Late on the first Easter Sunday, after the Lord had risen from the sepulcher, ten of the disciples gathered for the evening in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem (John 20). They were afraid and probably confused. Since their leader had been crucified by the Roman power, as organized by their own Jewish leaders, they feared that now his followers might also be hunted down and punished. They closed and locked the doors. Were any of the women there? The story does not say, but Peter and John were, who saw and talked with the angels that morning, and the stories of the women were known. Some time must have been spent wondering and perhaps arguing - was He really alive? How could they know it was really Him? This kind of thing, coming back to life after you’re dead, this doesn’t happen in this real world, there must be some mistake!

Then two of the followers, not of the twelve, but the two that had gone to the village of Emmaus, came in, excited and bursting with their news. They had seen Him! They had walked with Him for seven miles and He had told them wondrous things! They had only recognized Him when He broke bread and ate with them. "Don’t doubt us, it really was Jesus!"

And then as they all talked and argued, there He was, standing with them in the room. "Peace be unto you," He said, and He showed them His hands and feet and His side, where he was wounded. He calmed them, and told them that just as he had come down to mankind, so they must go out and teach to all people all the true things that He had taught in the years He was with them.

It was these truths about how to live one’s life that were saving, not the disciples themselves. These saving truths have the power to remit or retain sins, because they were from the Lord, the disciples only transmitted them from the Lord to those who would listen and take them to heart. Then He breathed on them - representing His holy spirit - so that they would not only want to pass these truths on to people, but would also be given the words to say whenever the times came. And then He was gone again.

Thomas was not there that night. We don’t know why. And Thomas, when he heard the story, just could not swallow it. "Except I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe", he said. (John 20:25.)

The next verse tells us that the next Sunday they gathered again, and that Thomas was present this time. As before, the Lord was suddenly there, saying again, "Peace be unto you", and then directly to Thomas, "Reach hither thy finger… and reach hither thy hand… and be not faithless but believing". Now Thomas's response was, "my Lord and my God". It seems as if the Lord came this time just to convince Thomas, because it was Thomas who needed Him.

I think He does work this way. I am reminded of another story, from the gospel of Mark (Mark 9:17-27) where a father comes to Jesus with a young son who is possessed by a devil, and asks Jesus to cure him, and is asked in turn: "Do you believe I can do this?" In Mark 9:24 the father responds. Crying out, he said with tears, "I believe, help thou my unbelief."

I think many people have this conflict between lingering doubts and a desire to have the doubts taken away. If we carry on and make our decisions in life as if the doubts were indeed gone, then indeed they will lose their strength and actually will be gone.

These are the only details given of these two meetings in Jerusalem. Chronologically the next post-Easter stories are the ones that take place in Galilee.

John does go on to say at the end of his gospel "...many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God...." (John 20:30-31). Perhaps there were more post-Easter stories that weren't written down, but the ones we do have are strong. For the disciples who were involved, there was an unstoppable impact from the life and teachings of the Lord, and His crucifixion, and physical death, and now - in these stories - His resurrection. Hearing the Lord's charges to them, these Galilean fishermen and their colleagues launch out into the wide world, and work to achieve the Great Commission, enduring hardships and persecution, and succeeding - probably beyond their wildest dreams!

10125. 'And you shall anoint it' means consecration to represent the Divine Good of Love from the Lord as He exists in heaven and in the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'anointing' as consecration to represent the Lord in respect of the Divine Good of Divine Love from His Divine Human, dealt with in 9474, 9954, 10019, at this point from the Lord as He exists in heaven and in the Church; for the subject is the influx and reception of Him there. Whatever represents the Lord also represents Him as He is present with people of the Church and with angels of heaven, and so represents heaven and the Church, since people who have the Church within them constitute the Church in general, and angels who have heaven within them constitute heaven in general. Not that those people regarded in themselves constitute the Church, only the Lord present with them does so. Nor therefore do the angels regarded in themselves constitute heaven, only the Lord present with them. For the Lord does not dwell in anything that is a person's or an angels's own, only in what is His with them. So it is that when the words 'the Church and heaven' are used, what is Divine and the Lord's with those who are there is meant. From all this it is evident how the statements that the Lord is the All in all of heaven and the Church and that the Lord Himself is heaven and the Church ought to be understood. This is also evident from the teaching known and accepted in the Christian world that all the good of faith and love comes from God and none at all from man, and that whatever comes from man's own self is not good. For this reason also no one has any merit or any righteousness by virtue of what is his own.

[2] These matters have been stated in order that people may know what is meant by 'the Lord as He exists in heaven and in the Church', thus what heaven and the Church are, and consequently in what way the altar and the anointing of it were representative of the Lord. All the objects that were going to represent the Lord and the Divine things that came from the Lord were anointed - the altar, the tent of meeting, the tables within it, the lampstand, the ark, Aaron himself, his sons, and their garments. And when they had been anointed they were called holy, not because the oil imparted any holiness but because when anointed they would represent the Divine things from the Lord, which alone are holy. The reason why oil was employed for this purpose was that oil was a sign of the good of love, and the Divine Good of Divine Love is the Divine Himself, for He is the Essential Being (ipsum Esse) of all things. So in order to represent that Good, consecration was effected by the use of oil. The Divine Himself, the Essential Being of all things, was within the Lord alone, for He was conceived from Jehovah; and everyone derives the being (esse) of his life, called his soul, from his father. From this it is clear that the Divine Good of Divine Love was within the Lord's Humanity as a father's soul is within his child. With the human being nothing possesses life except the soul. The body without the soul has no life; indeed the whole body is fashioned by the soul in its own image, to bring the soul into a condition suitably adapted to the functions it performs on the lowest levels of order, that is, in the world. These facts about the human being lead to the conclusion that the Essential Being within the Lord's Humanity was Jehovah, or the Divine Good of Divine Love, the Being of life, and that this Being makes everything which exists from it a likeness of itself. Thus the Lord, acting from the Divine [Being] that was within Him and so was His, also made His Human into the Divine Good of Divine Love.

[3] Furthermore the Athanasian Creed which hands down the faith accepted in the Christian world states,

As body and soul is one man (homo), so Divine and Human in the Lord is one Christ ¹ .

Anyone therefore who knows about the union of soul and body in the body, and about the image of the soul in the body, can have some conception of the union of the Divine and Human within the Lord, and of the image of the one in the other. And from this he would recognize that the Divine, called the Father, and the Human, called the Son, were one, also that each was in the other, that is, the Father was in Him and He in the Father, according to the Lord's words in John 10:30; 14:10-11. But since there is no awareness at the present day of what the soul is, and scarcely any awareness that it is derived from the father, that the body is an image of it, and that the two are one, as prior and posterior are, or as being and manifestation of that being are, mankind has separated the Divine from the Human within the Lord, dividing them into two natures. As a consequence of this no other idea has been formed of the Lord's Humanity than of its being like anyone else's humanity. But in fact anyone else's soul from his father is finite and has evil within it owing to heredity, whereas the Lord's soul, being derived from Jehovah, was infinite and was nothing other than the Divine Good of Divine Love; and therefore His Human after glorification was not like anyone else's.

[4] For the same reason the Lord took up into heaven His entire Humanity that had been glorified, that is, had been made Divine by Him; He left nothing of it in the tomb, which is different from what happens with anyone else. The fact that the Lord glorified His actual body right down to the last and lowest constituents of it, which are its bones and flesh, the Lord also made plain to the disciples, saying,

See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see Me having. Luke 24:39.

And yet He came in through closed doors, and after He had revealed Himself became invisible, John 20:19; Luke 24:31.

These things have been stated in order that people may know that the Lord alone in respect of His Human was Jehovah's Anointed. He was not anointed with oil however but with the Divine Good of Divine Love, which 'oil' is the sign of and which 'anointing' represented, see 9954.

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