The Christ of the 40 Days: From Resurrection to Ascension
"How tender and loving is the Christ of the 40 days! Look at Him again as He meets with Thomas, the doubting one, the willful disciple who petulantly demanded that the Lord should give him evidence that He had given to none other, and that no human heart had a right imperiously to claim. But how tenderly the Lord concedes even his demand, until Thomas is ashamed to accept it. More amazed at his Lord's magnanimity and omniscience than at the evidence of His wounds, he cries, "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28). One who is harassed by doubts and difficulties does not need to fear again to bring them to the presence of Him who, with such condescending love, is ready to meet them all and to make our hearts know, by the deeper evidence of His own great love and the revealing of Himself, that He is indeed the Son of God."
A. B. Simpson, The Christ of the 40 Days
The heartbreaking events of Good Friday did not signal the end of Jesus Christ's ministry to His disciples—far from it. His resurrection on Easter morning was the beginning of a unique and significant time in His ministry on earth. For the next forty days, until His glorious ascension into heaven, Jesus appeared many times to His followers. During this remarkable period, He taught them about the kingdom of God and explained the requirements of discipleship, His own divine nature, and the power they would soon receive to expand the kingdom of God "into all the world" (Mark 16:15). Today, we can experience that same power to accomplish God's work.
These forty days were a link between heaven and earth that is a pattern for us. As we walk with the resurrected Christ, we discover how to reproduce His life in our own experience, and we gain a new sense of His glorious reality and continual presence with us day by day. Just before His ascension, Jesus promised to be with us "all the days," even to the end of the age.
Relive those forty days with Christ in Simpson's classic The Christ of the 40 Days, following the risen Lord to a higher place of spiritual life and victory.
