Philemon Robbins Russell. A Series of Letters to a Universalist: In which the Subject of Modern Universalism is examined. 1842.
"The sense which the Universalists (AKA Preterists) put upon the word resurrection in this text is absurd also. You apply the text to the famous destruction of Jerusalem, and tell us that the resurrection then and there experienced, was a "moral and political resurrection," — that " the Jewish nation had long been in a state of moral and political death." Very well. Now, how will this hang together? We will see. What's a moral resurrection? Why, it is obviously, being raised from a death in sin, to a life of holiness. There is no chance for dispute here. Well, now, did the Jewish nation experience such a resurrection at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem ? Look at it. Think it over. Did the Jewish nation, or any considerable portion of them, experience a happy change in their moral characters ? Were they then raised by the Roman army that destroyed their city and temple, or by the gospel, or by any other means, from a life of sin to a life of holiness? With the history of that bloody siege before you, you dare not answer in the affirmative. So far were the Jews from experiencing any moral resurrection, properly so called, at the destruction of Jerusalem, that, according to Josephus, their moral blindness and infatuation were amazing in the highest degree. — They seemed to have been lost to all moral sensibility, and madly plunged into their graves, instead of coming forth from them to a moral resurrection. But you may say to this, that a moral resurrection ' took place at the destruction of Jerusalem, so far as the Christians were concerned. I reply, (I.) The resurrection spoken of in the text is not thus limited. It is applicable to ALL. "All that are in their graves shall hear his voice,"&c. The living saints, at the time Jerusalem was destroyed, were not as a matter of fact, " in their graves." Their bodies were not there. Their souls were not there. They were not morally, nor physically in their graves. Hence they could have had no part in your moral resurrection at the destruction of Jerusalem. ( 3.) The Christians of Jerusalem, who, according to the testimony of one historian who wrote three hundred years after that event, fled to the mountains of Pella, had all of them experienced your "moral resurrection" before the Roman army arrived and commenced the work of human butchery. They experienced their " moral resurrection " when they " passed from death unto life," when they "were raised up and made to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (page 92-93)
