The words of the angels at the tomb the day Jesus rose from the grave don’t often come to mind. But then again, that’s because they don’t mean much to us. It went like this, “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” (Mark 16:6-7)
Basically, the angel seems to give instructions for the disciples to “go on ahead to Galilee”. But as we saw, eight days later, they were still in Jerusalem. Now, Galilee is about 68 miles north of Jerusalem. And, as they had no cars and were walking, it would take awhile. The average adult walks/travels at about 3 miles per hour. That means, it would take a couple of days to travel there. So, we can assume, if they left the very next day, they would have arrived in Galilee about 11 or 12 days after The Resurrection.
In the 40 days that Jesus did stay (after He arose), we can guess too that He was in Galilee at least 12 days or so afterwards. Why? Because Matt. 28:16-17 tells us that He finally met them there. “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”
Interesting, they see Him alive…but some still doubted.
All that to say, Jesus spent some time with them in Galilee. After all, this was their home turf. The 12 were originally from there. So it was only natural to be back where they started…at least for awhile.
Stay tuned…
S.
