion in chapter 15, where the natural body (Adamic) is raised as the spiritual body (Christ’s).
The same eschatological framework and corporate-body language appear in Paul’s other letters written in the same transitional period. In 2 Corinthians 5:1–4 Paul speaks of the earthly tent/house being dissolved and of believers longing to be “clothed” with their habitation from heaven, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. This is precisely the language of 1 Corinthians 15:53–54 (“this perishable must put on the imperishable… Death is swallowed up in victory”). The “building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” is the new-covenant body of Christ into which the saints were being transferred as the old-covenant tent was being taken down. This heavenly house is further illuminated by the vision of Revelation 21–22. The New Jerusalem, the bride adorned for her husband, comes down out of heaven as the completed Most Holy Place dwelling of God with His people (Rev. 21:2–3, 9–10, 16, 22). The glory of that descending city further clothes the church so that the corporate body is fully “swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:4) and God dwells with His people forever (Rev. 21:3; 22:3–5). Paul’s longing in 2 Corinthians 5 is therefore the same reality John sees fulfilled when the New Jerusalem descends and God tabernacles permanently with His people—the final clothing of the corporate body at the AD 70 consummation.
In Philippians 3:7–21 Paul counts all his former advantages under the old covenant as “dung” (σκύβαλα) in order to gain Christ and be found in Him. He presses on toward the goal, and then declares: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory…” (Phil. 3:20–21). The “eager waiting” (ἀπεκδέχομαι) is the same verb and the same imminent expectation found in 1 Corinthians 1:7. The “body of our humiliation” (or “vile body”) is not the biological body of individual believers considered in isolation; it is the corporate body of humiliation under the old-covenant order of Sin and Death—the same natural body that is being sown and raised in 1 Corinthians 15. That body of the old world was about to be conformed to the glorious body of Christ at the Parousia. The “dung” of the old-covenant world was being discarded as the saints were clothed with the righteousness and life of the last Adam.
This eager expectation of the resurrection-transformation in Philippians 3:20–21 is explicitly tied to the nearness of the Lord’s coming in the same letter. In Philippians 4:5 Paul writes, “The Lord is near.” The nearness of the second coming is the ground of their joyful expectation of the very transformation described in 3:20–21. Moreover, Paul had already identified the Philippians (and the entire apostolic generation) as living in the “perverse generation” of Moses’ last-days prophecy: “that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15; cf. Deut. 32:5, 20). Paul deliberately echoes Moses’ description of the last-days “perverse generation” (Deut. 32:5, 20) because that generation’s judgment was the appointed time for the very “near” coming of the Lord and transformation he describes in 3:20–21; 4:5 (cf. Deut. 32:35 – 43 LXX). The Song of Moses had foretold that in Israel’s latter days a perverse generation would arise, fill up its sins, and face the appointed judgment. Paul and the Philippians were living in that very generation; therefore the Lord’s coming, the transformation of the body of humiliation, and the resurrection were “near”—fulfilled in AD 70. See my book on the Song of Moses–Deuteronomy 32 here.
Internal Connections within 1 Corinthians – The Eschatological Trajectory to Chapter 15
| Passage | Key Phrase / Concept | Connection to 1 Corinthians 15 |
| 1:5–8 | Gifts given; eagerly awaiting the revelation of Christ; confirmed to “the end”; day of the Lord Jesus | Same coming & “end” at which the dead are raised and the living changed (15:23–24, 51–52); gifts sustain until that event |
| 7:29–31 | “The time (καιρός) has been shortened”; “the form of this world is passing away” | Same appointed time; the mortal/perishable body & old-covenant world pass away at the change (15:50–54) |
| 10:11 | “The ends of the ages have come upon us” | Identical to “the end” (15:24) and the consummation of the mystery (15:51) |
| 12:12–27 | One body, many members; “you are Christ’s body” | Corporate body concept foundational for the natural body → spiritual body transformation (15:35–49) |
| 13:8–12 | Gifts cease “when the perfect comes”; now we see in a mirror dimly, then face to face | “The perfect” = the same end/Parousia of chapter 15; full knowledge arrives with the resurrection change |
Jesus, Paul, and the Old Testament Background – Coming, Appointed Time, and End
| Theme | Jesus | Paul (1 Corinthians & Parallels) | Old Testament Background |
| Coming of the Son of Man / Lord | Matt. 10:23; 16:27–28; 24:30–34 (this generation) | 1:7–8 (revelation of Christ); 15:23 (at His coming); Phil. 3:20 (eagerly wait for a Savior); Phil. 4:5 (“the Lord is near”) | Dan. 7:13–14, 18, 22, 27 (Son of Man; kingdom to the saints during Roman Empire) |
| The End / End of the Age | Matt. 13:39–43; 24:3, 14, 34 | 1:8 (“to the end”); 10:11 (ends of the ages); 15:24 (“then comes the end”) | Dan. 12:4, 9, 13 (“time of the end”); Dan. 9:24–27 (end of the seventy weeks) |
| Appointed Time (καιρός) | Matt. 8:29; Luke 21:8, 24 | 7:29 (“the time has been shortened”) | Deut. 32:35 LXX (day of vengeance); Dan. 9:24–27 LXX; Dan. 12 LXX (appointed time of the end, resurrection, shattering of the holy people) |
| Passing of the Present World / Form / Body | Matt. 24:35 (heaven & earth pass); Luke 21:32–33 | 7:31 (“form of this world is passing away”); 15:50–54 (perishable must put on imperishable); 2 Cor. 5:1–4 (earthly tent dissolved; clothed with heavenly house); Phil. 3:21 (body of humiliation transformed) | Deut. 32 (judgment on the covenant people; perverse generation – Phil. 2:15); Dan. 7 & 12 (end of the fourth empire & holy people’s power) |
The Clothing / House / New Jerusalem Motif
| Text | Image / Reality | Connection to 1 Cor. 15 Resurrection Change |
| 2 Cor. 5:1–4 | Earthly tent dissolved; clothed with house from heaven; mortal swallowed up by life | The perishable puts on the imperishable; death swallowed up (15:53–54) |
| Phil. 3:20–21 | Body of humiliation transformed into conformity with Christ’s glorious body | The natural body raised as spiritual body (15:42–49) |
| Rev. 21:2–3, 9–10, 16, 22; 22:3–5 | New Jerusalem descends as completed Most Holy Place; God dwells with His people; no more curse | Final clothing of the corporate body; God tabernacles forever with the raised and changed church |
| Heb. 1:10–12; 8:13; 11:39–40; 12:22–24 | Old garment/house folded up; spirits of the righteous made perfect; heavenly Jerusalem | Old-covenant order removed; Hadean and living saints perfected together in the one body of Christ |
These passages form a single eschatological and corporate trajectory that reaches its detailed exposition in chapter 15. The coming of Christ, the end, the passing of the present form of the world, the arrival of the perfect, the one body of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead are not events postponed for thousands of years; they were the imminent hope of the first-century church, rooted in the time prophecies of Daniel 7, 9, and 12 and the Song of Moses.
1 Corinthians 15:1–11 – The Common Gospel
Paul begins by reminding the Corinthians of the gospel he preached, which they received, in which they stand, and by which they are being saved (vv. 1–2). The content of that gospel is the death of Christ for our sins according to the Scriptures, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day according to the Scriptures, followed by appearances to Cephas, the Twelve, more than five hundred brethren at once, James, all the apostles, and finally to Paul himself (vv. 3–8).Paul stresses that he is the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle because he persecuted the church, yet by the grace of God he is what he is (vv. 9–10). Whether it was Paul or the other apostles, “so we preach and so you believed” (v. 11). The resurrection of Christ and the apostolic gospel are common ground. Paul will use that common ground to overthrow the error that follows.
1 Corinthians 15:12–19 – The Modus Tollens Argument and the Real Error
“Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (v. 12).
Paul’s form of argumentation here is classic modus tollens (denying the consequent) or reductio ad absurdum. In formal logic, modus tollens takes the structure:
If P, then Q.
Not Q.
Therefore, not P.
Paul applies it as follows:
If P – If there is no resurrection of the dead ones…
Then Q – then not even Christ has been raised; our preaching is useless; your faith is useless; we are false witnesses of God; those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished; you are still in their sins; Christians are of all men most to be pitied (vv. 13–19).
But not Q – Christ has been raised (vv. 1–11, 20 – the common ground the deniers already accepted).
Therefore, not P – Therefore the premise that there is no resurrection of the dead is false.
Paul is not trying to prove the bare possibility of resurrection to people who denied it entirely. He is using premises the deniers already affirmed (Christ’s resurrection, the hope of those “in Christ,” the faithfulness of the apostles, and their own standing in the gospel) to show the absurdity of excluding the pre-Christian dead. They did not deny the doctrine of resurrection in general; they denied the all-ness of the resurrection—the participation of the pre-Christian (Adamic/Hadean) saints in the one body of Christ. Their error was a premature replacement theology that excluded the great cloud of witnesses from the “better resurrection” (Heb. 11:35–40).
Syllogism 1 (Expanded): Paul’s Modus Tollens
Premise 1: If there is no resurrection of the (pre-Christian) dead, then Christ has not been raised.
Premise 2: But Christ has been raised (affirmed by both Paul and the deniers).
Conclusion: Therefore, there is a resurrection of the (pre-Christian) dead.
This exclusivism had something in common with certain Jewish errors of the period. Some Jewish traditions held that resurrection was tied to burial in the land of Israel; those who died and were buried outside the land were thought to have no share in the resurrection, or at best would have to roll through underground tunnels to reach the Holy Land before rising. In a parallel way, the deniers at Corinth taught that only those who died “in Christ” under the inaugurated new-covenant age could participate in the resurrection body. If one had not lived and died under the new-covenant administration, one was excluded. Both errors restricted the scope of the resurrection on the basis of location or covenantal timing rather than the universal reach of God’s redemptive purpose in the one body of Christ. The same kind of exclusivism appears in Romans 11, where Gentile arrogance against the natural branches is corrected by the olive-tree illustration.
A related Covenant Creation claim that the blood of Abel in Matthew 23:35 proves the old-covenant world began with Abel (and therefore with Genesis 1–3) is a non-sequitur. Jesus is speaking of corporate and representative guilt—the generation that rejected Him was filling up the long measure of their fathers’ sins by completing the ancient pattern of murdering the righteous that began with Abel. That does not mean the old-covenant “heavens and earth” (the covenantal order judged and removed in AD 70) began with Abel or in Genesis 1–3. The fact that blood-guilt reaches back to Abel does not determine the starting point of the old-covenant world itself.
Futurism, including Gentry’s, has no coherent explanation for how men who denied the very possibility of resurrection could simultaneously affirm Christ’s resurrection and the eschatological hope of those who had fallen asleep in Christ. The text itself supplies the rational solution: the deniers accepted resurrection for those “in Christ” on their side of the cross but could not see how the pre-Christian dead could share in it.
1 Corinthians 15:20–28 – First-Fruits, the End, and the Present Destruction of “the Death”
“But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep” (v. 20).
Syllogism 2: First-Fruits and the Nature of the Resurrection
Premise 1: The first-fruits of a harvest are of the same kind as the full harvest.
Premise 2: Christ is the first-fruits of those who are asleep (the corporate body).
Premise 3: Christ rose as the first to overcome Adamic spiritual death and separation (Ps. 22; 2 Cor. 5:21), not merely as the first biological resurrection.
Conclusion: The harvest (the body of Christ) is raised in the same redemptive-historical victory over Adamic death, not necessarily in identical biological composition.
Christ is the first-fruits of the harvest. Gentry leans heavily on this metaphor to insist that our resurrection must be of the same physical kind as Christ’s: the first-fruits of wheat are wheat; therefore the resurrection body must be physical like Christ’s.[2] This assumes what is in dispute—namely, that the “harvest” in view is the individual biological bodies of believers rather than the cosmic-covenantal body of God’s people.
Christ is the Head; the church is His body (already established in chapter 12). The order is Head first, then the body. Crucially, Christ is “the first” not primarily as the first person ever to rise from biological death (others, such as Lazarus, had already been raised biologically). He is the first to have entered fully into the spiritual death and separation from the Father that came through Adam, taking our sin upon Himself (Ps. 22; 2 Cor. 5:21), and therefore the first to rise victoriously from that Adamic spiritual death and alienation. Christ died a certain kind of death—to the sin of Adam and in separation from the Father—so that we do not have to die that kind of death. His physical resurrection was the public sign and vindication that He had overcome the spiritual death and sin of Adam on our behalf, securing that those in Him would never experience final Adamic separation from the Father. His resurrection is therefore the first-fruits of the eschatological resurrection of the body of Christ (the corporate people of God) from the dominion of Sin and Death. It is the first-fruits of victory over Adamic death (alienation and condemnation), not a pledge of biological reanimation of corpses. The “kind” is redemptive-historical: the Head rises from spiritual death, and the Body follows in the same order of existence.
“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, then comes the end…” (vv. 22–24).
Here the Adam–Christ contrast begins in earnest. Paul treats Adam as the historical head through whom death entered the world and Christ as the historical head through whom resurrection life enters. This parallel is federal and typological, not a demand for biological identity of substance in the resurrection body.
“The end” here is the same “end” already announced in 1:8 and anticipated in 10:11. It is the end of the old-covenant age, consistent with Jesus’ teaching that the end of “this age” would come in “this generation” (Matt. 13:39–43; 24:34). It is Daniel’s “time of the end” when the power of the holy people would be shattered (Dan. 12:1–7), the same end that Daniel 7 located within the period of the Roman Empire. The new-covenant age is “without end” (Eph. 3:20–21); the old-covenant age was “about to” end (Eph. 1:21).
Christ must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that is being destroyed is “the death” (vv. 25–26). Note the present passive indicative: “is being destroyed” (Wuest). Futurists cannot explain this. Biological death has not been “being destroyed” for two thousand years. The definite article points to the spiritual Adamic death that entered the day Adam sinned and was magnified through “the law” (vv. 55–56; 2 Cor. 3). That death was already in process of annihilation through the cross and the indwelling Spirit, to be completed at the Parousia in AD 70—the same Parousia the Corinthians were “eagerly awaiting” in 1:7 and the Philippians were “eagerly waiting” for in Philippians 3:20, a coming Paul declared “near” in Philippians 4:5 while living in the perverse generation of Deuteronomy 32 (Phil. 2:15).
Syllogism 3: Present-Tense Progressive Language
Premise 1: Paul uses present passive verbs: “death is being destroyed,” “it is being sown… it is being raised.”
Premise 2: Parallel NT language describes an ongoing process in the apostolic generation (“are being transformed” – 2 Cor. 3:18; “are receiving a kingdom” – Heb. 12:28; “are being dissolved” – 2 Pet. 3:11 LEB; “the form of this world is passing away” – 1 Cor. 7:31; the earthly tent is being dissolved – 2 Cor. 5:1).
Conclusion: The resurrection of the corporate body was a progressive cosmic-covenantal process underway between the cross and AD 70, not a single future biological event.
This present-tense progressive language is not isolated. It fits perfectly with the broader New Testament pattern of an already/not-yet transformation underway in the apostolic generation:
Believers “are being transformed” into the same image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18).
The saints “are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28).
The elements of the old-covenant world “are being dissolved” (2 Pet. 3:11 LEB).
Paul himself had already told the Corinthians that “the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31) and that the earthly tent was being dissolved (2 Cor. 5:1).
The body of humiliation was about to be transformed (Phil. 3:21).
The same present passive and progressive sense appears throughout chapter 15: “God is giving it a body” (v. 38); “it is being raised in glory… in power” (v. 43); “it is being sown a natural body, it is being raised a spiritual body” (v. 44). These verbs describe the corporate body of Christ—the pre-Christian dead, those dead “in Christ,” and the living—still being raised from the Adamic and Mosaic body of death during the transitional period between the cross and AD 70. The resurrection was not a single future biological event; it was a progressive cosmic-covenantal process that reached its consummation when the old-covenant order was finally removed.
Gentry has conceded a spiritual, corporate resurrection in Daniel 12:
“In Daniel 12:1-2 we find a passage that clearly speaks of the great tribulation in AD 70. … But it also seems to speak of the resurrection occurring at that time… Daniel appears to be presenting Israel as a grave site under God’s curse: Israel as a corporate body is in the ‘dust’ (Da 12:2; cp. Ge 3:14, 19).”[3]
James Jordan is still more explicit in The Handwriting on the Wall:
“What Daniel is promised is that after his rest in Abraham’s bosom, he will stand up with all God’s saints and join Michael on a throne in heaven, as described in Revelation 20, an event that came after the Great Tribulation and in the year AD 70.”[4]
These concessions describe exactly the progressive, corporate, spiritual resurrection involving the Hadean dead that full preterism sees in 1 Corinthians 15. Once granted, the attempt to postpone a second, physical resurrection of the same event becomes special pleading driven by creedal constraints.
Moreover, Gentry has also conceded that the judgment of the living and the dead in 1 Peter 4:5–7, 17 was fulfilled in the “near” time frame of AD 70. Yet Paul, using the same Greek verb mellō (“about to be”), taught that the very resurrection of Daniel 12:2 was “about to be” fulfilled in his own day:
“having hope toward God, which they themselves also wait for, that there is about to be a rising again of the dead, both of righteous and unrighteous” (Acts 24:15 YLT).
And concerning the judgment of the living and the dead Paul likewise wrote:
“I do fully testify, then, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is about to judge living and dead at his manifestation and his reign” (2 Tim. 4:1 YLT).
If Gentry is correct that Daniel 12:2 was fulfilled in AD 70 and that the judgment of the living and the dead in 1 Peter 4 was likewise fulfilled in the “near” AD 70 time frame, then consistency demands that he honor Paul’s mellō in Acts 24:15 and 2 Timothy 4:1. The resurrection of Daniel 12:2 that was “about to be” is the same resurrection Paul expounds in 1 Corinthians 15, and the judgment of the living and the dead that was “about to” occur is the same judgment associated with that resurrection. Gentry cannot concede the AD 70 fulfillment of Daniel 12 and 1 Peter 4 while refusing the clear imminent language of Acts 24:15 and 2 Timothy 4:1 without special pleading.
This inconsistency becomes even more acute when measured against the creeds. The historic creeds of the Church (Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed) recognize only one judgment of the living and the dead. They do not envision two separate judgments—one spiritual/corporate in AD 70 and another physical at the end of history. Gentry’s partial preterism is forced to posit two judgments of the living and the dead in order to preserve a future physical resurrection and judgment. In doing so he departs from the very creedal orthodoxy he claims to defend. Full preterism, by contrast, affirms the one judgment of the living and the dead that the creeds confess, locating it at the AD 70 Parousia when the old-covenant order ended and the dead were raised into the body of Christ.
Syllogism 6: Gentry’s Concessions and the Single Judgment
Premise 1: Gentry concedes a spiritual/corporate resurrection in Dan. 12:1–2 and a “near” judgment of living and dead in 1 Pet. 4 fulfilled in AD 70.
Premise 2: Paul uses mellō (“about to be”) for the same resurrection (Acts 24:15) and the same judgment (2 Tim. 4:1).
Premise 3: The historic creeds confess only one judgment of the living and the dead.
Conclusion: Consistency requires locating the one resurrection and one judgment of 1 Cor. 15 in AD 70; positing a second future event violates both Paul’s imminent language and the creeds.
1 Corinthians 15:29–34 – Baptism on Behalf of the Dead
“Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?” (v. 29).
The baptism in view is the baptism of suffering and martyrdom (vv. 30–32; cf. Luke 12:50; Matt. 20:20–23; 23:29–36; Heb. 11:39–40). If the pre-Christian dead would not participate in the resurrection, then those undergoing persecution on behalf of the one body that included them were suffering in vain. Paul concludes with a sharp rebuke: “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good morals.’ Become sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame” (vv. 33–34).
1 Corinthians 15:35–50 – The Nature of the Body, the Adam–Christ Contrast, Literal Genesis Illustrations, and Direct Response to Gentry and Martin
“But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?’” (v. 35).
This question reveals the precise nature of the error. The deniers could not conceive how the pre-Christian dead—those who had lived and died “in Adam,” outside of Christ—could have a body with which to rise. These were the Hadean / Adamic saints (the great majority of whom belonged to the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenant communities), the very ones the writer to the Hebrews says must be made perfect together with the new-covenant believers (Heb. 11:39–40). Hebrews 11 opens with Abel as a real historical man of faith whose blood still speaks, and continues through a long line of actual people living in successive historical periods. The Old Testament saints were not perfected in isolation; their full entrance into the promised inheritance waited for the new-covenant consummation, and the living New Testament saints could not be perfected apart from them. The one people of God spans the ages and includes Abel onward.
In their minds the eschatological church was already the spiritual body that had been sown with Christ and would be raised the same spiritual body, completely disconnected from the Adamic order. They thought the body of Christ essentially appeared out of nowhere, as it were, absolutely separate from the world that preceded it. They thought the eschatological church was buried the spiritual body and that it was going to be raised the same spiritual body on the Last Day.
The reality, however, was that the eschatological church was itself still in the mortal, corruptible, dishonorable, weak, and natural “body” of the pre-Christ saints. It was still bearing “the image of the earthy” (1 Cor. 15:49), not in a biological sense, but in a cosmic-covenantal sense. God’s old-covenant ministration of Death and Condemnation still stood, and God’s church was still an organic part of that world-order. It was therefore still in the body of Sin and Death, and was putting that body to death through the Spirit.
Expanded Paraphrase of the Deniers’ Objection (v. 35)
“We, the eschatological church, are the blood-bought body that has been sown (planted, buried) with Christ through the Holy Spirit in order that we might be raised with Him to inherit the kingdom of God. The saints of old lived and died before Christ arrived. They have not been sown (planted/buried) with Him, as we have. There is no resurrection outside of Christ’s body, and we are His body. Therefore, the dead have no part in the resurrection body. How then are the dead being raised with us? If your doctrine is true, Paul, then answer this question: With what body are the dead being raised?”
Paul’s Answer (vv. 36–38 and following)
“The dead are being raised through the burial and death of the body of Sin, of which we are still a part (since the old-covenant world has not yet vanished). The dead, therefore, are being raised through our (the last-days, first-fruit church’s) dying to Sin (the burial and death of the Adamic ‘body’ with Christ) on their behalf, and they will therefore be ‘changed’ with us into the resurrected, spiritual body of Christ in the new-covenant world.
“Look at your own experience for confirmation of this truth. When you yourselves are planting a seed (as God has planted us with Christ) you are not planting the tree that will be. Likewise, God did not plant the ‘spiritual body’ of the age to come in order that the same ‘spiritual body’ will emerge. That is not God’s purpose. The Christological resurrection-body is not what has been sown/buried. It is not we alone who shall be raised. Rather, it is the Adamic ‘natural body’ that has been ‘sown’ with Christ, through the Spirit in us, so that the ‘natural body’ (the dead together with the last-days-of-the-Adamic-ages church—the whole Adamic ‘man’) is now being raised up and ‘changed’/‘transformed’ into the spiritual body of Christ.”
Paul therefore made reference to the universal death and change of seeds, not merely to demonstrate the already-agreed-upon fact of resurrection, but to establish four things the deniers were denying:
The necessity of the death of the pre-resurrection body (v. 36)
The differentness of the pre- and post-resurrection bodies (v. 37)
The necessity of the change of the pre-resurrection body (v. 38a)
The universality of the pre-resurrection body and the post-resurrection body (v. 38b)
After establishing these premises through the common-ground analogy of the “resurrection” of seeds, Paul went on to reference the whole of the material universe (vv. 39–41), because insofar as it is filled with innumerable, different bodies—just like the multitudes of different kinds of seeds and plants—it confirms the universality of the two different bodies.
The universal diversity of the Genesis creation served as an analogy of the cosmos-changing work of the gospel. As the whole Genesis creation is filled with differing bodies (fleshes, glories), so the whole “creation” (the body) of God’s chosen ones in Adam, living and dead, “from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other,” was going to put off the old “body” of Sin and Death (the Adamic, mortal, corruptible, dishonorable, weak, and natural “old man”), and was going to be “clothed” with the wholly other “body of Christ” (the immortal, incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and spiritual new Man; the Christological “new creation”).Paul deliberately draws his illustrations from the ordinary, physical creation that everyone already understands:
A seed is sown and dies, and a plant comes up (vv. 36–38; cf. Gen. 1:11–12, third day).
There are different kinds of flesh—men, animals, birds, fish (v. 39; cf. Gen. 1:20–28, fifth and sixth days).
There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, sun, moon, and stars, each with its own glory (vv. 40–41; cf. Gen. 1:14–16, fourth day).
Paul is not appealing to some specialized “covenant creation” concept of Genesis 1–3. He is appealing to the common-sense, physical realities of the world God made—the very realities described in the opening chapters of Genesis. We all know what a real seed is, how it is sown into the ground, and how a living plant emerges. We all know the difference between the flesh of a man and the flesh of a fish, or between the glory of the sun and the glory of a star. Paul uses these everyday physical facts as analogies for the transformation of the corporate body from the natural (Adamic / old-covenant order of death) into the spiritual (new-covenant life in Christ).If Genesis 1–3 were merely the symbolic charter of a non-physical old-covenant world, Paul’s argument would lose its force. The illustrations only work because the creation language of Genesis refers to the real, physical world everyone experiences. As David Green has observed, Moses, Jesus, and Peter all treat elements of Genesis 1–2 as literal (Exod. 20:8–11; Matt. 19:4–5; 2 Pet. 3:5), and Paul does the same here. Scripture itself treats the elements of Genesis 1 as literal created realities and then, later, employs those same realities as types and metaphors. The two moves are complementary, not contradictory. Covenant Creation collapses the distinction and reads the later metaphorical use back into Genesis itself as its primary meaning. Paul does the opposite: he starts with the literal created order everyone already knows and uses it as an analogy for the resurrection transformation.
“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly” (vv. 42–49).
Here the Adam–Christ contrast reaches its fullest expression and becomes the decisive battleground against both Gentry’s futurism and Martin’s Covenant Creationism.
Syllogism 4: Against Gentry’s Physical Continuity Demand
Premise 1: The first Adam / last Adam parallel is federal and typological (order of existence: natural/soulish vs. spiritual/heavenly).
Premise 2: Present-tense verbs and the seed analogy require the natural body to die and be changed into a different body.
Premise 3: Christ’s physical resurrection is the sign of victory over Adamic spiritual death, not a template for identical biological composition.
Conclusion: The resurrection of the corporate body does not require future physical reanimation of individual corpses.
Refuting Gentry on the Adam–Christ Parallel
Gentry uses the first Adam / last Adam parallel to argue that just as Adam is the source of our perishable physical bodies, Christ is the source of our future Spirit-powered physical bodies. The parallel, he claims, demands continuity of physicality.[5] Paul’s actual point is federal headship and two successive orders of existence. Adam, as historical head, became “a living soul” (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν, quoting Gen 2:7 LXX) and is “from the earth, earthy” (χοϊκός). Those “in Adam” bear that earthy image—the natural, soulish, perishable mode of existence under the dominion of Sin and Death. Christ, as last Adam, became “a life-giving spirit” and is “from heaven.” Those “in Christ” bear that heavenly image—the spiritual, imperishable mode of existence. The contrast is not “physical body versus physical body 2.0,” but “natural/soulish order versus spiritual/heavenly order.” The resurrection is the corporate transfer of God’s people from the one order into the other at the Parousia. Gentry’s reading imports the assumption of individual biological continuity that the text nowhere requires and that the present-tense verbs and seed analogy contradict.
Syllogism 5: Against Martin’s Non-Literal Adam / Covenant Creation
Premise 1: Paul quotes Genesis 2:7 and calls Adam “the first man… from the earth, earthy” (χοϊκός = from dust).
Premise 2: Paul illustrates the resurrection with literal physical elements of Genesis 1 (seeds, fleshes, sun/moon/stars).
Premise 3: The Adamic order of death is distinguished from the later Mosaic Law (Rom. 5:14; Gal. 3:17; Rom. 5:20; Heb. 8).
Conclusion: Genesis 1–2 records the historical, physical creation of the first man; it is not a non-physical “covenant creation” that began the old-covenant world.
Refuting Martin / Covenant Creationism on Adam
Covenant Creationists claim that Genesis 1–2 is not the historical, physical creation of the first man from literal dust but a covenantal or spiritual creation, and that therefore Adam was not literally formed from the ground nor the first historical man. Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 15:45–47 directly refutes this.
Paul quotes Genesis 2:7 (“the first man, Adam, became a living soul”) and then describes that first man as “from the earth, earthy” (ἐκ γῆς χοϊκός). The adjective χοϊκός is derived from χοῦς (“dust, dirt”). Paul treats Adam as the historical first man who was formed from the dust of the ground exactly as Genesis records. The typology of “first man / second man,” “earthy / heavenly,” “living soul / life-giving spirit” only works if the first Adam is the real historical head of the race created from the earth. If Adam is reduced to a non-literal covenantal figure, the entire parallel collapses. Covenant Creationism destroys the type in order to save its system. Paul does the opposite: he preserves the historical Adam of Genesis 2 as the type so that the last Adam can be the greater antitype.
Moreover, the Adamic order of sin and spiritual death is not identical to the Mosaic old covenant. Scripture itself distinguishes them:
Death reigned from Adam to Moses (Rom. 5:14). The reign of death is already in place before the Law is given.
The Law was added 430 years after the Abrahamic promise (Gal. 3:17). It did not create the Adamic order of death; it was introduced into a situation in which death was already reigning.
The Law came in so that the trespass might increase (Rom. 5:20). It diagnosed, exposed, and intensified the problem that originated with Adam; it did not originate the problem.
The “first covenant” language of Hebrews refers specifically to the Mosaic administration given when God took Israel by the hand out of Egypt (Heb. 8:9; 9:1, 15–18).
Covenant Creation collapses these distinctions. It treats the Adamic order of sin and death as essentially the same thing as the old-covenant Law, and therefore concludes that the “old covenant / old creation” began in Genesis 1–3. That is the move we reject. Adam is the historical and corporate head of the order of sin and spiritual death that affects all humanity. That Adamic order of death is broader and earlier than the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic Law was a specific, temporary administration given to Israel within the period of death’s reign. What passed away in AD 70 is that Mosaic old-covenant order. The deeper Adamic problem of sin and death is resolved in Christ, the last Adam, for all who are in Him.
A noteworthy textual variant in verse 49 is the strongly attested aorist subjunctive φορέσωμεν (“let us bear”) rather than the future indicative. This hortatory reading fits the progressive, already/not-yet character of the transformation: the church is exhorted to continue putting off the image of the earthly and putting on the image of the heavenly while the natural body is still being put to death.[6]
Direct Response to Gentry’s Broader Arguments
The “Spiritual Body” and the Coca-Cola Analogy
Gentry argues that “spiritual body” (σῶμα πνευματικόν) does not mean a body composed of spirit any more than a Coca-Cola bottle is made of Coca-Cola. It means a physical body governed or activated by the Spirit.[7]
Even if one grants the adjectival force (“Spirit-governed”), the argument assumes that the “body” in question is an individual biological organism. That is precisely the point in dispute. In the cosmic-covenantal reading, the “body” is the corporate identity of God’s people—either the body of Sin and Death or the body of Christ (already introduced in chapter 12). A corporate body can be “natural” (Adamic, Law-dominated, mortal in the sense of covenantal alienation) or “spiritual” (Christ-dominated, Spirit-filled, immortal in the sense of permanent access to God). The Coca-Cola analogy only works if one has already decided that Paul is talking about individual physical bodies. Paul’s own usage of “body” elsewhere points strongly in the corporate direction.
First-Fruits Continuity
Already addressed above. The first-fruits metaphor is redemptive-historical, not a demand for biological identity of substance. Christ the Head rose first from the spiritual death and separation that Adam brought; the body follows in the same victory. His physical resurrection served as the public sign that the spiritual death of Adam had been overcome on our behalf.
Continuity Language (“this perishable,” “the dead will be raised”)
Gentry emphasizes the demonstrative “this” in verses 53–54 as demanding continuity of the same individual body. In the cosmic-covenantal reading, “this” refers to the same corporate body that is currently being sown and is dying—the Adamic/Mosaic body of which the church was still a part. Continuity is real: the same people of God who were under the dominion of Sin and Death are the people of God who are raised into the body of Christ.
“Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom” (v. 50)
Gentry correctly notes that “flesh and blood” describes the mortal, perishable condition rather than mere physicality.[8] We agree. In the cosmic-covenantal view, that mortal condition is precisely the Adamic body of Sin and Death intensified by the Mosaic Law. It cannot inherit the kingdom; it must be changed into the spiritual body of Christ. This is what occurred when the Old Covenant order passed away.
1 Corinthians 15:51–58 – The Mystery, the Change, and Victory (Including Isaiah 25, Hosea 13, Isaiah 27, Matthew 24, 2 Corinthians 5, Philippians 3–4, and Revelation 21–22)
“Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (vv. 51–52).
The mystery is the simultaneous transformation of the living and the dead into the one spiritual body of Christ. The sounding of the symbolic “last trumpet” took place when the worldly city and sanctuary fell in AD 70 (Rev. 10:7; 11:2, 8; cf. Heb. 9:8). This “last trumpet” is the same trumpet already prophesied in Isaiah 27:12–13:
“In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing stream of the Euphrates to the brook of Egypt, and you will be gathered up one by one, O sons of Israel. It will come about also in that day that a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were perishing in the land of Assyria and who were scattered in the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord in the holy mountain at Jerusalem.”
Isaiah 27 places the great trumpet, the harvest/threshing, and the gathering of the scattered people of God in direct connection with the judgment of the fortified city and the end of Israel’s covenantal rebellion (see the broader context of Isa. 24–27, the “Little Apocalypse,” which includes the judgment on the city and the swallowing up of death in chapter 25). Jesus takes up exactly this imagery in Matthew 24:31: “And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.” The gathering of the elect with the great trumpet occurs immediately after the tribulation of those days and the darkening of the sun and moon—events Jesus explicitly limited to “this generation” (Matt. 24:34) and tied to the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem.
Paul’s “last trumpet” in 1 Corinthians 15:52 is therefore the same trumpet of Isaiah 27 and Matthew 24. It signals the final harvest and gathering of the people of God (the living and the dead) into the one spiritual body of Christ at the moment when Jerusalem was judged and the old-covenant order passed away. The parallels are precise:
Isaiah 27: Great trumpet + threshing/harvest + gathering of the scattered → tied to judgment on the city and the end of the old order.
Matthew 24: Great trumpet + gathering of the elect from the four winds → immediately after the tribulation and the fall of Jerusalem, within “this generation.”
1 Corinthians 15: Last trumpet + the dead raised + the living changed → the consummation of the resurrection harvest at the end of the age.
When that old “house” fell and the Old Covenant “garment” of Hebrews 1:10–12 was folded up and “changed” (cf. Heb. 8:13), the Adamic body of Sin and Death—which the Law had intensified—was put away, the dead were raised, and all the elect were clothed with the body of Christ in the new-covenant world. This is the same “end” and “day of the Lord Jesus Christ” that the confirmatory gifts of 1:5–8 were designed to sustain the church until, and the same “perfect” of 13:10 at which those partial gifts would cease. It is also the same transformation of the “body of our humiliation” for which the Philippians were “eagerly waiting” (Phil. 3:20–21), a waiting grounded in the nearness of the Lord’s coming (Phil. 4:5) while they lived in the perverse generation of Moses (Phil. 2:15; Deut. 32:5, 20). It is likewise the same clothing with the heavenly dwelling for which Paul longed in 2 Corinthians 5:1–4—the very dwelling that descends as the New Jerusalem, the completed Most Holy Place, to tabernacle with God’s people and further clothe the church in glory so that the corporate body is fully “swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:4) and God dwells with His people forever (Rev. 21:2–3, 9–10, 16, 22; 22:3–5).“For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality… then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (vv. 53–56).
Paul here quotes Isaiah 25:8 (“He will swallow up death forever”) and Hosea 13:14 (“O death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting?”). Both texts are decisive against Gentry’s futurism.
Isaiah 25 is not a description of a distant end-of-world-history event. The chapter opens with the judgment and destruction of “the city” (v. 2: “For You have made a city into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin; a palace of strangers is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt”). In the prophetic context this is the judgment upon Jerusalem/Zion under the Mosaic order. Immediately after that judgment, the Lord of hosts prepares “a feast of rich food” for all peoples on His mountain (vv. 6–7), removes the covering/veil that is spread over all nations, and “will swallow up death forever” (v. 8). The swallowing up of death is therefore contemporaneous with the judgment on the city and the inauguration of the eschatological feast.
Hosea 13 is equally covenantal. It describes the death of Israel/Ephraim under the judgment of God for covenant unfaithfulness, and then the promise that God will ransom them from the power of Sheol and destroy death. When Paul cites both Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14 as fulfilled in the change of 1 Corinthians 15, he is identifying the AD 70 destruction of Jerusalem and the passing of the old-covenant order as the moment when Adamic/Mosaic death was finally abolished.
Gentry himself has appealed to Matthew 8:10–12 and Revelation 21 to argue that the wedding of the Lamb occurred in AD 70. Yet the biblical pattern is clear: the wedding precedes the wedding feast. In Isaiah 25 the feast is the climactic celebration that follows the judgment on the city and accompanies the swallowing up of death. When Paul cites Isaiah 25:8 in 1 Corinthians 15:54 as the moment when “Death is swallowed up in victory,” he is identifying the AD 70 destruction of Jerusalem (the “city” of Isa. 25:2) as the time when the Adamic/Mosaic death was finally abolished, the veil removed, and the people of God entered the long-promised wedding feast of the new covenant. Gentry cannot consistently place the wedding in AD 70 (via Matt. 8 and Rev. 21) while postponing the feast and the swallowing up of death (Isa. 25) to a future physical resurrection thousands of years later. The feast comes after the wedding; Isaiah 25 joins the judgment on Jerusalem, the feast, and the swallowing up of death in one redemptive-historical complex fulfilled in AD 70. The descending New Jerusalem of Revelation 21–22 is the architectural and bridal expression of that same feast and clothing: the completed heavenly house of 2 Corinthians 5 comes down as the Most Holy Place to dwell with and further glorify the church.
The same reality is described in 2 Corinthians 5:1–4: the earthly tent is dissolved, and what is mortal is swallowed up by life as the saints are clothed with the dwelling from heaven—the New Jerusalem that descends in glory. In Philippians 3 the “dung” of the old-covenant advantages is discarded, and the body of humiliation is transformed into conformity with Christ’s glorious body—the very change Paul announces in 1 Corinthians 15, expected because the Lord was near (Phil. 4:5) in the last days of the perverse generation (Phil. 2:15; Deut. 32).
Death (condemnation and alienation from God) was deprived of its sting (Sin) when Sin was finally sealed up and done away in the consummation of the Adamic/Mosaic ages. Sin was deprived of its power (the Law of Moses) when the Law-covenant vanished (Heb. 8:13). Paul’s OT echoes—Isaiah 25, Hosea 13, and the trumpet/gathering of Isaiah 27—describe a spiritual, corporate, covenantal resurrection of Israel after covenantal death and scattering, fulfilled when Jerusalem was judged and the elect were gathered into the body of Christ. There is no biological casket resurrection at the end of world history in any of these texts.
“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord” (vv. 57–58).
Conclusion
The eschatological framework of 1 Corinthians is consistent from chapter 1 through chapter 15 and is reinforced by the parallel language of 2 Corinthians 5, Philippians 2–4, and Revelation 21–22. The Corinthians were enriched with every gift while they eagerly awaited the revelation of Christ and the end (1:5–8). That same eager waiting appears in Philippians 3:20, grounded in the nearness of the Lord’s coming (Phil. 4:5) while the church lived in the perverse generation of Moses’ last days (Phil. 2:15; Deut. 32:5, 20). That coming and end are the same events prophesied in Daniel 7 to occur during the Roman Empire. The appointed time of 1 Corinthians 7:29–31 is the same appointed time of Deuteronomy 32:35 LXX and Daniel 9 and 12 LXX. The ends of the ages had come upon them (10:11). The partial gifts would cease when the perfect arrived (13:8–12). Paul had already established the corporate body of Christ in chapter 12. That perfect arrival is the Parousia and resurrection of chapter 15—the moment when the earthly tent was dissolved (2 Cor. 5), the dung of the old covenant was left behind, the body of humiliation was conformed to the body of Christ’s glory (Phil. 3:21), and the New Jerusalem descended as the completed Most Holy Place to clothe the church in final glory (Rev. 21–22).
Futurism, as represented by Gentry, collapses under Paul’s present-tense language, his seed analogy of concurrent burial and death, his identification of “the death” with Adamic/Mosaic condemnation, his explicit resolution of the Corinthian error, and his Old Testament echoes. The present passive “death is being destroyed” and the body “is being sown… is being raised” align perfectly with the New Testament’s broader progressive language: believers “are being transformed,” they “are receiving a kingdom,” the elements of the old-covenant world “are being dissolved” (2 Pet. 3:11 LEB), “the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31), and the earthly tent is being dissolved (2 Cor. 5:1). Gentry’s own concessions on Daniel 12 (spiritual, corporate resurrection in AD 70) and Jordan’s explicit affirmation that this included the raising of the dead out of Abraham’s bosom only heighten the inconsistency of postponing a second, physical resurrection of the same event. His further concession that the judgment of the living and the dead in 1 Peter 4 was fulfilled in the “near” AD 70 time frame collides with Paul’s clear mellō statements in Acts 24:15 and 2 Timothy 4:1 that the resurrection of Daniel 12:2 and the judgment of the living and the dead were “about to” occur. The creeds recognize only one judgment of the living and the dead; Gentry is forced to invent two in order to preserve a future physical event. Full preterism alone honors both the imminent language of the New Testament and the creedal confession of a single judgment.
Gentry’s claim that the miraculous gifts have ceased lacks a coherent exegetical foundation in 1 Corinthians itself; the full-preterist reading supplies the missing link: the gifts confirmed the church only until the AD 70 coming of Christ and the end of the old-covenant age. His use of the Adam–Christ parallel and the first-fruits metaphor to demand a future physical resurrection of individual bodies misunderstands the federal and typological nature of the contrast. Christ the Head was the first to enter fully into Adamic spiritual death and separation (Ps. 22; 2 Cor. 5:21) and the first to rise from it; His physical resurrection was the sign that He had overcome that death on our behalf so that we do not have to die in Adamic sin and separation from the Father. The body follows in the same victory.
Furthermore, Gentry’s appeal to Matthew 8:10–12 and Revelation 21 to locate the wedding in AD 70 cannot be reconciled with a postponed fulfillment of Isaiah 25, Hosea 13, and Isaiah 27. The feast follows the wedding, and Isaiah 25 places the eschatological feast, the removal of the veil, and the swallowing up of death immediately after the judgment that turns “the city” into a heap (Isa. 25:2). Hosea 13 likewise ties the destruction of death to the redemption of Israel from covenantal death. Isaiah 27 joins the great trumpet, the harvest, and the gathering of the elect to the same judgment on the city. Jesus applies that trumpet-and-gathering imagery to the fall of Jerusalem within “this generation” (Matt. 24:31, 34). Paul cites the same complex of texts as the moment when “Death is swallowed up in victory” and the last trumpet sounds (1 Cor. 15:52–55). The AD 70 destruction of Jerusalem is therefore the time when the wedding feast began, the elect were gathered, and death was swallowed up—the same event Paul describes as the change of the corporate body, the clothing with the heavenly dwelling that is the descending New Jerusalem (2 Cor. 5; Rev. 21–22), and the transformation of the body of humiliation (Phil. 3:21).
Covenant Creationism’s demand for a formal Adamic covenant and its non-literal reading of Genesis (denying that Adam was the first historical man formed from the dust, and treating Genesis 1–3 as the inauguration of the old covenant via Abel and Matthew 23:35) are system-driven requirements that destroy the very typology Paul employs. Paul quotes Genesis 2:7 and calls Adam “the first man… from the earth, earthy.” He illustrates the resurrection with the literal physical realities of Genesis 1—seeds, different fleshes, sun, moon, and stars. The historical Adam of Genesis is the necessary type; the last Adam is the greater antitype. The Adamic order of sin and death is broader and earlier than the Mosaic covenant (Rom. 5:14; Gal. 3:17; Rom. 5:20). The natural body of Sin and Death—the Adamic order intensified by the Mosaic Law—was buried and put to death through the Spirit-empowered church on behalf of the Hadean/Adamic saints (including Abel and all the faithful of Hebrews 11), then raised and changed into the spiritual body of Christ when the Old Covenant order passed away in AD 70.
The last Adam has come. The natural body has been put to death and raised as the spiritual body of Christ. The dung of the old covenant has been discarded. The body of humiliation has been conformed to His glorious body. The last trumpet has sounded. The earthly tent has been dissolved; the body of humiliation has been transformed; the New Jerusalem has descended as the final, glorious house of God with man. The new creation is here.
[1] Gentry has an ongoing “End-Time Resurrection” / “Stand Firm in the Resurrection Hope” series on Postmillennial Worldview (2024–2025). The specific “Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God” article was published July 11, 2025. Have We Missed the Second Coming? (Victorious Hope Publishing, 2016/2017) is his dedicated critique of full preterism.
[2] Gentry develops the first-fruits argument in “Paul’s Concern in 1 Corinthians 15” (Postmillennial Worldview, June 2023) and related posts.
[3] Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., He Shall Have Dominion: A Postmillennial Eschatology, 3rd edition (American Vision), discussion of Daniel 12:1–2.
[4] James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (American Vision, 2007), p. 628; see also pp. 618–621.
[5] Gentry’s use of the Adam–Christ parallel for physical continuity appears throughout his 1 Corinthians 15 series on Postmillennial Worldview.
[6] On the textual variant φορέσωμεν / φορέσομεν in 1 Cor. 15:49, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, and the NET Bible notes. The subjunctive has strong early support (𝔓⁴⁶ א A C D etc.).
[7] Gentry’s “Coca-Cola bottle” analogy appears in “1 Cor 15:45 & Christ’s Resurrection” (Postmillennial Worldview, March 2022) and “Paul and Our Bodily Resurrection (Again)” (January 2023).
[8] Gentry, “Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom of God” (Postmillennial Worldview, July 2025).