The Time of the Tomb

188:3.1Through­out this Sab­bath day the dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles re­mained in hid­ing, while all Je­ru­sa­lem dis­cussed the death of Je­sus on the cross. There were al­most one and one-half mil­lion Jews pres­ent in Je­ru­sa­lem at this time, hail­ing from all parts of the Ro­man Em­pire and from Mes­o­po­ta­mia. This was the be­gin­ning of the Pass­over week, and all these pil­grims would be in the city to learn of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus and to carry the re­port back to their homes.

188:3.2Late Sat­ur­day night, John Mark sum­moned the eleven apos­tles se­cretly to come to the home of his fa­ther, where, just be­fore mid­night, they all as­sem­bled in the same up­per cham­ber where they had par­taken of the Last Sup­per with their Mas­ter two nights pre­vi­ously.

188:3.3Mary the mother of Je­sus, with Ruth and Jude, re­turned to Beth­any to join their fam­ily this Sat­ur­day evening just be­fore sun­set. David Zeb­e­dee re­mained at the home of Nicode­mus, where he had ar­ranged for his mes­sen­gers to as­sem­ble early Sun­day morn­ing. The women of Gal­i­lee, who pre­pared spices for the fur­ther em­balm­ing of Je­sus’ body, tar­ried at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

188:3.4We are not able fully to ex­plain just what hap­pened to Je­sus of Naz­a­reth dur­ing this pe­riod of a day and a half when he was sup­posed to be rest­ing in Joseph’s new tomb. Ap­par­ently he died the same nat­u­ral death on the cross as would any other mor­tal in the same cir­cum­stances. We heard him say, “Fa­ther, into your hands I com­mend my spirit.” We do not fully un­der­stand the mean­ing of such a state­ment inas­much as his Thought Ad­juster had long since been per­son­al­ized and so main­tained an ex­is­tence apart from Je­sus’ mor­tal be­ing. The Mas­ter’s Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster could in no sense be af­fected by his phys­i­cal death on the cross. That which Je­sus put in the Fa­ther’s hands for the time be­ing must have been the spirit coun­ter­part of the Ad­juster’s early work in spir­i­tiz­ing the mor­tal mind so as to pro­vide for the trans­fer of the tran­script of the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence to the man­sion worlds. There must have been some spir­i­tual re­al­ity in the ex­pe­ri­ence of Je­sus which was anal­o­gous to the spirit na­ture, or soul, of the faith-grow­ing mor­tals of the spheres. But this is merely our opin­ion—we do not re­ally know what Je­sus com­mended to his Fa­ther.

188:3.5We know that the phys­i­cal form of the Mas­ter rested there in Joseph’s tomb un­til about three o’clock Sun­day morn­ing, but we are wholly un­cer­tain re­gard­ing the sta­tus of the per­son­al­ity of Je­sus dur­ing that pe­riod of thirty-six hours. We have some­times dared to ex­plain these things to our­selves some­what as fol­lows:

188:3.61. The Cre­ator con­scious­ness of Mi­chael must have been at large and wholly free from its as­so­ci­ated mor­tal mind of the phys­i­cal in­car­na­tion.

188:3.72. The for­mer Thought Ad­juster of Je­sus we know to have been pres­ent on earth dur­ing this pe­riod and in per­sonal com­mand of the as­sem­bled ce­les­tial hosts.

188:3.83. The ac­quired spirit iden­tity of the man of Naz­a­reth which was built up dur­ing his life­time in the flesh, first, by the di­rect ef­forts of his Thought Ad­juster, and later, by his own per­fect ad­just­ment be­tween the phys­i­cal ne­ces­si­ties and the spir­i­tual re­quire­ments of the ideal mor­tal ex­is­tence, as it was ef­fected by his never-ceas­ing choice of the Fa­ther’s will, must have been con­signed to the cus­tody of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Whether or not this spirit re­al­ity re­turned to be­come a part of the res­ur­rected per­son­al­ity, we do not know, but we be­lieve it did. But there are those in the uni­verse who hold that this soul-iden­tity of Je­sus now re­poses in the “bo­som of the Fa­ther,” to be sub­se­quently re­leased for lead­er­ship of the Neb­a­don Corps of the Fi­nal­ity in their undis­closed des­tiny in con­nec­tion with the un­cre­ated uni­verses of the un­or­ga­nized realms of outer space.

188:3.94. We think the hu­man or mor­tal con­scious­ness of Je­sus slept dur­ing these thirty-six hours. We have rea­son to be­lieve that the hu­man Je­sus knew noth­ing of what tran­spired in the uni­verse dur­ing this pe­riod. To the mor­tal con­scious­ness there ap­peared no lapse of time; the res­ur­rec­tion of life fol­lowed the sleep of death as of the same in­stant.

188:3.10And this is about all we can place on rec­ord re­gard­ing the sta­tus of Je­sus dur­ing this pe­riod of the tomb. There are a num­ber of cor­re­lated facts to which we can al­lude, al­though we are hardly com­pe­tent to un­der­take their in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

188:3.11In the vast court of the res­ur­rec­tion halls of the first man­sion world of Sa­ta­nia, there may now be ob­served a mag­nif­i­cent ma­te­rial-mor­ontia struc­ture known as the “Mi­chael Memo­rial,” now bear­ing the seal of Ga­briel. This memo­rial was cre­ated shortly af­ter Mi­chael de­parted from this world, and it bears this in­scrip­tion: “In com­mem­o­ra­tion of the mor­tal tran­sit of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth on Uran­tia.”

188:3.12There are rec­ords ex­tant which show that dur­ing this pe­riod the su­preme coun­cil of Sal­ving­ton, num­ber­ing one hun­dred, held an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing on Uran­tia un­der the pres­i­dency of Ga­briel. There are also rec­ords show­ing that the An­cients of Days of Uversa com­mu­ni­cated with Mi­chael re­gard­ing the sta­tus of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don dur­ing this time.

188:3.13We know that at least one mes­sage passed be­tween Mi­chael and Im­manuel on Sal­ving­ton while the Mas­ter’s body lay in the tomb.

188:3.14There is good rea­son for be­liev­ing that some per­son­al­ity sat in the seat of Cali­gas­tia in the sys­tem coun­cil of the Plan­e­tary Princes on Je­ru­sem which con­vened while the body of Je­sus rested in the tomb.

188:3.15The rec­ords of Eden­tia in­di­cate that the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther of Nor­la­ti­adek was on Uran­tia, and that he re­ceived in­struc­tions from Mi­chael dur­ing this time of the tomb.

188:3.16And there is much other ev­i­dence which sug­gests that not all of the per­son­al­ity of Je­sus was asleep and un­con­scious dur­ing this time of ap­par­ent phys­i­cal death.