{"id":605,"date":"2015-04-09T12:01:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T12:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/?p=605"},"modified":"2015-04-09T08:07:08","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T08:07:08","slug":"blog-april-9th-doubting-thomas-how-great-are-his-signs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/?p=605","title":{"rendered":"Blog April 9th – \u201cDoubting Thomas\u201d – \u201cHow Great Are His Signs\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Unless
\n“Unless I see nail marks put my finger into His side, I shall not believe that He is alive ” Thomas after hearing from the disciples that Jesus is alive.\u00a0 Taken from Risen!- The Musical.<\/p>\n

Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em> has, of course, been immensely successful over four decades, however it does not include the Resurrection of Jesus. Stephen Schwartz\u2019s 1970\u2019s musical Godspell <\/em>\u00a0is \u00a0regarded by most as \u201cChristian\u201d as it is based on the parables told \u00a0in St Matthew\u2019s Gospel, \u00a0however, \u00a0even in Godspell <\/em>, the Resurrection of Jesus can, at best, be described as problematic.<\/p>\n

There is nothing problematic about the resurrection appearances featured in Risen!- The Musical<\/em> whose double CD was released \u00a011 days ago, in fact the majority of the 110 minute production focuses on the many appearances Jesus made to His followers during the 40 days from His Resurrection on Easter Sunday to His Ascension to heaven.<\/p>\n

In John\u2019s Gospel we learn that the first person to see Jesus alive was Mary Magdalene- that was very early on the morning of what we now call Easter Sunday. Luke\u2019s Gospel tells us that later that afternoon He appeared to Cleopas and his friend as they were walking to the village of Emmaus. Later that evening Jesus again appeared to His disciples but John tells us that Thomas was not with them. When the disciples \u00a0exclaim to \u00a0Thomas \u201c We have seen the Lord\u201d (John 20:25) Thomas \u00a0does not believe them and \u00a0says \u201cUnless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my finger into His side, I will not believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this is why poor Thomas has forever been referred to as \u201cDoubting Thomas.\u201d\u00a0 I had always felt this to be completely unfair – we learn from John 11:16 that Thomas was, in fact, a courageous man who told the rest of the disciples that they should all follow Jesus into danger when Jesus decided to travel to Bethany near Jerusalem- in fact Thomas said to the disciples \u201cLet us also go that we may die with Him.\u201d – hardly the words of a man who doubted Jesus! \u00a0Risen!- The Musical<\/em> portrays Thomas\u2019 \u201cdoubt\u201d as being caused \u00a0by him being \u00a0so overcome with grief, after seeing Jesus crucified, that he just did not dare believe the disciples when they told him that Jesus was alive. He did not want his hopes dashed yet again.<\/p>\n

John tells us that Jesus appeared to the disciples again one week later and this time Thomas was with them and proclaimed to Jesus \u201cMy Lord and my God.\u201d\u00a0 In Risen!- The Musical<\/em> \u00a0I took a little poetic licence and imagined what Thomas would have done in that week between hearing from his friends that Jesus was alive and then seeing Jesus Himself.\u00a0 I have portrayed him going somewhere in solitude, immersing himself with those Psalms that focus on trusting God and then returning to the rest of the disciples reassured that what they had told him could, in fact, be true – in fact Risen!<\/em> -The Musical<\/em> has Thomas leading the disciples in a worship song, the words of which come from the Book of Daniel, Chapters 4 and 6. This is the featured song for today \u201cHow Great Are His Signs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next week I hope to have news of how the rehearsals are going with our cast from the London College of Music and we should also have the Risen! – The Musical<\/em> double CD available to be downloaded from ITunes and Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Unless I see nail marks put my finger into His side, I shall not believe that He is alive ” Thomas after hearing from the disciples that Jesus is alive.\u00a0 Taken from Risen!- The Musical. “How Great Are His Signs” featuring Thomas (played by James Townend)\u00a0 and The Original Cast from Risen!- The Musical Jesus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-shearsmiths-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}