The weeks between Passover and Pentecost are a special time that God works with the spirits of His people. Those fifty days were probably the most challenging and confusing days the disciples had ever lived. They ate the Passover meal with Yeshua (Jesus), went to the Garden of Gethsemane, saw Him arrested, and watched Him be crucified (Luke 23:49; John 19:25-27). It was not a fun time. During those fifty days between Yeshua’s hanging on the cross and the Day of Pentecost, God was working something in the hearts of these men and women who were getting ready to change the world. But first Yeshua had to change His relationship with them.

The disciples had walked with the Master and known Him after the flesh. He was Immanuel, “GOD WITH US” (Matthew 1:23).¹ Think about that. They did not know Jesus in the sky. They knew the Son of God as a human who shared His daily life with them. They walked with Him, dwelled with Him, and ate with Him. God was a living relationship with them. So it was no small thing when Yeshua said, “You are not going to see Me anymore.” Peter struggled with this idea and Yeshua responded, “It is to your advantage that I go away” (John 16:7). God had to transition the disciples from being followers to being apostles. He had to take them from being mere men to those walking as Christ walked in the earth. He had to mature them out of the stage of being students and transform them into the place of being teachers of the things of God. That was a big job! Nothing would be the same after the day of Pentecost. Nothing!

We have lived during the years of an invisible Christ, but God is going to change that. I know that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), but God is always doing something new (Isaiah 43:19). Christ will appear again to His people just as He did during the forty days preceding His ascension. He “will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The disciples saw many appearings during the forty days before Yeshua left, so we should anticipate His multiple appearings to us during this miracle time between Passover and Pentecost as He returns (Acts 1:3).

God is getting ready to do something different with the Church—more than He has done before. Christ is preparing our hearts to receive Him; the Father and Son are coming to make their abode in us (John 14:23). After the resurrection, Christ appeared to His disciples in another form. He was changing their thinking, and we are in a time when He is changing our thinking as well. When Yeshua walked with the two on the road to Emmaus, they did not recognize Him, but their hearts burned within them (Luke 24:32). Why was that? Christ was becoming a living Word to them and not just a visual Person (John 1:14). In the same way that Yeshua departed, so He will return. Look for Him during this time leading to Pentecost. Fix your “eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2). As we focus on Him, this new anointing in us will reveal Christ to the entire world.

¹ All Scripture references are from the New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB1995).