If you went to a funeral and the person who died greeted you at the door, would you immediately recognize him? Maybe your mind wouldn’t allow that. If you did recognize him would you call his living body a ghost? Even though Jesus told His disciples that He would be resurrected, they didn’t understand it or expect it. First He had to convince them He wasn’t an invisible spirit. Notice, they didn’t say his dead body was demon possessed. Demons didn’t re-animate dead bodies. They cohabited in living ones.

Presumably the Holy Spirit preserved Jesus’ biological body so that He could use it to reappear to his disciples for forty days, to prove that He indeed overcame the place of the spiritually dead ones. That was a first. Overcoming biological death in order to temporarily live on earth again had been done before. But they all died again and went to Hades (the two known exceptions are Enoch and Elijah and we don’t know where their earthly bodies went). Jesus didn’t die again. He went to heaven.

The typical tree of life could have sustained biological life for Adam, to the age of determination. But that would have been a spiritually dead end to Adam’s probation. Jesus is the antitypical tree of life who granted spiritual life to the age. The age ended or became never ending in AD70. In Adam all died to the age. In Jesus all lived to the age.

Jesus said some of God’s people would still be biologically alive when He returned, but all God’s chosen people were guaranteed to be spiritually alive to the age. It was spiritual life in AD70 that granted access to the realm of heaven, not biological life. If physical life to the age was enough for Adam to get to heaven then Adam would have been allowed to stay in Eden and live to the age of one thousand. The typical tree of life would have sustained his biological life that long. It was up to Adam to sustain his spiritual life to the age, by not breaking the one law that broke his relationship with Yahweh. His relationship was automatically broken when he ate from the one and only forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Being banned from the typical tree of life is what caused Adam to die before the age of one thousand. He spiritually died (hiding and blaming) the day he ate. He biologically died at 930 years of age and waited for the messiah to reign in his/His millennial day in AD70.

Invisible evil spirits were commonly known and feared in the first century. Even the human bodies they inhabited were feared, since they were superhumanly possessed. Traditionally, those evil spirits were hybrid humans who had biologically died in the typical judgement and were now looking for human bodies to indwell. Demons were bred by crossing forbidden lines between creatures in the first place. They were a first century reminder of the flood judgement on the land, which was caused by the bad behavior of the progeny of the angels; the fallen angels who left their proper domain and took human wives. But demons wanted to occupy and rule any earthly body; male or female. When the demons died during the flood they were stuck in the realm of physical earth depraved of their biological body. They did not belong in Hades with the dead humans, so their hybrid spirits co-opted living human bodies for their outlandish realm of existence.

Like both their parents, these crossbreeds were especially attracted to human bodies, which may be why they hung around Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the human enclave, but demons were inhumane beings, which meant they didn’t follow the rules of humanity. Whether they became evil or were born evil I don’t know. We normally think of newborn babies as depraved with the potential to either join humanity or become evil. Even animals were declared to be part of God’s good creation in their proper domain.

When an animal crosses the line and habitually harms or kills a human it is considered bad and is to be killed. A demon possessed person sometimes acted worse than an animal and even harmed himself, though he was hardly to blame. Demon creatures were the offspring of angel/human parents and were bred by crossing the domains of God’s good creations. They had no God-assigned body of their own. They were sentient beings who were blameworthy for their actions. Their irredeemable destiny was destruction.

Unlike first century demons, even the fallen and irredeemable angels still had their own bodies. Even when angels took on human bodies, I think they were their own special creation bodies. Angels had participated in the (Genesis chapter one) human creation event. Maybe that is why angels could cross the line into a specially created human body to take humans for wives. They didn’t inhabit and assume control of human bodies already in use. That was their unseen yet earthbound progeny known as demons who would do that. What made the angels bad was the purpose for taking on the human bodies of their own. Good angels sometimes took upon themselves human bodies, but did not use them for procreation. When God begot a Son He didn’t do it with a temporary flesh body of His own. He did it by sending the Holy Spirit to Mary.

Demons were of course in a worse state of affairs than the spiritually dead humans, who were on hold and awaiting the grace of God in Hades. Demons were so desperate and depraved that they were willing to ‘share’ a body on land. If you call that sharing. They were irredeemable half-human/half-angel gone bad, with no domain to call their own. Constrained to earth, they were haunting and spiritually violating the humans they originally came out of. They were very personally calling upon themselves the anti-typical flood judgement of AD 70. That judgement would complete the former flood judgement death, of their flesh body, with the death of their very existence. Jesus came into the world so His people would not be destroyed to the age, but receive life to the age. He saved His people from perishing in AD70. God’s people are now in the new covenant age that never ends. Those in the first resurrection (the body of Christ) would not be harmed by this second death. The resurrected body of Christ is the church. The demons and their angel parents were irredeemable. Those who stayed in Adam also perished to the age.

John 3:15-16

YLT ¹⁵ that every one who is believing in him may not perish, but may have life age-during, ¹⁶ for God did so love the world, that His Son—the only begotten—He gave, that every one who is believing in him may not perish, but may have life age-during. (Age-lasting life was life all the way to the millennial probationary age, which resulted in the eternal life of the new covenant age that now possesses God’s people.)

AD 70 was a second and more existential death to the Nephilim, whose spirits were confined to the land of Noah’s flood. Some commentaries render the following verse to mean eternal torment rather than what the demons may have imagined, which was some kind of pre-annihilation affliction. The demons were still tormenting people and so they projected an immediate retributive justice upon themselves when they saw the judge. They thought maybe Jesus came to torment them before His final judgement day actually arrived, when they would face destruction. The demons knew the day of the Lord was at hand but not quite yet. The Nephilim had already experienced a typical day of the Lord judgement.

Matthew 8:28-29

LITV ²⁸ And when He had come to the other side, into the country of the Gergesenes, two demon-possessed ones met Him, coming out of the tombs, very violent, so that no one was able to pass through that way. ²⁹ And, behold! They cried out, saying, What is to us and to You, Jesus, Son of God? Have You come here beforetime to torment us?

Seeing a spirit would be a fearful aberration since spirit beings themselves aren’t visible to earthly body eyes. So Jesus told His disciples to feel his flesh and the bones within. He could have cut Himself and proved His body still had bright red blood too, but that wasn’t necessary. Even Thomas, who demanded to touch the nail wounds as proof of the resurrection, probably didn’t follow through. It was, after all, the same living body they were familiar with before He died. Somehow having the same flesh body made Him a safely contained spirit being. Jesus kinda said they were being unreasonable about the whole thing. What’s harder to believe: an animated dead body or a walking talking living body? He was obviously not invisible and Hebrews didn’t believe in zombies. The English word for zombie didn’t even appear until the 19th century. It is a recent conceptual hyperbole used by Haitians to describe their soulish torment as 17th and 18th century slaves.

Luke 24:33-40

YLT ³³ And they… gathered together the eleven, and those with them, ³⁴ saying—`The Lord was raised indeed, and was seen by Simon;’ <sup>35</sup> and they were telling the things in the way, and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread, <sup>36</sup> and as they are speaking these things, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith to them, `Peace—to you;’ ³⁷ and being amazed, and becoming affrighted, they were thinking themselves to see a spirit. ³⁸ And he said to them, `Why are ye troubled? and wherefore do reasonings come up in your hearts? ³⁹ see my hands and my feet, that I am he; handle me and see, because a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me having.’ ⁴⁰ And having said this, he shewed to them the hands and the feet,

Mark 9:31-32

³¹ for he was teaching his disciples, and he said to them, `The Son of the human is being delivered to the hands of humans, and they shall kill him, and having been killed the third day he shall rise,’ ³² but they were not understanding the saying, and they were afraid to question him.

In the early morning light, at some distance from Him, expecting Him to be dead, Mary thought He was the gardener.

John 20:15

LITV ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, Woman, why do you weep? Whom do you seek? Thinking that it was the gardener, she said to Him, Sir, if you carried Him away, tell me where you put Him, and I will take Him away.

Another early-morning-light encounter with the disciples, also had a delayed recognition.

John 21:4

LITV ⁴ And it now becoming early morning, Jesus stood on the shore. However, the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

We know that the Jewish disciples, who were hiding for fear of the old covenant Jewish establishment, became fearless after they realized the bodily resurrection of Christ. Except when the Judaizers tried to require the Gentiles to become proselytes and join their old covenant establishment. But that episode was soon resolved by the original church in Jerusalem itself, which only adds credibility to the tumultuous transition story.

The next instance can’t be attributed to the lighting or to the distance. But it was their eyes that were “held” from seeing. It was not His body that was unrecognizable. Jesus said they were slow to believe what the prophets spoke. It wasn’t until the closer fellowship of a meal that their eyes were opened. They had been served a meal by this man before. After they recognized Him, Jesus disappeared. He didn’t leave them until they in their slowness were able to be a witness to His resurrection. They recognized not His body first, but His person. Then they spoke of how they should have known all along. Their eyes wouldn’t believe what their mind was trying to tell them. They had to believe with their heart, not their eyes. Their eyes were telling the truth all along but their mind would not accept the picture. Their eyes were looking right at a their resurrected messiah, yet they wouldn’t believe it.

Luke 16:31

CLV ³¹ Yet he said to him, ‘If Moses and the prophets they are not hearing, neither will they be persuaded if someone should be rising from among the dead.'”

Luke 24:13-35

LITV ¹³ And, behold, two of them were going on the same day to a village being sixty stadia distant from Jerusalem, which was named Emmaus. ¹⁴ And they talked to each other about all these things taking place. ¹⁵ And it happened, as they talked and reasoned, coming near, Jesus Himself traveled with them. ¹⁶ But their eyes were held so as not to recognize Him. ¹⁷ And He said to them, What words are these which you exchange with each other while walking, and are sad of face? ¹⁸And answering, one of them whose name was Cleopas, said to Him, Are you only one who resides in Jerusalem and do not know the things happening in it in these days? ¹⁹ And He said to them, What things? And they said to Him, The things concerning Jesus the Nazarene, who was a man, a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people; ²⁰ and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the judgment of death, and crucified Him . ²¹ But we were hoping that He is the One going to redeem Israel. But then with all these things, this third day comes today since these things happened. ²² And also some of our women astounded us, having been early at the tomb, ²³and not finding His body, they came saying to have seen a vision of angels also, who say Him to be alive. ²⁴ And some of those with us went to the tomb, and found it so, even as the women also said; but they did not see Him. ²⁵ And He said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe on all things which the prophets spoke! ²⁶ Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His glory? ²⁷ And beginning from Moses, and from all the prophets, He explained to them the things about Himself in all the Scriptures. ²⁸And they drew near to the village where they were going, and He seemed to be going further. ²⁹ And they constrained Him, saying, Stay with us, for it is toward evening, and the day has declined. And He went in to stay with them. ³⁰ And it happened as He reclined with them, taking the loaf, He blessed, and breaking He gave to them. ³¹And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him. And He became invisible from them. ³² And they said to one another, Was not our heart burning in us as He spoke to us in the highway, and as He opened up to us the Scriptures? ³³ And rising up in the same hour, they went back to Jerusalem, and they found the Eleven, and those with them, having been gathered, ³⁴ saying, The Lord really was raised and appeared to Simon. ³⁵ And they related the things in the highway, and how He was known to them in the breaking of the loaf.

The message was going out that Christ had been raised from the dead ones. Yet in The church at Corinth they were not believing in the ongoing resurrection of those who died before Christ, because they couldn’t see them with their biological eyes. Yet even biological eyes wouldn’t believe in the resurrection when they did see the walking, talking body of Christ. Paul tells them that if the dead ones (that Jesus visited in Hades and proclaimed victory to) aren’t being raised (into the new covenant body of Christ) then neither has Christ been raised from there. It was the new covenant human who brought life to the old covenant dead ones. He was giving them life to the age of probation. The new human body is now the eternal church proper, no longer in probation. We can’t see the resurrected body of Christ with our biological eyes only.

1 Corinthians 15:21-22

ECB ²¹ For since through humanity, death, also through humanity, the resurrection of the dead. ²² For exactly as in Adam all die (to the age), even thus in the Messiah all enliven: (to the age)

The all that enlivened were all the elect. The body of Christ, which is the visible people of God on earth, was enabled to do even greater works after the bodily ascension of Christ. He was glorified with the Father (returned to the glory He had) before He sent the Holy Spirit to glorify His bride. The church on earth was enabled after His ascension. The church was not disabled and told to wait in inactivity. His sacrifice, resurrection and ascension from Jerusalem didn’t accomplish lethargy or idle retreat.

It was only after He took that old covenant sacrifice to the true temple as the priest in the order of Melchisedec that He sent the Holy spirit to His redeemed people. He Himself was no longer there to empower them. The fulfillment Adam had to become the antitypical sacrifice in the true temple before empowering His people, from heaven. Jesus’ life in Adam had to be put to death so he could be a high priest without genealogy in a new creation body. He is now our high priest without beginning or ending. His humanity joined the glory He had before He came down from heaven.

John 14:12

CLV ¹² Verily, verily, I am saying to you, he who is believing in Me, the works which I am doing he also will be doing, and greater than these will he be doing, for I am going to the Father.”

Maybe “greater works” means greater in volume or in time, since nobody can do a greater work than the keeping of the law in the old covenant or the sacrificial redemption of God’s old covenant people who couldn’t keep it. They would do “greater works” because He was going to the Father, not because He was biologically with them again.

Hebrews 7:3

ECB ³ unfathered unmothered ungenealogized; neither beginning of days nor completion/shalom of life; but likenessed to the Son of Elohim; abides a priest in perpetuity.

Psalms 110:4

YLT ⁴ Jehovah hath sworn, and doth not repent, `Thou art a priest to the age, According to the order of Melchizedek.’ 

Adam was not allowed to be a typical tree of life priest to the age. He forfeited that privilege for his family. Biological life to the age wasn’t the goal. Obedience to the age was the goal.

Genesis 3:22

YLT ²² And Jehovah God saith, `Lo, the man was as one of Us, as to the knowledge of good and evil; and now, lest he send forth his hand, and have taken also of the tree of life, and eaten, and lived to the age,’ 

In the flesh body of Adam Jesus had a genealogy. Jesus could not be a priest as a son a Adam because nobody from the tribe of Judah was a priest, let alone a priest into the perpetuity. The writer of Hebrews changes “into the age” to ” into the perpetuity” because as high priest Jesus took us into the new covenant age alive, which became perpetuity. To the age was some kind of goal that we retroactively translate for Adam as “forever” even in Genesis chapter 3.

After Adam’s fall, Jesus alone could have finished the old covenant age alive and gone into perpetuity as a son of Adam. Instead He sacrificed that old covenant life to became a priest for His people as the new covenant first born man; no longer a son of Adam but still the only begotten Son of God. It required a death, burial and resurrection to become the firstborn of a new creation without adamic genealogy.

Although Jesus was resurrected with the same flesh body with the same DNA, nowhere does it say He is living in the same flesh body today. His presence on Earth in his flesh body was a testimony to His victory over Hades, yet something was still incomplete. Many commentators interpret the next verse in the sense of “do not be holding onto me as of yet”. Apparently, the time for holding on to the eternal body of Christ was still to come, after Christ ascended to the Father. Something about the perpetuity of His new creation was still incomplete. Evidently He had to become glorified in order to become Mary’s priest. Glorification meant exiting the flesh that humiliated Him. Biology was His humiliation not His goal. After returning to His former glory with His Father, He sent His image to live in Mary spiritually. Only with Jesus at the right hand of God do we see heaven open up for humanity. He was still in the body of eschaton Adam while on earth, even though He was resurrected into the beginning stage of the new covenant, just as we are still in our earthly bodies after entering the new covenant and before ascending to heaven at death. So what did He do with that living old covenant sacrifice when He arrived to the real temple as our new high priest?

You are not sowing the body that will be. There are earthly bodies and there are heavenly bodies. Maybe Jesus is in a heavenly body now and He was in an earthly body while on earth. We all burn out of our earthly bodies before we go to heaven. Jesus wasn’t hanging around that long. He had work to do in heaven. Those who received the Spirit of Christ were being called living sacrifices. They were all dying to the flesh body they were in but still spiritually alive. Heavenly angel bodies were sometimes cloaked or contained in temporary earthly bodies, just so we could see and interact with them here. An angel can be seen in his spiritual body when we get to heaven, because we will have spiritual body eyes.

The spiritual body resurrection of 1 Corinthians 15 was in the ongoing tense in the first century. The spiritual body was only unseen by earthly eyes. Nevertheless, people on earth were joining Christ in His spiritual body resurrection. They were joining Him who lives in heaven, where angel bodies already lived too. They can see each other in heaven. Only hybrid demons are said to be bodiless spirits stuck in an inter-realm of existence. At their flesh-body death, the demons were in a unique realm-less depravity. All God’s creations were given bodies by Himself. Demons didn’t belong to either the human or the angelic body class that had God created. That is why He destroyed their chaos-creating earthly body and then they had nowhere to go. Only human bodies on earth would wait in Hades to receive heavenly resurrected bodies; not half-humans/half-gods. Jesus is fully human and fully God. God didn’t make a half-human when He begot His Son through a woman. That is why He went to Hades when He died. Hades was made for humans. Hades would be destroyed after humanity was off probation.

1 Corinthians 15:44

⁴⁴ It is being sown a natural body; it is being raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual

body.

1 Corinthians 15:49-50

YLT⁴⁹ and, according as we did bear the image of the earthy, we shall bear also the image of the heavenly. ⁵⁰ And this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood the reign of God is not able to inherit, nor doth the corruption inherit the incorruption; 

John 20:17

YLT ¹⁷ Jesus saith to her, `Be not touching me, for I have not yet ascended unto my Father; and be going on to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and to your God.’

His old covenant soul was resurrected out of the old covenant death of souls and re-united with His earthly flesh body. It was kept from corruption for 3 days but it was still the same aging earthly body. The old covenant age was previously limited by the flesh and blood failure. Everyone spiritually died and stayed spiritually dead without completing the age alive. Jesus’ earthly body was simply preserved from decay and then re-inhabited. It did not become a glorified heavenly body at the earthbound resurrection. He got back into the same aging body, with flesh, blood, bones and scars.

Acts 2:31

YLT ³¹ having foreseen, he did speak concerning the rising again of the Christ, that his soul was not left to hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

Yeshua did not send the Spirit until He Himself was glorified in heaven. He did not end the old age until His bride was glorified.

John 7:39

ECB ³⁹ And he says this concerning the Spirit whom those trusting in him are about to take: for the Holy Spirit is not yet because Yah Shua is not yet glorified.

His return to glory united His people. God imagers are united by the Holy Spirit. Is the Holy Spirit glorious? The Holy Spirit is the full image of God. John 17:11 is spoken in the present tense, yet it is obviously referring to post-cross and post-ascension time.

John 17

LITV ¹ Jesus spoke these things and lifted up His eyes to Heaven, and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may also glorify You, ² as You gave to Him authority over all flesh, so that to all which You gave to Him, He may give to them everlasting life. ³ And this is everlasting life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. ⁴ I have glorified You on the earth. I finished the work that You gave Me to do. ⁵ And now Father, glorify Me with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the existence of the world. ⁶ I revealed Your name to the men whom You gave to Me out of the world. They were Yours, and You gave them to Me; and they have kept Your Word. ⁷ Now they have known that all things, whatever You gave to Me, are from You. ⁸ For the words which You gave to Me, I have given to them. And they received and truly knew that I came out from beside You, and they believed that You sent Me. ⁹ I pray concerning them; I do not pray concerning the world, but for those whom You gave to Me, for they are Yours. ¹⁰ And all My things are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹ And no longer I am in the world, yet these are in the world; and I come to You.

John 17:20-25

LITV ²⁰ And I do not pray concerning these only, but also concerning those who will believe in Me through their word; ²¹ that all may be one, as You are in Me, Father, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. ²² And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may be one, as We are one: ²³ I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected in one; and that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them, even as You loved Me. ²⁴ Father, I desire that those whom You have given Me, that where I am, they may be with Me also, that they may behold My glory which You gave Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵ Righteous Father, indeed the world did not know You, but I knew You; and these have known that You sent Me.

Jesus’ mission was to make God known to those He chose and to rescue them from the about-to-perish flesh mode of the old covenant consummation. Jesus got into an aging flesh body to accomplish it. Maybe He didn’t come to make flesh eternal. He came to rescue us from our probationary flesh. The average lifespan from which time you must be born again to be saved is 70 years. If not you perish along with your flesh. doesn’t that seem to be a reversal of the curse on Adam who was put on hold at 930 years of age?

John 17:25

JMNT ²⁵“O fair and equitable Father (Father who is the paradigm of justice, uprightness and rightwised relationship), though the ordered System (world of culture, religion, economy and government) does not have experiential knowledge of You, yet I Myself experientially and intimately know You (or: the world, also, did not know you by experience, yet I personally knew You), and these people personally know and recognize that You sent Me forth as an Emissary with a mission,

After the ascension, God’s people were not really His people unless they had the Holy Spirit in them. So why would God’s people go to Hades after they die. Hades was for the spiritually dead ones. If anyone has spiritual life it is those with the indwelling Spirit of Yahweh. Stephan saw heaven open for humanity and Jesus standing as his high priest at the right hand of the Father. Stephan had the indwelling Holy Spirit and was about to die and go to Heaven. Even if at that time in the transition the martyrs are pictured under the alter, as the full number of martyrs had not yet been accomplished, because the old covenant hold outs were still killing the spiritual people who had the Holy Spirit of God. That time has ended. Nobody is in the old covenant killing those in the new covenant transition. The covenant transition is complete. Transition sacrifices are over.

Romans 8:9

ECB ⁹ And you are not in flesh, but in Spirit whenever the Spirit of Elohim dwell in you. And if one has not the Spirit of Messiah, he is none of his.

Do we expect Jesus to re-appear in His flesh, blood and bone body in Jerusalem again? He ascended and was glorified in heaven after that reappearance. Haven’t the old covenant dead ones already been raised with their heavenly bodies fit for heavenly living, in the one new covenant body of Christ? Isn’t Christ the head human in God’s family today? Where is that family? Heaven or Hades? Only old covenant people went to Sheol, AKA Hades. The first century was a transition from the old man body to the new man body. The new man body is spiritual and heavenly. In the new man all spiritually live even though they biologically die.

Adam was in Hades. Christ is in heaven. The new man doesn’t live in the types of old covenant Jerusalem. He only lived there as eschaton Adam. He said, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days.” Their temple was a copy of the real one that is now and forever in heaven. Isn’t the eternal human body the temple of the God’s image in heaven? The Holy Spirit of God used to live in a typical temple in Jerusalem. He does no more. He opened the true temple to humanity. The true temple is the body of Christ in heaven and on earth. He is forever the head human.

1 Corinthians 6:19

CLV ¹⁹ Or are you not aware that your body is a temple of the holy spirit in you, which you have from God, and you are not your own?

If you were your own you would perish along with your flesh.

John 3:11-15

YLT ¹¹ `Verily, verily, I say to thee—What we have known we speak, and what we have seen we testify, and our testimony ye do not receive; <sup>12</sup> if the earthly things I said to you, and ye do not believe, how, if I shall say to you the heavenly things, will ye believe? <sup>13</sup> and no one hath gone up to the heaven, except he who out of the heaven came down—the Son of Man who is in the heaven. <sup>14</sup> `And as Moses did lift up the serpent in the wilderness, so it behoveth the Son of Man to be lifted up, ¹⁵ that every one who is believing in him may not perish, but may have life age-during,