Why Forty Days?

In the above words the evangelist Luke brings to our minds the forty days between the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and His ascension. Why was it that between these two blessed events of salvation there were actually forty days? Why did not Christ, after having arisen, immediately ascend into heaven? Had He not cried out, “It is finished”?

The answer to these questions must be that these forty days were not necessary for Christ, but they were necessary for His church. Oh, what would have become of those women, of Peter, of the travelers to Emmaus, of Thomas, and of all the others if He had not revealed Himself alive by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days?

Oh, it is true, they had the Scriptures. Those Scriptures (the Old Testament) spoke so clearly of the necessity of His suffering and death, but also of the certainty of His resurrection. It is also true that they loved the Scriptures. However, at the same time they were so blind regarding it. Repeatedly we read how that, after Easter, He opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures. That was one of the reasons why He did not immediately ascend to heaven after His resurrection. He must, as Hellenbroek says so simply, “instruct His disciples still farther in some things.” How God's church has need of instruction continually!

What a privilege it then is that the living King still gives that heavenly instruction, even though He is no longer upon this earth in His human nature. From His place of honor at the right hand of the Father, He now teaches them by His Word and Spirit. He has said that the Spirit “shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26).

Oh, beloved readers, how necessary it is that we personally also partake of that instruction! Are you already in the blessed school of instruction, where man must learn that which our flesh is not willing to learn, namely, to become less and less until we are nothing and God is all? He teaches as one having authority. His Spirit can teach us everything that we by nature never desire to learn — a bowing before God, a loathing of ourselves, an approving of God's judgment, a hungering after righteousness. By His Spirit He still teaches His children in the way of salvation, opening the Scriptures for their understanding and their understanding for the Scriptures.

Forty days! What blessed, scriptural instruction the disciples received in that time! The Lord makes scriptural Christians of His children. However, those forty days also served another purpose. It was not only a time of instruction, not only a time in which He manifested to His disciples more fully the certainty of His resurrection, as Hellenbroek so aptly expressed it, but it was also a time of preparation. Another course was coming in the life of the disciples.

After the sharp preaching of the law under John the Baptist, a blessed, sweet, and unforgettable time had dawned for the church. They had daily enjoyed the presence of the Savior. His prophetical instruction had been richly blessed in their lives. However, that time was now past. They now had to learn to live not by what they felt and enjoyed, but by faith in Him who had accomplished all things and now sat at the right hand of God.

It was for that life of faith that the King now began to prepare His people in those forty days. “Touch me not,” He had said to Mary Magdalene; and He said to Thomas, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” Oh, readers, what a blessed people they are who may know Him and love Him, although not seeing Him.

In those forty days there were a number of times that the disciples saw the Lord, after He had revealed Himself to them. May you in your own life know that He is not a stranger to you.

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