Claim. I Thessalonians 4:16 (“the dead in Christ will rise first”) and 52 (“the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints… were raised”) do not refer to literal corpses leaving graves. The “dead rising” is the Old Testament saints appearing in spirit to believers on earth whose spiritual senses are open. “Tomb” symbolizes the realm of form spirits — the dim region of the spirit world where pre-Christian saints were lodged.
Elaboration. Per 3.2. Bible Verses Concerning the Signs of the Last Days: DP offers two arguments against literalism on Matthew 27. First, “if the physical bodies of the saints of the Old Testament Age had actually risen from their tombs and appeared before many people in Jerusalem, they would certainly have testified to the people about Jesus” — and “after hearing such testimony, who among the inhabitants of Jerusalem would not have believed?” Second, “if the saints really had risen from their tombs in the flesh, then surely their deeds would have been recorded in the Bible. However, we find no such records.”
The verse therefore records spiritual appearances perceived by “people who could perceive the spirits of the past saints being resurrected spiritually.” DP cites the Mount of Transfiguration parallel — Moses and Elijah appearing as spirits to Jesus — as the type. “Tomb” denotes the realm of form spirits, “the region of the spirit world where the spirits of the Old Testament saints were abiding” before they “appeared to spiritually-attuned believers on the earth.”
This shifts resurrection from physical resuscitation to spiritual perception, with implications for resurrection in Part II.