Day 253

  • Principle: Jesus, and others, appeared to many in testimony of Christ’s resurrection.  
  • Book of Mormon Reading: Helaman 3:1-3:18
    • Verse 14 says “a hundredth part of the proceedings . . . cannot be contained in this work.”  Not everything was recorded but the Nephites.  How many things go unrecorded in your life?  How does this relate to the life of Jesus Christ?  What could have gone unwritten about the life of Jesus Christ? 
  • As you study about the resurrection of Jesus Christ make a list of all those who he visited.  
  • James E. Talmage taught about the time of the resurrection:
    • “Our Lord definitely predicted His resurrection from the dead on the third day, (Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Mark 9:31; 10:34; Luke 9:22; 13:32; 18:33), and the angels at the tomb (Luke 24:7), and the risen Lord in Person (Luke 24:46) verified the fulfillment of the prophecies; and apostles so testified in later years (Acts 10:40; 1 Cor. 15:4). This specification of the third day must not be understood as meaning after three full days. The Jews began their counting of the daily hours with sunset; therefore the hour before sunset and the hour following belonged to different days. Jesus died and was interred during Friday afternoon. His body lay in the tomb, dead, during part of Friday (first day), throughout Saturday, or as we divide the days, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, (second day), and part of Sunday (third day). We know not at what hour between Saturday sunset and Sunday dawn He rose.” (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 697.)
  • He went on to teach about why Jesus instructed Mary to not touch him:
    • “One may wonder why Jesus had forbidden Mary Magdalene to touch Him, and then, so soon after, had permitted other women to hold Him by the feet as they bowed in reverence. We may assume that Mary’s emotional approach had been prompted more by a feeling of personal yet holy affection than by an impulse of devotional worship such as the other women evinced. Though the resurrected Christ manifested the same friendly and intimate regard as He had shown in the mortal state toward those with whom He had been closely associated, He was no longer one of them in the literal sense. There was about Him a divine dignity that forbade close personal familiarity. To Mary Magdalene Christ had said: ‘Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.’ If the second clause was spoken in explanation of the first, we have to infer that no human hand was to be permitted to touch the Lord’s resurrected and immortalized body until after He had presented Himself to the Father. It appears reasonable and probable that between Mary’s impulsive attempt to touch the Lord, and the action of the other women who held Him by the feet as they bowed in worshipful reverence, Christ did ascend to the Father, and that later He returned to earth to continue His ministry in the resurrected state.” (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 682.)
  • Talmage went on to teach about why others didn’t believe Mary’s account of the resurrection:
    • “Mary Magdalene and the other women told the wonderful story of their several experiences to the disciples, but the brethren could not credit their words, which ‘seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.’ After all that Christ had taught concerning His rising from the dead on that third day, the apostles were unable to accept the actuality of the occurrence; to their minds the resurrection was some mysterious and remote event, not a present possibility. There was neither precedent nor analogy for the stories these women told—of a dead person returning to life, with a body of flesh and bones, such as could be seen and felt—except the instances of the young man of Nain, the daughter of Jairus, and the beloved Lazarus of Bethany, between whose cases of restoration to a renewal of mortal life and the reported resurrection of Jesus they recognized essential differences. The grief and the sense of irreparable loss which had characterized the yesterday Sabbath, were replaced by profound perplexity and contending doubts on this first day of the week. But while the apostles hesitated to believe that Christ had actually risen, the women, less skeptical, more trustful, knew, for they had both seen Him and heard His voice, and some of them had touched His feet.” (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, pp. 682–83.)
  • Additional Study: