We are constantly told that the resurrection, the time of the harvest at the end of the age, is still future. Yet, Jesus was the first-fruits of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:23). When would harvest, the resurrection, occur? It seems not to have occurred to most people that if Jesus was the first-fruit, that the time of the harvest, i.e. the time of the resurrection, was definitely at hand in the first century. Yet, most insist it is still future and entails the raising of physical bodies from the ground.
The Bible tells us when the resurrection was to be, and it is not in our future! Jesus’ "first-fruit" resurrection occurred in "the end of the age" (Hebrews 9:26). Clearly, this was not at the end of the Christian Age. Jesus appeared in the end of the Mosaic Age. Can the first-fruit be at the end of one age, but the harvest at the end of a different age thousands of years later? The first-fruit and the harvest are never in different seasons. The suggestion is disjunctive to say the very least. The word "first-fruits" demands that harvest is near.
In Matthew 13:38-40 Jesus said, "harvest is the end of this age." Jesus was living in the Mosaic Age when he said this. He said the harvest would be at the end of the age in which he was living — not at the end of "the age to come." Since Jesus was the first-fruits of the resurrection, at the end of the Mosaic Age, and since he predicted the harvest would be at the end of that age, the harvest was to be at the end of the Mosaic Age — not at "the end of time."
This is confirmed in Revelation 14 where the 144,000 were the "first-fruits" of the harvest, unto God. An angel proclaimed: "the hour of his–judgment has come" (v. 6-8). This was the judgment on the Great City Babylon at the coming of the Son of Man — the time of harvest. The harvest would be when Babylon was judged. Babylon is identified as the Great City, "where the Lord was crucified" (Revelation 11:8). It was the city that had slain the Old Covenant prophets (18:24). This can be no other than Old Covenant Jerusalem (Luke 13:33). And her judgment, at the time of resurrection (Revelation 11:15f), was "at hand."
Jesus and John agree. Jesus said the harvest would be at the end of the age in which he was living. The end of that age was at the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (Matthew 24:3, 29-34). John said the harvest/resurrection would be when Babylon — the city that crucified the Lord — was judged. That was in A.D. 70.
Jesus and John were either right or wrong. If they predicted the raising of physical corpses out of the ground at the end of the Mosaic Age, then they were wrong.
Jesus’ prediction as to the time was correct. It is the concept of physical resurrection that needs to be realigned in harmony with inspiration’s time statements.