In the Room - Luke 24:40-49; John 20:20-23

The disciples were able to touch Jesus and presumably see the nail marks in his hands and feet and the spear wound in his side. This concept gave me pause for a moment because I’ve always thought that as soon as we were resurrected, we would have a perfect body, and I was super excited about it. But when I considered that Jesus still had scars on his body after he was resurrected, I thought “well, maybe he chose to keep those because it helped convince people that it was really him. But then I had a friend send me something called “What the Prophets Have Taught about Resurrection,” with 13 points that are relatively “unknown” all with their citations. Because this isn’t preached at the pulpit and from canonized scripture, I’m warning to take this with a grain of salt; it’s all interesting but might be incorrect. Points 6 to 9 it says, “All men will come from the grave as they lie down, whether old or young.” I knew part of this because I knew that all those who died as children would have the opportunity to grow up and be raised by their parents. I didn’t know about the being resurrected into an old body, which it kind of unnerving.

The article continues, “We will have the same identity as we had in mortality, even the wounds of the flesh.” I don’t know if this means even like “death wounds” because I’m just imagining someone who was blown apart by a cannon being resurrected with a gaping hole in their chest. “Scars deformities and defects will be removed in their course, in their proper time, according to the providence of God. From the day of resurrection, the body will develop until it reaches it’s full measure of the stature of the spirit, whether male of female.” So how I imagine this working out is, our spirits are all mature and yet youthful, and we’ll be that until the resurrection, then our spirits will go back into our bodies and the condition of our bodies will reflect the condition of our spirits. It seems like it will be an “inner beauty” reflection and as we grow more God-like spiritually, our bodies will become more God-like physically.
The IM quotes President Joseph Fielding Smith as teaching, “After the resurrection from the dead our bodies will be spiritual bodies, but they will be bodies that are tangible, bodies that have been purified, but they will nevertheless be bodies of flesh and bones… They will no longer be quickened by blood but quickened by the spirit which is eternal, and they shall become immortal and shall never die.” Jesus was teaching this principles to his disciples as he let them touch him and feel that he was real. He took it a step further and asked for some fish, which he ate. Maybe they were expecting the food to fall out the bottom and onto the floor, but it didn’t. So clearly whoever was standing in front of them was not simply a spirit, but how to determine who it was. It looked like Jesus and it sounded like Jesus, but Jesus had died right in front of them only a few days earlier. And sure it was a flesh and blood man, but how would they be sure that it was him?
I think that the only way that we can grasp the importance of the disciples identifying Jesus by his crucifixion marks is to consider how else he could have done it without them. If Jesus had shown up in the room having been without those marks, even miraculously just appearing in the room without using a door, it might have been possible for the disciples to be suspect of this look alike. There was a show that I watched once about voodoo in Haiti or something, and one part of the show was about this family whose son had died then a couple of years later they found this kid roughly their sons age who looked exactly like the boy they had lost and was living on the streets and was mentally disabled. They naturally assumed that this was their son who had risen from the dead and they took the boy into their house and he became family. When these medical people came for the documentary, they took DNA samples from the boy and the parents and ran them. The results came back that this boy was not in any way related to this family, so the researchers didn’t tell them because having this boy in their family made the parents happy and being loved and cared for made the boy happy. But the point is that it is possible to have someone who looks and sounds convincingly like another person.
It might be unlikely that Jesus’ doppelganger would be able to appear in a closed room and be so convincing that the disciples would believe him, but stranger things have happened. Exploiting grieving people is not unusual practice, especially when something is as highly controversial as Jesus. But when Jesus appears to his disciples looking and sounding exactly like himself and then shows them the nail marks in his hands and feet, that’s pretty convincing. For an imposter to retain the same marks, they would have had to drive nail into their hands and feet in the same exact position that Jesus had, and they would have had to pierce their side with a spear in the same exact place that Jesus had. But the kicker is that the a spear wound in the side would have been fatal, especially the way that the Romans do it which is how they did it to Jesus which is the way that the imposter would have to mirror. And even if all this was possible, which it’s not because it would have killed anyone else, this imposter would have had to know beforehand exactly what was going to happen to Jesus so that they could inflict these wounds on themselves and then give themselves enough time to heal as to appear a “miracle.”
The likelihood of an exact Jesus look-a-like and sound-a-like with the exact same fatal wound pattern healed up being able to seemingly just “appear” within a confined room seems a little bit too much to believe. This is apparently enough to convince the disciples, and it would probably be enough for me as well. After eating, Jesus continues, “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.” The IM points to the definition of “Scriptures” in Jesus’ day as providing insight in his statement. The definition reads, “The scriptures used by Jews in Jesus’s day were sometimes divided into three main categories. The Torah, also known as ‘the Law,’ consisted of the five books of Moses (The first five books of the Old Testament). The Prophets referred to a collection of books by and about prophets and included the historical books from Joshua through 2 Kings as well as the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 ‘minor prophets’ (Hosea through Malachi). The Writings were a collection that included literary works (Psalms, Proverbs, and Job), ‘the five scrolls’ (Songs of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther), the book of Danial, and the historical books of 1 and 2 Chronicles.” So when they say “on this hangs all the law and the prophets,” what they mean is “this is what all the scriptures are talking about.”
It’s like Jesus is providing a huge mind shift for the disciples because he expounded his statement and “opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.” And provides a new insight for them as to his whole mission and to theirs that is coming, saying, “This it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem… And, behold, I sent the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” Christ was not meant to overthrown the oppressors of the Jewish nation, Christ’s whole purpose was to overthrown Satan and his power over us. He didn’t come to save the Jewish people politically, he came to save all people spiritually, which is difficult to understand if you don’t recognize that the spiritual is more important than the physical. But actually, he came to save us from physical oppression as well, by giving us all the gift of resurrection. So really, it’s a win-win, we are saved spiritually through the Atonement and physically through the Resurrection. Sounds good to me.
When Luke describes that Jesus “opened he their understanding,” it doesn’t really sound like a verbal lecture that he gave them because you can bring someone all knowledge, but you can’t make them understand it. I associate this statement of “opening understanding” with the bestowal of the Holy Ghost because the Spirit is the only way that we can understand new concepts. In John we are told that Jesus “breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” The IM says, “In both Hebrew and Greek, the word spirit also carries the meaning ‘breath’ and ‘wind.’ Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained, ‘Jesus ‘breathed on them’ which probably means that he laid his hands upon them as he uttered the decree: ‘Receive the Holy Ghost.’” He points out further that there is a difference between “receiving” the gift of the Holy Ghost and “enjoying” the gift of the Holy Ghost, which he reminds us “in the case of the apostles the actual enjoyment of the gift (of the Holy Ghost) was delayed unto the day of Pentecost.”
Maybe this is like when we are confirmed and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost but don’t actually start to recognize our interactions with the Spirit until later. I never understood why the followers of Christ could not have the Holy Ghost until after He ascended to heaven. To me, it would make sense to have the Holy Ghost and the Savior teaching the gospel simultaneously. That way, Jesus would teach the doctrine and the Spirit would testify of it and people would learn and understand. It probably would have been a game changer. But maybe having both the Savior and the Spirit together would have been too powerful an influence, maybe the two of them working together would have made people know more and but not want it more. Maybe all this together would have made people accountable for more than they were ready for. It will be nice to one day understand why that was.