In the bible, as with other Faiths before and after Christianity, there is a general expectation of a Great Resurrection.
The bible implies at least two or more resurrections, with the first (the most blessed) Resurrection taking one thousand years to occur, which would presumably be a long embryonic period of preparation for and establishing of what follows it, which is another resurrection a thousand years later, and is depicted as having a different spiritual status quo, since the initial priesthood of the first is only for that first thousand-year resurrection:
"But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This (period) is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." (Rev 20:5-6)
[Whilst "first" and "second" have come to be interpreted as of time, it refers to primacy in a vague way: primacy in either rank, place or time. So really this thousand years could well be translated as "the most blessed" resurrection.]
There are several aspects that are naturally associated with "Resurrection".
Firstly, there's the resurrection of the individual; before, you are dead, and suddenly you are alive!
This resurrection of an individual can be understood spiritually of the soul (you are an atheist, and suddenly your outlook is revolutionised and you turn to God), or it can be understood physically (you were buried in a grave, and you arise in a new form).
Indeed, a spiritual resurrection often results in a physical resurrection - in the New Testament, many an invalid in a state of spiritual hopelessness, acquires faith, and is healed, can see, is cured of leprosy: and Jesus says, "your faith has healed you," for else they are in danger of becoming too focussed on the transient, physical results, in place of the spiritual cause. The outer change is a symbol of the inner spiritual transformation.
The first kind (spiritual resurrection), Christians call being born again, although the biblical phrase equally (and more naturally) means being born from above, since children of Adam (="earth") are transformed into children of the Father in heaven (="sky") above. Either way, they both amount to the same thing, a spiritual recreation; Paul calls this, becoming a new creation, which is clearly a spiritual resurrection.
There's also the resurrection of society; a land, sinking in its quagmire of materialism and negligence of spiritual priorities, is rapidly reborn in outlook, vision and collective way of working through a transformation of the spirit animating it and its people.
This social resurrection can be seen in the Revelation of John, where a new heaven (spiritual reality) and a new earth (mundane reality, with its structures, laws and knowledge) descend from the sky of God's power. The new heaven and new earth, represents much more than a collection of disconnected resurrected individuals, but is far more, a collective resurrection of forms, systems and structures integrated with the individual, such that the individual and the collective mutually nurture each other. Today you can see technology rocketing around us all, spreading rapidly throughout the earth like nerves growing throughout an embryo - which is the unfolding of the new earth - which all eyes see - a counterpart to the unrolling of the new heaven - which, being spiritual, requires spiritual insight and vision to perceive and be part of, though some of its minor sparks are the extraordinary (though tentative) movements of peace, reconciliation and ecumenicism you see beginning in the world today. For even the unreligious are being set into action by the unrolling of the new heaven in the invisible realms surrounding their souls. As part of this process, most of the kings and ecclesiastical powers of the earth suddenly lost their authority at the beginning of the 20th century, becoming a vestige of what they once were, power becoming thrown into the hands of peoples and congregations all across the world, and increasingly starting to become used. As the Revelation of John indicates, this is a thousand-year process, and currently in its very embryonic first stages.
The archetypal symbol in Christianity for both these resurrections, is of course the resurrection of Christ, who showed in His body a symbol of what was to come: a resurrection of both form and spirit.
Obviously, the two aspects of resurrection (individual and collective) are connected: a spiritually and materially resurrected society in due course should naturally yield the fruits of more spiritually-resurrected individuals, and even a small number of spiritually-resurrected individuals will, with the assistance of God, commence to resurrect a materialist society.
After the Jews had brushed the dust off their hands and considered the Light of Christ extinguished, Christ was busy visiting the hearts of His disciples, revealing himself within them. His disillusioned disciples saw Him crudely, yet failed to recognise Him; He broke bread with them, yet passed to and from them despite locked doors.
Was Christ, therefore, in a physical body showing non-physical powers, or in a non-physical body, showing physical powers? In modern language, we might choose to say that was Christ was objective (real) in distinction to subjective (imaginary, an illusion or delusion).
The answer of course, is that it doesn't matter, so long as He is real - because by surviving death, in whatever new body it may be, He shows to the doubting Thomas's that material death is not the end of existence. We live on.
Obviously Jesus' resurrection appearances are of the second kind, in a non-physical body manifesting physical powers, for the form of life after physical death is not of this earthly world, but in one of the limitless realities of God's fashioning, as Christ assures His followers: "in my Father's house are many mansions.. I go to prepare a place for you," (John 14:2), and to the thief on the cross, "verily I say to thee, today with me thou shalt be in the paradise" (though to all material eyes he died); whilst Paul says of this realm, of the soul in its nearness to God, "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God", and elsewhere describes a man who had been transported up to the third heaven; Jesus depicts Abraham, Isaac and Jacob alive in a non-material world, when says of them, "and as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living"; and likewise, do the disciples see Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah, and then look around with their material eyes and see no one - clearly these are not depicting earthly places in physical space, but non-physical realms traversed by the soul, and witnessed when the conscious soul in its faith is focussed away from the body and to the spiritual world around in which it lives.
When Christ was crucified and buried, His disciples were scattered and depressed. They lost almost entirely their faith. It was as if Christ's mission had all been in vain. When the reality of Christ came to them in the heavenly worlds, their lack of faith meant they did not accept Him. They saw a figure, but thought it was the gardener, or someone else. But by God's Grace, their faith became resuscitated and they reconnected to Christ, allowing Him to dwell in them, and they recognised the figure as Christ where before they saw a figure they did not recognise. The appearances of Christ after His crucifixion are therefore intimately linked to His disciples' faith. In a similar way, Stephen saw Christ sitting at the right hand of God, whilst those stoning him saw nothing. For Stephen had faith, and those executing him lacked faith, and saw just the clouds. Had the disciples not regained faith, they would have continued to see an unrecognisable figure, and Christ would have had from His heavenly kingdom to employ more drastic means of furthering His cause on earth, such as He chose to do with Saul. Paul describes his own encounter as an inner matter of the soul, declaring (Gal 1:16) how Christ was revealed "in" him. At Pentecost, the disciples by grace were filled with faith and through faith were connected to divine power, beholding the flames of power where before in less faith they saw just an empty room. Through their new faith they went on to do outstanding things. All the wonderful matters in the New Testament that happen to people, are intimately related to and dependent upon their faith, and symbolise the strength of their faith.
The reality of every human being, is that we are all conscious souls living in the heavenly world of the soul, with expression through a material form, like a sun shining in the mirror of our body: living within the light of our faith in God, we can gaze upon this material world, or see with the light of the Spirit.
Material eyes perceive life and death to be the animation and disfunctioning of the soul's transient coat in this mortal world, the body, whilst spiritual eyes see life and death in the spiritual world of the eternal soul. Throughout the New Testament, life and light generally indicate spiritual life in nearness to God, and death and darkness indicate a spiritual remoteness from God. This nearness and remoteness of the soul to God is not a physical thing, although it can sometimes have physical repercussions; for if nearness to God were physical, climbing mountains or acquiring riches might take you closer to God. Rather, it is our spiritual nearness in the heavenly world in which the soul lives, not of this flesh and blood.
One of the signs of the Resurrection is the coming of that Light of the World, Christ, to all mankind. All eyes will see Him, and look upon His torn body, which is His church.
The New Testament paints a murky picture of what this extreme test means - a great test of spiritual discernment, separating like a blade those whose spirits are near from those who are afar: the world-resurrecting daystar of Christ's appearance, comes in the clouds, which means in a hidden or obscured way. As the sun in the sky is obscured by the intervening clouds for those who dwell below, so Christ, though He lights up the heavenly kingdoms of the soul from one end to the other, to the mortal eyes of the unspiritual, the clouds of His obscuration will be His material body veiling the light of His Reality, the renewal He brings to humanity that does not fit the fanciful expectations of the pious, and the glory of His humiliation and sacrifice, a veil to those with material eyes. Where His glory in Judea had been the humiliation of the cross, praised by Paul as the foolishness of both the religious and secular ("we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness"), so His glory and humiliation now a thousand-fold, become a thousand-fold stumbling-block for the religious and worldly who think themselves knowing. The very spiritual will recognise Him, soaring as they do above the clouds in which He is wrapped, whilst the majority, awaiting Him daily in prayer and in earnestness for His coming, will not recognise Him: many a time, Jesus warned the world to watch less their spirits be asleep when He comes; on account of the renewal He brings, they will be the first to cast at Him their stones: coming like a thief in the night, only the spiritually alert will be awake to the uplifting of the treasures of men's souls to Himself in the heavenly world, though on earth they are seen by those around as two people talking. And just as the first time, He came down from Heaven to do the will of the Father, people will not see a thing - though they all see Him. Seeing they do not see; and hearing, they do not understand. When they finally awake spiritually, as Christ's morning dawns upon humanity and resuscitates them in the unfolding descent of the new Heaven and the new Earth, they will see that He indeed had come in the spiritual night when they were asleep, and though He came with all heavenly fanfare, they were as dead in the heavenly world and saw nothing, for they were alive only in the earthly world of the body.
Religious expectations of today, are the same as the expectations of the Pharisees. The Pharisees watched and watched for the Messiah's descent from the sky with Elijah: they did not see Him descend from heaven and be born in Mary's womb as Jesus, with Elijah born in Elizabeth's womb as John. They were watching for physical wonders, not spiritual wonders. He lived amongst them, and returned to heaven just as He had come, promising to come back in same way, as witnessed by those who had spiritual insight, the same insight with which Stephen saw Christ on the right-hand of God, whilst all those around saw just the sky. The pious, too, are waiting for the Messiah's descent from the sky. Like the Pharisees, they too will see just the sky.
See also: Resurrection in Islam