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).