John Lightfoot on John 5:25

[The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear, &c.] The Jews, as we have said before, looked for the resurrection of the dead at the coming of Messiah: and that truly, and with great reason, though it was not to be in their sense.

The vision of Ezekiel about the dry bones living, chapter, 37, and those words of Isaiah, "thy dead men shall live," &c., chapter 26:19, suggest to them some such thing, although they grope exceedingly in the dark as to the true interpretation of this matter.

That of R. Eliezer is well enough; The people of the earth [the Gentiles] do not live: which somewhat agrees with that of the apostle, Ephesians 2:1, "Ye were dead in trespasses and sins." Nor does that of Jeremiah Bar Abba sound much differently: "The dry bones [Eze 37] are the sons of men, in whom is not the moisture of the law."

It is true, "many bodies of the saints arose" when Christ himself arose, Matthew 27:52: but as to those places in Scripture which hint the resurrection of the dead at his coming, I would not understand them so much of these, as the raising the Gentiles from their spiritual death of sin, when they lay in ignorance and idolatry, to the light and life of the gospel. Nor need we wholly expound Ezekiel's dry bones recovered to life, of the return of the tribes of Israel from their captivity, (though that may be included in it) but rather, or together with that, the resuscitation of 'the Israel of God' (that is, those Gentiles that were to believe in the Messiah) from their spiritual death.

The words in Revelation 20:5, "This is the first resurrection," do seem to confirm this. Now what, and at what time, is this resurrection? When the great Angel of the covenant, Christ, had bound the old dragon with the chains of the gospel, and shut him up that he should no more seduce the nations by lying wonders, oracles, and divinations, and his false gods, as formerly he had done: that is, when the gospel, being published amongst the heathen nations, had laid open all the devices and delusions of Satan, and had restored them from the death of sin and ignorance to a true state of life indeed. This was 'the first resurrection.'

That our Saviour in this place speaks of this resurrection, I so much the less doubt, because that resurrection he here intends, he plainly distinguishes it from the last and general resurrection of the dead, verses 28, 29; this first resurrection from that last: which he points therefore to, as it were, with his finger, by saying, "The hour is coming, and now is," &c.