The Road to Emmaus

A joyous Easter to all who may read this this day. Jesus Christ is risen today. Through the ages, skeptics have fought with this and their arguments have fallen by the wayside. One of them has personal meaning - the swoon theory.

This theory is that Jesus did not really die on the cross, woke up from His coma while in the tomb and walked away. The absurdity of this theory has never been able to completely kill it. It keeps on coming back to life every several decades. Let's put it in the tomb.

When we look at the later paintings of Jesus on the cross or being laid in the tomb, we see that he has been speared in the side of his abdomen by the Roman soldier. But this was not the way it was done. The oldest pictures have it right. They show the Roman soldier pressing his spear between two ribs into the right lung.

This is excruciatingly painful. Tuberculosis forms a hardened ring on a lung, then punctures the lung in the middle. Both times when this happened to my mother, she went straight to the floor in extreme agony. She would not be walking anywhere for weeks to come.

But the spear did not stop there. the soldier would push it further in until it punctured the heart. This is what the Bible is trying to tell us when it says that water ran out first(pulmonary fluid from the lung - the descriptive words, pulmonary fluid, did not exist at this time). This was followed by blood from the heart.

Even if a man had risen from where he was lain in the tomb, he would then have had to push the stone away to get out - 350-450 kilos ( 800 - 1,000 lbs.), at least, and then escape past the Roman guard. And you are going to require this if a man that was mercilessly beaten before crucifixion. Absurd. Only the risen Son of God can come forth out of the tomb.

I find it always helpful when I find the answer to some question that has puzzled me in the past. One question that had been on my list for many years was why two of the men who had followed Jesus were on their way to Emmaus Easter afternoon.

I suppose that the most obvious answer would be that they were going home, but I have learned in my many years in the scripture that the obvious often misses the point, in this case, by a country mile.

I have found out in recent years that the village of Emmaus was at the site of a battleground where a great Jewish victory over the Seleucid Greeks who had defiled the temple in Jerusalem. Much like many of us who like to read about former great moves of God when we are facing defeat or plain boredom in our current spiritual estate. When the blessing that God had for them was to come in Jerusalem, two of Jesus' sheep were headed away from it. The Good Shepherd had to go after them and set them back in the right direction.

Jesus' method was to bypass the Maccabees and go back further to the prophets and to tell them that all that had happened in these previous days were in the plan of His Father. But, even though what He said burned in their hearts, they were so grief stricken, it did not get to their hearts until Jesus prayed for them. Then their eyes were opened.

Jesus is ever interceding for us at this very moment the Word of God tells us. It also says that Jesus is saying, at this moment, "Behold I stand at the door and knock and if any man hear my voice, I will come in and eat with Him. Had the two men not decided to welcome Him to stay with them, He never would have sat at the table with them, nor would He have prayed before them and their eyes would not have been opened.

More than anything, we need to invite Him to stop and stay with us awhile so that our spiritual eyes may be opened. Before the cross, it was as though God and man were in adjoining rooms and both of the adjoining doors were locked. In the cross, the door on His side was opened and He was now knocking at the door which only we could open. If we would open that door to Him, He can come in and fellowship with Him. Have you ever done that? Have you done it recently? The problem is not on His side nor His heart.