Where Did Jesus Die? — Page 83
Chapter Seven—Did Jesus Ascend to Heaven? 83 He might even have been in the room before they came in unperceived until he came and stood in their midst. It is from St. Luke’s story of the journey to Emmaus that it has been supposed that the risen Jesus had power to become invisible. He ‘vanished out of their sight’ when he went out of the house. Dr. Arthur Wright goes so far as to assert that he was ‘one moment at Emmaus and the next in Jerusalem. At one instant he is the world of sense, at another in the world of spirit’ (Christ’s claim, etc. , The Interpreter , July, 1916, p. 385), apparently forgetting that, according to St. Luke’s account, the two disciples left Emmaus after he died and arrived at the room in Jerusalem before him. It is difficult to believe that St. Luke meant anything more than that he went away quickly (having to return to Jerusalem) when it is remembered that the story is followed immediately by proofs which Jesus gave that his body was still flesh and bone and not spirit. If it is true that he asked Thomas to put his finger in the print of his nails; if it is true that he said to his doubting disciples, ‘Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have’ 1 ; if it is true that he ate in the presence of disciples; if it is true that he disguised himself as a gardener after leaving the sepulchre; if it is true that he walked the whole distance from Jerusalem to Galilee on foot; if it is true that he took every possible precaution against rearrest; it follows as clearly as day follows night that the statement that 1. Luke 24:39