239. In What Body Did Jesus Appear After the Resurrection?

The language of Luke 24:39 is clear and explicit. The resurrection body proved that Jesus was "the Son of God with power" in taking to himself the same identical body which had been crucified and laid in the grave, and yet which had been glorified "by some such inscrutable change as took place at the transfiguration." The very fact attests him as the Master of life and death and as divine. He continued forty days on earth after the resurrection, taking again to himself that life which he had laid down, in order that his followers and the whole world might be convinced of the completeness of his triumph over the grave and that he had not "seen corruption." He ascended to heaven a spiritual body. (Phil. 3:21, Col. 3:4.)