Author: Louise Seymour Houghton

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-05-05

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9780259172994

Excerpt from From Olivet to Patmos: The First Christian Century in Picture and Story During forty days after Jesus arose from the dead he remained, so far as we can know, on earth. He was not with his disciples all the time, but only appeared to them now and again, sometimes to one alone, sometimes to the Eleven, for Judas was dead. Once or twice he appeared to a large number of those who believed in him. We can understand now why our Lord took such a course as this. It was to make his disciples understand and really feel that even when he was absent from their sight he was actu ally present with them. If he had remained with them all the time during those forty days it would have been as hard for them to feel this when at last he left them to re. Turn into heaven as it would have been at any time before his death. They would have been almost as crushed and hopeless at the Ascension as they were when Jesus was crucified. And if he had not appeared to them more than once or twice after the resurrection they would soon have found it hard to believe that he had risen from the dead at all. They would have come to think that perhaps they had deceived themselves, perhaps they had only had a sort of vision of him, and they certainly would not have been able to preach with convincing power that Christ was risen indeed. But these six weeks of Jesus' frequent appearances and disappearances, while it taught them that they could not have him always with them, also gave them a sense of constant communion with him. They felt that he knew where they were and what they were doing, even when they did not see him among them, and they began to understand in some measure that it was not necessary that he should remain on earth in order to be with them always, as he had promised to be. They learned to under stand that whether absent or present his love and guidance would be always theirs; and so they became prepared for that final parting which was not in reality a parting, since it could not deprive them of the assurance that he was their ever-present Saviour and friend. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.