Before the Son of God was crucified and gave Himself to die, He had prepared His disciples with a glorious promise.  They were floored with the warning from Him that He would be put to death.  To them He was eternal life, and His death was not in their understanding of Him.  They wanted a new kingdom of Jewish glory where the Romans would be sent back to Rome.  His kingdom was a spiritual kingdom that they had not grasped.  He had to help them see this spiritual breakthrough that was about to occur.  A glorious day was going to break upon the whole world.  A risen Lord would lead a transformed body of believers to evangelize all men.

How could such a thing happen with Him dead?  It could not, but there was a plan.  He would rise again, and His resurrected life would be given to every believer.  He promised this to them with these words, "Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also" (John 14:19).  Do you understand that after His resurrection no unconverted person saw Him nor could they see Him?  He was invisible to the world; only His transformed saints saw Him.  He appeared to them at His will and the most that were ever able to see Him at one time was about five hundred at His ascension. 

His resurrected body was a mystery to behold and it still is today.  The next time that He will be seen by His living saints is at the Rapture.  Those that die in the Lord see Him immediately, but the entire body of raptured believers will see Him all at one time.  Nothing should fill our hearts everyday of our life like "looking for Him to appear"  The Holy Book has stated "unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation" (Hebrews 9:28b).  All the scales of human limitation will be removed and we will see Him in His unclothed glory.  John had only a glimpse of Him while still in the mortal body and he fell like a dead man.  When that Rapture occurs we will be glorified and see Him as He is eternally. Joy unspeakable!

The mystery of His resurrection is breathtaking.  When His Spirit was set free by His sacrifice of blood and His body, that Spirit immediately descended into the realm of the dead.  He did not go in some emaciated death defeat but to take charge of death.  The believers of the First Covenant were in Abraham’s bosom awaiting a sacrifice of blood that would complete every death of every animal that had ever been slain.  When He stepped into that realm as the Kinsman Redeemer, every waiting soul recognized who He was.  They must have shouted for three days and three nights as He preached the message of resurrection.  When all hell was finished, He lead a procession up, up, up and shook all Jerusalem as these saints passed, on their way to glory.

He ministered to His own for forty days and revealed the mystery of His resurrected life.  They saw His body–a new resurrected body–never before seen or known.  That was the perfect image of His living body bearing all the marks of redemption, but unaffected by those previous wounds.  It was a body of flesh and spirit instead of flesh and blood.  Thomas put his finger in the wounds, but they did not bleed.  The blood was on the altar not in His new body.  His voice had an eternal ring that could not be mistaken.  His movements were no longer limited by space.  There was a glory in His body that revealed this unity of the Divine.  The Father was in Heaven on His throne, but He was also revealed in His resurrected Son.  The Holy Spirit was flowing out of Him like a river. Yet He was fully the Son of man as they had known Him.

No one that saw Him would ever forget Him.  The stumbling Peter was transformed into a fearless apostle.  Saul of Tarsus got close enough to hold a garment that was ripped from one that saw Him in His glory and days later was fallen in the dirt from the glimpse of His shadow.  This great company of eyewitnesses shook the world.

If we can once again look full into His resurrected mystery, we too can be arrested disciples.  Our weaknesses are in our absence of the vision of Him.  Too busy to tarry in the place of His glory and too satisfied with our limited knowledge of Him, we struggle forward in our powerless pursuit of religion.  He is still alive and His promises have not changed.  "Because I live, ye shall live also" (John 14:19).   He also said, "Handle me and see" (Luke 24:39).

The death of the LordÂ’s Day has created a stench in the House of God. A day set apart for the world to slow down, rest, and listen was ordained by the Creator in Genesis at the conclusion of His creative genius. By the great arm of their Spirit, our Father and His Son had brought perfect order out of empty space. The crown of their creation was man and woman that were perfectly capable of filling the world with worshippers. The entire universe was set on a motion of sevens.

The birth of a child is the perfect example of two created numerical powers united together. Forty is the cycle of a generation, while seven is the cycle of our inner motions. After conception, a child is fully complete and ready to pass the birthing channel in forty weeks or forty times seven days. Every animal and living cell mutates or gives birth after the multiplication or division of sevens. Even our fields, our forests, and our gardens have a built in cycle of sevens. If the land does not rest after six years, it dies and artificial substance must be added to shock it into action. The entire growth of organic vegetables, along with every product in our food chain, is a testimony to this reality. ItÂ’s a shame of the church that New Agers and environmentalists are the forces behind this revival of reality. ItÂ’s already in GodÂ’s book, but we ignore it in our pursuit of a seventh day of fun instead of a seventh day of worship.

John, the writer of the book of Revelation, is a great testimony to the fourth commandment in the New Covenant. He was a captive serving a sentence imposed on him by the Roman government and was no doubt doing hard labor. I would question the Roman guards not forcing him to work because of His desire to keep the LordÂ’s Day, but He was already having church deep in his heart regardless of their efforts. The Bible affirms his devotion, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet” (Revelation 1:10). The significant words are “the Lord’s day.” The First Day of every week is the “LordÂ’s Day.” JohnÂ’s words make it plain that this is not our day — but His day — and that it is sacred before Him. He arose on the First Day of the week and appeared that same day to His disciples. “And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you” (Luke 24:36). He appeared on the next First Day of the week – one week later — to them again and His Spirit descended to fulfill Pentecost forty-nine (7 X 7) days and one day after His Resurrection, which was again on the First Day of the week. The “LordÂ’s Day” was set in these incredible occasions, which was the fulfillment of numerous First Covenant prophecies.

The Ark rested on the First Day of the week to prophecy a New Beginning (Genesis 8:4). The Children of Israel crossed the Red Sea on the First Day of the week to progress on their journey to the Promised Land. (Read our booklet entitled, “The Lord’s Day and the Feast of Firstfruits.”) The Old Covenant is loaded with types and shadows of the coming New Beginning when the Kinsman Redeemer would suffer. He was resurrected and inaugurated a New Beginning of life, hope, and salvation as our Jewish Messiah. We do not live under the Old Covenant, so we do not celebrate its death. We live under the New Covenant and every seven days we celebrate its glorious victory.

The church world would be turned upside down if we took seriously the joy of total rest and worship on the “Lord’s Day.” It cannot be done as a ritual or a legalistic bondage. To reduce this to hard and cold legalism would be to return to the empty laws of dead religion. It’s life and joy when we celebrate His Resurrection in the liberty of His finished work. We must turn away from our own natural delight and labor to worship and renew His life in us every seventh day. It is because the cycle in our natural bodies longs for the rest that flows only from Him, Who is “all in all.” There is no other source of Eternal Life but Him.

Joseph R. Chambers