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R - ContentsResurrection of Christ
Contemporary Christian belief has, as one of its major tenets, the resurrection of Jesus in the flesh, and His ascent to Heaven in this flesh. Resurrection in the flesh is not what matters; what matters more is whether actually He could have ascended to Heaven in this flesh. Looking at some Bible passages would also help us clear the air about this assertion that He actually resurrected in the flesh. The fact that He could not have ascended to Heaven in His earthly body casts doubt on the fact that He actually resurrected in the flesh.
The problem therefore is the assertion that He ascended to Heaven without further ado in His gross earthly body. The fact that after His resurrection He was not with His earthly physical body can be attested to by many Bible passages. The inability of Mary Magdalene and others to recognise Him shows that He could not have been with His physical body, but with another body, a kind of transformed, transfigured body, different from the earthly one, otherwise He would have been recognised immediately by those who had become familiar with Him.
Man on earth, in his physical body, already has with him many other bodies telescoped into one other; bodies of the essence of the Beyond, finer, lighter and therefore totally different from the physical one. After giving up His physical body through earthly death, Jesus was left with the outermost of the bodies which are made up of the substance of the Beyond, and that was why He looked different and was not recognised by anyone. This body is lighter and can easily penetrate the material substance of this earth.
This would account for the baffling circumstances where Jesus suddenly appeared to His disciples while they were in a room with the doors shut. In the Gospel of John 20. 26 we read ‘…The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them and said ‘Peace be with you” or in the same Gospel 21. 4-5 ‘Just as the day was breaking, Jesus stood on the beach, yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.’
All these point to the fact that Jesus must have been in another body, finer, lighter, different from the earthly body He had used and this accounts for His ability to enter rooms without opening doors and the fact that He was not easily recognisable to the disciples.
It is such a body made up of a different substance that has the capacity by its finer nature to ascend to Heaven. Many of us have had dreams of being in different places participating in all kinds of activities, yet our physical bodies are lying quietly on the bed. This is exactly the same phenomenon, the same fact of having many bodies telescoped into each other.