John 5:28 Commentary and Bible Study

Here we come to the second part of this life from the dead, another resurrection: this time a bodily resurrection. Do not be so astonished and amazed that the Son of God has power to impart life and bring life from the dead spiritually on earth. Something to your mind even more astonishing is going to happen. Here is the greater thing – ‘for the hour is coming.’ What he describes now is at the end of time, when he returns. This has not come yet but is at the close of the Christian age, the age of the Gospel: the bodily resurrection of all, the saved and the lost. Where are their souls? Their bodies are in the graves. Many have been there for centuries and centuries, decomposed, burned up perhaps, reduced to particles and reabsorbed. Dear friends, their souls in the meantime are either reserved for judgement in what we call the prison house of the lost, disembodied souls, or they are in Paradise with Christ. But the time is coming when the bodies are going to be amazingly reassembled.The time is coming when the commanding voice of the Son of God shall summon people from the graves. Not the earlier gentle, pleading voice of Christ, ‘Come unto me’, but now a voice that summons all in death and Hades to appear before him. When the dead - though their spirits are either in the paradise of Christ awaiting the great final resurrection day, or are in the prison-house of the lost, awaiting that day and final judgement - their very bodies, will, as it were hear the voice of the Son of God, and come forth from the graves.