Aspects of Christian Doctrine: Jesus rose from the dead in the physical body
This is another fundamental tenet of Christianity. Jesus Christ was believed to have risen from the dead in His physical body. It is interesting to note that a great emphasis is being placed on this His rising in His physical body. Jesus could just have been accepted to have died and made an appearance after His death but the insistence that He appeared in His physical body is actually the bone of contention in this matter.
While it is not in doubt that He indeed made several appearances after His death the need for this insistence that He made these appearances in His physical body shows the need for the fathers of the Christian Church to create a personal cult around the Person of Jesus and to build on this personal cult. This religion based on a personal cult was felt to be a surer and easier way of spreading the nascent religion. It guaranteed a quicker success. To have attempted to build the Christian religion on the foundation of the Teaching of Jesus would not have guaranteed a quick spread of this religion running the risk that most human beings would not have paid any attention to it because the true Teaching of Jesus demanded self-exertion and spiritual mobility.
The fathers of the Church knew that if they were to preach strict adherence to the Word of Jesus most human beings would have turned their backs because it would have been too hard for them and as such they felt that to achieve a quicker growth and expansion focus must be turned away from the real Word of Jesus. A personal cult was the way to go since this would not require that the generality of the people adhere strictly to the Word of God. It worked! The leaders of the Church knew our love of ease and they rightly sensed that it would have taken longer for Christianity to take root if they were to advance a strict adherence to the Word of Jesus.
It was this need for the Christian religion to be based on a personal cult that led to this insistence that Jesus rose up in His physical body so that He could be shown to be superhuman and extraordinary and magical. For the vast majority of human beings it worked since most of us thought mostly in magical terms and still do up until the present day. Otherwise it would not have mattered so much in which guise Jesus showed Himself since after all His Word was what should have mattered.
There are quite a few verses in the Bible to dispute this general supposition in the Bible that Jesus rose in His physical body as to when He was not recognised by anyone when He first made an appearance. If He had indeed arisen in His physical body He would undoubtedly have been recognised by His closest associates but He was not. This goes to show that He did not appear in His physical body but in a kind of transformed body different from the physical one.
He was also found to be able to enter into rooms without opening the doors, something He never did before He died which also goes to prove that He was not in His physical body. His being able to enter into rooms without opening doors proves that He was in a different body which was lighter and as such able to penetrate physical substances.
Why were there doubts about His identity by those who knew Him most? If He was in His accustomed physical body would there have been any doubts as to His identity? There were doubts because He looked different because He was not in His accustomed physical body, but as mentioned before in a transformed ethereal body different from the physical one.
If there had been that demand to pay more attention and emphasis on the Word and Teaching of Jesus there would have been no need to keep emphasising this factor of His rising in the physical body much less making it a tenet of the religion. The Word of Jesus is where attention should be directed. He came to this earth to give this Word and not to encourage a personal cult otherwise He would have accepted the offer to be made the King of the Jews but He rejected this and always pointed to the Father and the Message He brought and encouraging us to adhere to this Word.
A great disservice was done to mankind by this personal cult because it directed attention away from what was most important which is the Word of God as revealed through Jesus. This was the Word that was to bring Salvation which was never taught but instead de-emphasised in favour of something apparently more appealing to our indolence and love of ease. The consequences of this we see before us today.
Let us therefore take the personal element out altogether as regards Jesus and pay attention to His Word which is the saving Message sent through Him by the Father.