Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

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 o...

I wonder what the disciples were thinking about when they were sitting in the room hiding from the Jewish leadership who wanted to kill them. I wonder what they said to each other when the women, and then Peter, and then Cleopas and his wife all came back and said that they had seen Jesus. We know that Judaism taught the resurrection and that Jesus had prepared them before his death that he would rise again the third day, but then again, it had never happened before, and the Sadducees, who were the main religious leaders at the time, preached against it. While they are in this room, “Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.” If Jesus was a resurrected being, how could he just appear into the room? The IM quotes President Joseph Fielding Smith as teaching, “Resurrected bodies have control over the elements. How do you think the bodies will get out of the graves at the resurrection?” That’s a good question, I guess ...

When Jesus “vanished” out of sight of the two disciples who walked to Emmaus with him, they ran back to Jerusalem, where they had just left, to tell the others that not only was Jesus alive but they had seen him. In Jerusalem, the other disciples were behind closed doors, “for fear of the Jews.” This was probably around the time when those who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover started packing up and heading home. I’ve heard it estimated that the population of Jerusalem during the time of the Passover could climb to over a million people. This enormous crowd was divided between those who believed in Jesus, those who didn’t, and those who didn’t care. But the chief priests had already demonstrated that they were willing to kill to retain their power, so the disciples were laying low, especially now that some were saying that Jesus had risen from the dead. The disciples themselves were divided as to whether or not they believed that Jesus ha...

One of the two verses that we discussed yesterday came from the account of two of Jesus’ disciples walking to Emmaus, so we can deduce that Peter saw Christ beforehand. As these two people journeyed “about threescore furlongs” from Jerusalem to Emmaus they were discussing the events of the weekend. We know that they were believers of Christ and even go so far as to call them disciples, but in an article entitled, “Who were the disciples on the road to Emmaus?” found on Christianity.com, the author suggests that “if you turn to Luke 24:18, you will find that one of the disciples was called Cleopas. Moreover… you will find a second mention of his name in another account of the Resurrection. The reference is John 19:25. There we read, ‘Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.’.. Thus, we learn that the wife of Cleopas was also present in Jerusalem at ...

On that first day of Christ’s resurrection, he appears to many people and there are fairly extensive accounts of most of the appearances, but there is one appearance where there is almost no information and it’s almost told as a footnote in Luke 23:34 and 1 Corinthians 15:5. Luke records Christ’s disciples telling an apparent stranger on the road to Emmaus, “the Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.” Paul testifies to the Corinthians  that Christ “rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve.” It makes complete sense that Christ would appear to have a personal talk with the man he had chosen to lead his church after he was not on earth anymore to do it. Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, and surely Peter was as important as her personally to Jesus, but then if we consider that Peter would lead the church and there were still so many aspects of the gospel that he didn...

There is so much going on during the morning of Jesus’ resurrection, that all of what we’ve been studying is kind of just the accounts of the different experiences of all who were involved. We have the Mary Magdalene, the other women, Peter and John, Jesus himself, what happened inside the tomb, the angels, but now we are going to consider the experiences of the men who were guarding the tomb. Let’s remember that Pilate allowed the chief priests to secure Jesus’ tomb on Friday night with guards and his personal seal of authority. Whether these were Roman guards or the personal guards of the chief priests is not specified but my own personal belief is that they were Jewish guards. There is a television show called “A.D” which is about what happened after the death of Christ, and on the show, it presumes that the guards are Roman and it shows that the men who were guarding the tomb were executed because they allowed Jesus’ body to be removed, or m...

The women heed the angels’ counsel and run from the tomb into the city to tell the other disciples that Jesus is not where they left him. The reaction that they receive from the disciples are mixed and most “believed them not,” but Peter and John “ran both together: and the other disciples (John) did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.” Both Peter and John “stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying.” Jesus was not there. But what is interesting about this account is that while the linen clothes that Jesus’ body was wrapped in were laying, probably haphazardly, on the stone slab where his body laid, “the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.” I always thought that the mention of the face cloth was weird because, who cares, right? I recently came across an article that provided some interesting insight into ancient Hebrew culture...