Table of Contents
DISCIPLES DISBELIEVED
JOURNEY TO EMMAUS
That very day, on the way to Emmaus, Jesus joins two of his disciples and discourses with them for 5 miles without being recognised by them! What a perfect masquerade! On reaching their destination, the disciples persuade the Master to join them for a meal.
“And it came to pass, as he sat EATING with them, he took bread and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them”
(HOLY BIBLE) Luke 24:30
By the manner in which he brake bread (meaning the way he blessed it), “their eyes were opened”. Did they walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus with closed eyes? No! We are being told that the disciples recognised him only at that juncture. Luke continues with his story, that when they recognised him, “he vanished out of sight”. Did he do the Indian “Rope Trick”? Please don’t be ridiculous! What it means is that he went away. He went out of their sight.
INCREDIBLE SCEPTICISM
Full of excitement, the two disciples rushed up to that upper room, where the other disciples were:-
“And they went and told it unto the residue (of the disciples), NEITHER BELEIVED they them”
(HOLY BIBLE) Mark 16:13
What is wrong with these disciples of Jesus? Why are they reluctant to believe? What is their difficulty? The problem is that they are confronted with evidence that Jesus is ALIVE! Not resurrected (i.e. not spiritualised), but evidence that he is the same physical Jesus, flesh and bones as any one of them! — Eating food! In disguise — but not a spirit and not a ghost. This is what they could not believe. If they were told that Mary had seen the ghost of Jesus, they would have believed. If the above two had told the rest that they too had seen the ghost of Jesus, they would certainly have believed that. They were a people who had seen spirits going into pigs and stampeding two thousand of them to destruction — (Mark 5:13). They had seen spirits going into trees and drying them up from their very roots overnight — (Mark 77:20). They had seen “seven devils” coming out of Mary Magdalene — (Mark 76:9). All this was quite natural to their age. Spirits, ghosts and devils! They could accept that which was believable at that time and age. But a LIVE Jesus? A physical Jesus? One who had escaped the stings of death — (Acts 2:24)? This was too heavy for their “little faith” — (Matthew 6:30; 8:26; 74:37; 76:8; and Luke 72:28).
(a) Mary Magdalene testifies that Jesus is ALIVE. 1
(b) The disciples from Emma us testify that he is ALIVE!
(c) Angels said that Jesus was ALIVE! (Luke 24:23).
(d) Two men that stood by told the women “why seek ye the living among the dead?” That he is ALIVE! (Luke 24:4-5).
Yet they will not believe!! Let us see whether they will believe the words of their own “Lord and Master”, in the following chapter.
1. ALIVE: Here as well as in every other place where this word “alive” occur, it has been faithfully reproduced from the Christian Scriptures, and it is not any interpretation of mine. If these verses were inspired by God, then, it seems, that the poor “Hotv Ghost” did not have the word “RESURRECTED” in its vocabulary!