The first resurrection from the dead is Christ. He is being formed in us now. If He is not, then we are not attaining the first resurrection.

Either we are gaining the resurrection today or else we are losing the resurrection today. The Day of the Lord will not cause a change in our personality; rather, it will be an unveiling of that which has been wrought patiently throughout our pilgrimage on the earth.

Christ is formed in us as His body and blood become our spiritual life. It is that body and blood, that eternal life, that will raise us up to meet Him in the clouds.

Are you attaining the first resurrection? Or are you dying because you are living according to the appetites of your fleshly body?

A fourth step toward the first resurrection involves coming out from the multitude of halfhearted believers and entering total union, complete marriage, with the Lamb of God.

Keep in mind that many are called into the Kingdom of God but only a few are chosen for the first resurrection, chosen to rule with Christ as an eternal, inseparable, integral part of His Person.

And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads. (Revelation 14:1)

Each of us has been called to come up to Mount Zion, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect in Christ. How many of us obey that heavenly call and pass into the ranks of the chosen?

Whoever chooses to do so may become one of God's stars, His sons who are wells of living water. Each of them marches every day in the joyous processions to Zion. They bring refreshing and blessing wherever they go.

And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth. (Revelation 14:3)

That song is the love song, the song without end that can be sung only by Christ and His firstfruits, His Bride. She is the perfect one, the "only one of her mother" (Song of Solomon 6:8-10).

One of the main characteristics of these who are Christ's firstfruits from the earth, those who arrive at the first resurrection from the dead, is the purity of their personalities. They are not defiled with that which is religious but not of Christ. There is nothing in their spirits, no person, no attainment, no thing, no ambition competing for first place in their affections.

They are married to Christ. Nothing else and no other person has a hold or claim on their spirit. They are Christ's and Christ's alone. They are not of the churches but of Christ. Their relationships with everyone else and with all other things and circumstances are governed strictly by what Christ does or does not desire concerning them.

This group of people came originally from mankind. But having attained the first resurrection from the dead they will be with Christ as an inseparable part of Him throughout the unimagined eons of eternity.

To be continued.