will bring these passages together?  There is one word, the key word of the

period under review, reconciliation.  This is implied in Romans 8 and

expressed in Romans 11:15.  Immediately following the word reconciliation

(A.V. atonement) in Romans 5, we read, `Wherefore, as by one man sin entered

into the world, and death by sin'.  This is implied in 1 Corinthians 15 by

the connection which we have noticed between firstfruits and Adam, in the

other passages.

There is no actual reference to this type of the firstfruits in the

epistles of the Mystery.  The resurrection of Christ in the sphere of the

Mystery goes back further still and places the title `Firstborn from the

dead' in line with `Firstborn of all creation'.  Leviticus 23:10,11 must be

considered in order to see the type in its original setting:

`Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come

into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest

thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest

unto the priest: and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be

accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave

There is undoubted prophecy in this type of the resurrection of Christ.

The first day after the passover Sabbath was the actual day upon which Christ

rose from the dead.  (See Passover Week7).  The apostle does not detail the

outworking of this great type beyond that which immediately applies to the

believers of the period, whose hope was the parousia of the Lord.  The

resurrection and the hope of the One Body as revealed in the Prison Epistles,

written after Acts 28, find no mention here.  Neither is there anything said

of `the rest of the dead' that `lived not again till the thousand years were

finished'.  Paul is not teaching here the reconciliation, or expounding the

great purpose of the ages; he is rather correcting the error of the

Corinthians on the one subject of the resurrection, and brings this great

type to bear upon them, in order to reveal the tremendous issues that rest

upon that fundamental doctrine.

The `coming' of Christ here is the parousia.  This word means His

personal presence, and is found in the Papyri in reference to the coming of a

king (Teblunis Papyri No. 11,657).

`We now may say that the best interpretation of the primitive Christian

hope of the parousia is the old advent text, Behold thy king cometh

unto thee' (Deissman, Light from Ancient East, page 372).

Its first occurrence is Matthew 24:3.  It comes again in Matthew

24:27,37,39; also in 1 Thessalonians 2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23; 2 Thessalonians

2:1,8; James 5:7,8; 2 Peter 1:16; 3:4; 1 John 2:28.  It is associated with

the time when the earth will be like it was in the days of Noah; with great

signs in the heavens; with the man of sin and the temple; with the period

immediately after the Great Tribulation.  The word parousia is never used by

Paul in his later epistles for the hope of the church of the One Body.  It is

limited to the period covered by the Gospels and the Acts, and is associated

with the people of Israel, and with the day of the Lord.

The death brought in by Adam is removed by Christ in the case of some

believers at His Coming, in the case of others, after the Millennium.  He is

the Firstfruits.  The Corinthians are now taken one step further in

the endeavour to impress upon them the fundamental importance of the