The Resurrection of Jesus 

Jesus was crucified on April 7, 30 CE and buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Shortly after his burial, certain celestial personalities gathered to discuss a possible means of restoring their Master to life. But the celestial being Gabriel advised them that the means to bring the Creator back to life was up to Jesus alone. And then Jesus’ glorified indwelling spirit spoke further words of advice that echoed that of Gabriel. And so, this group of archangels and others whose job it was to participate in such mortal rehabilitation adjourned and awaited further developments.

On April 9, 30 CE, Jesus resurrected from the tomb in a form that was not material, yet not fully spiritual. He was made visible in this form to nearly one thousand people in nineteen separate appearances before he left earth.

The material body of Jesus remained in the tomb, undisturbed, when Jesus resurrected in semi-spirit form. The large stone in front of the tomb remained in place. Not wishing to witness the slow decay of the body of their Master, the chief of archangels requested of Gabriel that they be given custody of his human body and he granted their request. In order to remove the body, the stone was rolled away and the body of Jesus was returned to its elements, a return of the “dust to dust.” And this was accomplished by bypassing the element of time, so that the material body instantaneously decomposed.

When Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb on Friday afternoon, a group of archangels and others convened to discuss a possible technique for restoring Jesus to life. These personalities were involved with the work of the rehabilitation of mortal beings and the creation of their semi-spirit forms. This group under the direction of the chief of the archangels assembled on their own; they were not summoned by Gabriel to raise Jesus from the dead. After hours of deliberation, they came to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done to give their Master assistance. Gabriel had told them that since the Creator Son had “laid down his life of his own free will, he also had power to take it up again in accordance with his own determination.”

So the group adjourned; and shortly afterwards, Jesus’ glorified indwelling spirit spoke to this group, saying: “Not one of you can do anything to assist your Creator-father in the return to life. As a mortal of the realm he has experienced mortal death; as the Sovereign of a universe he still lives.”

He went on to explain to them that the Creator Son desired to experience the entire cycle of human life: from birth on this material world, through natural death, and then to resurrection as a semi-spirit being, and then into the status of true spirit existence – a cycle that all mortals undergo. He further explained that they were about to witness one phase of this experience of the Creator, but that they could not participate in it; what they might ordinarily do for a creature, they could not do for the Creator.

He finished by saying: “A Creator Son has within himself the power to bestow himself in the likeness of any of his created sons; he has within himself the power to lay down his observable life and to take it up again; and he has this power because of the direct command of the Paradise Father, and I know whereof I speak.”

Upon hearing this advice, the various personalities stood by in a state of anxious expectancy, including Gabriel and all the way down to the most humble cherubim. Not really understanding fully what was happening, they all quietly waited for the next development.

At two forty-five on Sunday morning, seven unidentified personalities from Paradise arrived at the tomb and positioned themselves around it. Five minutes later, intense tremors began coming from the tomb. And at two minutes past three o’clock in the morning of April 9, 30 CE, the personality of Jesus, in his resurrected, semi-spirit form, came forth from the tomb.

Jesus’ material body remained in the sepulcher where it had been laid, wrapped in the linen sheet. It was undisturbed from the way it had been arranged by Joseph of Arimathea and his friends on Friday afternoon. The seal of Pilate was intact; the stone that had been rolled across the entrance was still in place; the guards were still on duty as they had been since the tomb was sealed. None of them suspected that this personality that they so carefully guarded had risen to a new and higher form of existence and that the body in the tomb was now just an outer covering that was no longer connected to Jesus.

No personality or celestial being had anything to do with the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. On Friday, his human life ended on the cross; on Sunday morning, he took his life up again as a resurrected being in semi-spirit form.

Here is what is known for sure about the resurrection of Jesus:

1. Jesus was not resurrected in the material body of flesh and bone that he inhabited for his whole life. The material body of Jesus remained in the tomb, undisturbed. The stone before the entrance and the seal of Pilate were not moved or disturbed, but Jesus did emerge from the tomb in semi-spirit form.

2. Jesus did not emerge as a fully spiritual being. He did not appear as he had before his incarnation on earth.

3. Jesus did emerge from the tomb in the very same likeness as all resurrected mortals will appear in the next life after their mortal death. And this phase of Jesus' life is one that he desired to experience, just as all mortals will experience it. We may not stay on the earth for a period of time, as Jesus did. But we will resurrect as he did – in a new form and in a different world.

Jesus greeted Gabriel and other semi-spirit beings like himself who had gathered from the worlds where mortals dwell after their resurrection from earthly death. They had assembled to greet their Sovereign. And Jesus said to them: “Having finished my life in the flesh, I would tarry here for a short time in transition form so that I may more fully know the life of my ascendant creatures and further reveal the will of my Father in Paradise.”

And with that, Jesus began his next phase of existence as one who lives in a realm midway between the fully material life and the fully spiritual life, an existence that all mortals will experience after death.

Jesus lived as the resurrected Son of Man. He lived midway between the material and the spiritual. And he did all of this through his own inherent power. As he began this new life, his material body still rested in the tomb. The soldiers still guarded the tomb, and the seal of Pilate had not been broken.

Just after Jesus had resurrected and resumed his risen life, the chief of archangels asked Gabriel for the material body of the Master which still lay undisturbed in the tomb. This angel told Gabriel that the archangels desired to facilitate “immediate dissolution” of the body by means of accelerated time. In other words, what might take years to accomplish normally, they would process instantly. They reasoned that, having seen their Creator suffer and die, they wished to spare the hosts of heaven from witnessing the slow decay of the human form of Jesus.

Gabriel granted permission to the chief of archangels for the hosts of heaven to take custody of the body and its disposition.

Since the remains of Jesus were physical and literal, the body could not be removed in the way that the spirit-form of the Master had been able to escape the sepulcher. The spirit form can be made indifferent to ordinary matter, but not so with the physical form.

The stone guarding the tomb was then rolled away by unseen hands, prompting much terror and fear from the Jewish guards and the Roman soldiers who panicked and ran away to report what they had seen. This sent the Jewish authorities into great agitation. Instead of punishing the guards for deserting their posts, they paid each of the guards a sum of money to create a story that the apostles had come during the night while they slept and took the body of Jesus.

The empty tomb was discovered shortly thereafter when Mary Magdalene and the women came to anoint Jesus' body. And it is largely because of their witnessing of the “empty tomb” that the Christian belief in the resurrection of the literal body of Jesus began. But the fact of the empty tomb was very misleading.

The tomb was empty because the hosts of heaven had been granted their request to give Jesus’ body a rapid dissolution; a return of “dust to dust.” And this was done instantaneously, without any delay of time, as would be normal in any other situation of the natural and gradual decay of a material body in the grave.

In his resurrection appearances, Jesus often was unrecognizable even to people who had known him well. It was only after he would speak that his personality was recognized. And this is because it was not his earthly body that these people saw, but his semi-spirit presence. An example of this phenomenon is recorded in the Master’s first resurrection appearance. To Mary Magdalene, Jesus said: “Touch me not, Mary, for I am not as you knew me in the flesh. In this form will I tarry with you for a season before I ascend to the Father.”

It was Jesus’ unique personality that was instantly discernible to Mary and others once he spoke. And in this form, the risen Jesus became part of the personal experience of almost one thousand people before he ascended to the Father and departed earth.