Two Passages Against Four Doctrines

Introduction

This study sets two passages side by side: John 5:25-32 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-28. The first is Yahushua speaking in Jerusalem. The second is Paul writing to Corinth years later. Different speakers, different audiences, and yet they answer the same four questions the same way.

Each question below is a teaching heard in most churches today. For each one, Part A lays the two verses next to each other. Part B shows what the pulpit preaches on that teaching, and which of these two verses it leaves out.

Part I — The Split Resurrection

A. The Two Verses Side by Side

John 5 gives one hour. “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice” (John 5:28). Good and evil come out together, some to life and some to judgment (v. 29). Yahushua sets this future hour apart from the present one that “now is” (v. 25), so He is choosing His words carefully.

1 Corinthians 15 gives one coming. Paul lines up the order, tagma (G5001), a rank standing in turn: “Messiah the firstfruits; afterward they that are Messiah’s at his coming” (v. 23). The very next words are “Then cometh the end” (v. 24). No thousand-year gap sits between them.

Two witnesses, one picture: one hour, one coming, everyone raised, then the end.¹

B. The Pulpit: What It Preaches, What It Skips

The pulpit preaches a rapture. The righteous are “caught up” first (1 Thessalonians 4:17), and the wicked wait a thousand years or more for their turn (Revelation 20:5). The believer in the pew hears it taught as settled fact.

What the pulpit skips is John 5:28-29. The word “all” and the phrase “the hour” never appear on the rapture chart. Even the rapture verse itself puts the rising at the moment the Master “shall descend from heaven with a shout” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). That is His coming, the same moment Paul names in 1 Corinthians 15.

Part II — Straight to Heaven at Death

A. The Two Verses Side by Side

John 5 puts the dead “in the graves” when He calls (v. 28). They are not in heaven waiting for a body. They hear His voice and come forth (v. 29).

1 Corinthians 15 calls the dead “them that slept” (v. 20). Messiah is the firstfruits, the first sheaf waved before Yahuah at Bikkurim while the rest of the harvest still stands in the field (Leviticus 23:10-11). His people are made alive “at his coming” (v. 23), all together, not one at a time as each dies. Paul even warns that without the resurrection the dead in Messiah “are perished” (v. 18). That warning only makes sense if they are not already in glory.

Both verses keep the dead in the grave, asleep, until His voice and His coming.

B. The Pulpit: What It Preaches, What It Skips

Funerals preach that the departed believer is already in heaven, looking down. The usual texts are “absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) and the promise to the thief (Luke 23:43). Neither one gives a timetable. Paul gives the timetable in 1 Corinthians 15, and it is His coming.

What the pulpit skips is “in the graves,” “slept,” and “at his coming.” If the dead were already in heaven, the resurrection would add nothing, and Paul’s whole chapter would be pointless. A grieving family is almost never shown 1 Corinthians 15:23.

Part III — One Being in Three Persons

A. The Two Verses Side by Side

John 5 sets up a courtroom. Yahushua says, “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true” (v. 31). Then He points to “another” (v. 32) and names Him: “the Father himself, which hath sent me” (v. 37). The Torah requires two witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15). One being cannot be two witnesses. The argument only works if the Father stands outside the Son.

1 Corinthians 15 draws the same line. When all things are put under the Son, “he is excepted, which did put all things under him” (v. 27). The Father is not one of the things under the Son. He stands outside and above, the one doing the placing.

Both verses keep the Father as a separate and greater party: the second witness in John, the One excepted in Corinthians.

B. The Pulpit: What It Preaches, What It Skips

The pulpit preaches one being in three persons, most often from “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). Yet Yahushua prays that His disciples “may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:22). That is one in purpose, not one being.

What the pulpit skips is John 5:31-32. No preacher can read “another beareth witness of me” and then teach that the other witness is the same being, so the verse is left alone. John 8:17-18, where Yahushua counts the two witnesses out loud, Himself and the Father, is skipped too.

Part IV — A Co-Equal Son Ruling Forever

A. The Two Verses Side by Side

John 5 shows that everything the Son has was given. The Father “hath life in himself” and gave the Son to have life (v. 26). The Father “hath given him authority” to judge (v. 27). The Son says, “I can of mine own self do nothing” (v. 30).

1 Corinthians 15 shows where it ends. The Son delivers up the kingdom to the Father (v. 24), and then “shall the Son also himself be subject” to the Father, so the Father may be all in all (v. 28). Paul even calls Him a man: “by man came also the resurrection of the dead” (v. 21), the second Adam set against the first (v. 22).

Life given, authority given, kingdom handed back, Son subject. Both verses make the Father the source and the Son the one who receives.

B. The Pulpit: What It Preaches, What It Skips

The pulpit preaches a Son equal to the Father in every way. The Athanasian Creed says none of the three is “greater, or less than another,” and all are “co-equal.” Yahushua said the opposite: “my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).

What the pulpit skips is 1 Corinthians 15:28. Equals do not become subject to one another. A Son who hands the kingdom back and places Himself under the Father is not co-equal. When the verse is mentioned at all, it is explained as a “role” rather than read as written.

Conclusion

Set side by side, John 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 agree on all four points. One resurrection, not two. The dead asleep in the grave, not in heaven. The Father a separate witness, not the same being. The Son given everything and finally subject, not co-equal.

A believer raised in the church has heard all four teachings preached. What that believer has not heard is these two passages read against them. The verses are in every Bible. What is missing is the comparison.

Revelation closes the same way. The dead, “small and great,” stand before the throne together (Revelation 20:12), one gathering, as both witnesses said. And the Son sits “with my Father in his throne” (Revelation 3:21), a throne that belongs to the Father.

Footnotes

1. Matthew 25:31-32 gathers all nations before Him at one sitting, sheep and goats in the same scene. 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 gives rest to believers and vengeance to the disobedient “in that day,” at the same revealing. ↩