“He also presented Himself alive … during forty days” (Acts 1:3, NKJV)
We are currently discussing Gen. 8:7, where Noah sent a raven that flew to and fro until the waters of the earth had dried up. This action took place approximately seven months after the flood had started.
The fact that the raven was sent at the end of forty days (Gen. 8:6), once “the tops of the mountains were seen” (Gen. 8:5), is also an important symbolic marker. Firstly, it is a precise overturning of the forty days it had rained (Gen. 7:4), to illustrate that “the curse has been reversed”. Although there are many references to the number forty in the Old Testament (and it means judgment or testing throughout), the New Testament number is of greater importance to us in this case. In Acts 1:3 we read about the disciples “to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God”. Here forty days point to the period between Jesus rising from the dead and his ascension to heaven, which is to say the period where He walked the earth as a spiritual man with a glorified body. This would then symbolize the period that is linked to what 2 Pet. 3:5 (AMP) calls “the earth also which was formed out of water and by means of water”.
One always wonders why it was necessary for Jesus to live through this interregnum? Why did He not directly ascend to heaven once He rose from the dead?
Remember that the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees were very worried about the statement Jesus made about arising from the dead, and that they had made a plan to counter the possibility of that argument: “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.” (Matt. 27:63-64). In Matt. 28:13 we read that the soldiers responsible for guarding Jesus’s dead body were bribed to say “His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.” To counter this lie Jesus appeared multiple times during the forty days after He arose, to demonstrate that He was indeed not dead. There are various examples throughout the gospels and the book of Acts that are presented to us, and Paul’s argument in 1 Cor. 15:4-8 confirms it further: “And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also …” We also know of a number of other instances, for instance “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them,” and the visitors travelling to Emmaus (24:13-32).
The testimonies about Jesus rising form the dead was in the mouths of very trusted witnesses – the forty days reversed the blasphemy and the curse about the resurrected ark of His body. In addition to this no one could oppose the testimony. The secular historian of the time, Joseph Flavius (in his History of the Jews), as well as various other writers documented the events and thus also granted it credibility. Two generations later the Roman historiographer Eusebius Pamphilius wrote Ecclesiastical History in which he included interviews with other people from the previous generation who had been exposed to the risen Jesus during this forty-day period.
All appearances by Jesus in this period have not necessarily been written down. In John 21:24b-25 the apostle John makes this provision: “… we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.” Although Jesus appeared in bodily form during those forty days, He no longer appeared as such once the Holy Spirit had been poured out, as in this dispensation, the Lord IS the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). Thus the bodily form is not determined by flesh, but by spirit – “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.” (2 Cor. 5:16). Our experiences of the parousia, the appearances of Jesus, are today transmutations at most (we’ll return to this later in the teachings in greater detail.) To summarise, we can see the number forty here as the period representing the precise overturning of the curse in numeric terms, but also that in the New Testament it especially points to the manifestation of the reality of the risen Jesus Christ, and his direct intervention around “the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). Here forty days thus typologically points to the period between rising from the dead and ascending to heaven, which is to say the period where the spiritual man as part of a Body filled with glory manifests the new earth.
It is only now that we can return to the raven that Noah sent out after forty days. Gen. 8:6-7 notes, “So it came to pass, at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.” The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible writes the following about the word translated as window: “A hole is drilled with a tool called a bow drill. The string of the bow is wrapped around the drill. By moving the bow back and forth, and firmly pressing down, the drill spins around drilling the hole.” This clearly ancient mechanism is however important in symbolic terms, as the word for bow is directly linked to the word sin, namely to miss your mark, in other words to not fulfil your calling and purpose. The same ancient Hebrew lexicon notes about sin: “When shooting an arrow or other object to a target, the distance that one misses is measured with a cord.” Typologically seen – if you are IN Christ (in the ark), based on the curse of sin that has been overturned, you are offered a look at the eternal mountains of the period before time. A window is opened onto your calling and purpose, as determined before time.
The back and forth which is part of the action of the bow also reminds us of the Spirit of God who had to move “to and fro” over the primordial waters, according to Gen. 1:2. Darby notes: “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”. It thus also points to a creative act through which the new earth is mapped out.
Many Biblical commentators note that the raven was specifically used because this bird of prey could feed on the dead bodies of man and animal that washed up, and thus not have to return to earth. In the next teaching we delve further into this mystery.
- Selah: Explain the unfolding typology of the ark to someone.
- Read: 25-30
- Memorise: 25:2 – how apt is this Scripture!
