The Christ of the 40 Days: Experiencing the Risen, Triumphant Lord

The heartbreaking events of Good Friday did not signal the end of Jesus Christ’s ministry to His disciples—far from it. His resurrection on Easter morning was the beginning of a unique and significant time in His ministry on earth. For the next forty days, until His glorious ascension to heaven, Jesus appeared many times to His followers. During this remarkable period, He taught them about the kingdom of God and explained the requirements of discipleship, His own divine nature, and the power they would soon receive to expand the kingdom of God “into all the world” (Mark 16:15). Today, we can experience that same power to accomplish God’s work.
Those forty days were a link between heaven and earth that is a pattern for us. As we walk with the resurrected Christ, we discover how to reproduce His life in our own experience, and we gain a new sense of His glorious reality and continual presence with us day by day. Just before His ascension, Jesus promised to be with us “all the days,” even to the end of the age.
Relive those forty days with Christ, following the risen Lord to a higher place of spiritual life and victory.
 

Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843–1919) was born to parents of Scottish descent and grew to become one of the most respected Christian figures in American evangelicalism. A much-sought-after speaker and pastor, Simpson founded a major evangelical denomination, published more than seventy books, edited a weekly magazine for nearly forty years, and wrote many gospel songs and poems
The first few years of his life were spent in relative simplicity on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where his father, an elder in the Presbyterian church, worked as a shipbuilder and eventually became involved in the export/import industry. To avoid an approaching business depression, the family moved to Ontario, where the younger Simpson accepted Christ as his Savior at age fifteen and was subsequently “called by God to preach” the gospel of Christ.
Simpson went on to pastor New York’s 13th Street Presbyterian Church. However, in 1881, he resigned and began to hold independent evangelistic meetings in New York City. A year later, the Gospel Tabernacle was built, and Simpson began to turn his vision toward establishing an organization for missions. Simpson helped to form and lead two evangelization societies: The Christian Alliance and The Evangelical Missionary Alliance. As thousands joined these two groups, Simpson sensed a need for the two to become one. In 1897, they became The Christian and Missionary Alliance.