Morontia Appearances of Jesus

190:3.1The fifth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus to the rec­og­ni­tion of mor­tal eyes oc­curred in the pres­ence of some twenty-five women be­liev­ers as­sem­bled at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea, at about fif­teen min­utes past four o’clock on this same Sun­day af­ter­noon. Mary Mag­da­lene had re­turned to Joseph’s house just a few min­utes be­fore this ap­pear­ance. James, Je­sus’ brother, had re­quested that noth­ing be said to the apos­tles con­cern­ing the Mas­ter’s ap­pear­ance at Beth­any. He had not asked Mary to re­frain from re­port­ing the oc­cur­rence to her sis­ter be­liev­ers. Ac­cord­ingly, af­ter Mary had pledged all the women to se­crecy, she pro­ceeded to re­late what had so re­cently hap­pened while she was with Je­sus’ fam­ily at Beth­any. And she was in the very midst of this thrilling recital when a sud­den and solemn hush fell over them; they be­held in their very midst the fully vis­i­ble form of the risen Je­sus. He greeted them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. In the fel­low­ship of the king­dom there shall be nei­ther Jew nor gen­tile, rich nor poor, free nor bond, man nor woman. You also are called to pub­lish the good news of the lib­erty of man­kind through the gospel of son­ship with God in the king­dom of heaven. Go to all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel and con­firm­ing be­liev­ers in the faith thereof. And while you do this, for­get not to min­is­ter to the sick and strengthen those who are faint­hearted and fear-rid­den. And I will be with you al­ways, even to the ends of the earth.” And when he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight, while the women fell on their faces and wor­shiped in si­lence.

190:3.2Of the five mor­ontia ap­pear­ances of Je­sus oc­cur­ring up to this time, Mary Mag­da­lene had wit­nessed four.

190:3.3As a re­sult of send­ing out the mes­sen­gers dur­ing the mid­forenoon and from the un­con­scious leak­age of in­ti­ma­tions con­cern­ing this ap­pear­ance of Je­sus at Joseph’s house, word be­gan to come to the rulers of the Jews dur­ing the early evening that it was be­ing re­ported about the city that Je­sus had risen, and that many per­sons were claim­ing to have seen him. The San­hedrists were thor­oughly aroused by these ru­mors. Af­ter a hasty con­sul­ta­tion with An­nas, Cai­a­phas called a meet­ing of the San­hedrin to con­vene at eight o’clock that evening. It was at this meet­ing that ac­tion was taken to throw out of the syn­a­gogues any per­son who made men­tion of Je­sus’ res­ur­rec­tion. It was even sug­gested that any­one claim­ing to have seen him should be put to death; this pro­posal, how­ever, did not come to a vote since the meet­ing broke up in con­fu­sion bor­der­ing on ac­tual panic. They had dared to think they were through with Je­sus. They were about to dis­cover that their real trou­ble with the man of Naz­a­reth had just be­gun.