Please serious students: how do you understand John 20:17? When did it take place?

The ascension of Jesus back to heaven (from where He had come) took place 40 days after His resurrection. It happened on the Mount of Olives. Over 500 people witnessed it.

In John 20:17, on the day of the resurrection (the third day after Jesus had died), Mary thought that with the resurrection, Jesus would resume normal relations with His disciples. She was trying to cling to the joy she discovered in her resurrected Lord. But His fellowship with her would come in a new form (20:22). Jesus had not yet ascended to complete His return to the Father, but the process was underway. Before His final departure, He would give the Holy Spirit.

Because Jesus clearly differentiated between Himself and His Father in heaven, it is obvious that Jesus is not the same Person as is the Father. This is what the Trinity doctrine clearly states. We must never get confused with them, imagining the Son is the Father. They have distinctions and different functions in their eternal relationship.

As for Jesus speaking of ‘His God’, the Trinity doctrine agrees with the Bible that all the fullness of God dwells bodily in Christ, and that Christ is the exact representation of God. As Jesus shares the divine Being of God, He cannot be identified apart from this one Being of God, so was returning to God, to enjoy that unique oneness with the Father He had shared from before creation began. When Jesus says, “My God”, He is owning God in a way we never can! We can only ever be adopted children of God, but Christ is the unique, pre-eminent Son of God – which speaks of their relationship, one with the other.

When Mary Magdalene discovered the tomb was empty, it was early on the first day of the week. The first day of the Jewish week starts after sundown on Saturday evening, so it must have been on the Sunday morning, while it was still dark (John 20:1). Jesus told Mary that he still had to return to his Father in heaven. Jesus ascended into heaven 40 days later. See Acts chapter 1, Luke 24:50 and Mark 16:9-20.

As to the meaning of the expression, "my Father and your Father" we must remember that whereas Jesus has eternally been the Son of God, believers are adopted into God's family and so although God is Father both of Christ and of believers, it is in a different sense. See John 1:12, 14, 18 and 34.

Just as Jesus worshipped God while he was on earth, so too do believers worship God, but the difference is that within the One Being of God subsists the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was fully man but also fully God and when he returned to heaven, it was to take up his position alongside the Father and the Holy Spirit as part of the God-head.

Upon his return to heaven, Jesus was given all power and glory and authority, and the name that is above every name.

The words Jesus could never say were "I am ascending to our Father and our God". He had a special relationship with His Father God. He was the only begotten son of God. To begat something is to reproduce from the original source. Man can only begat man, God can only begat God. Jesus calls His Father God because He is still Jesus the man. In Revelations 22 v1 we read of the throne of God and of the Lamb. God is on the throne, the Lamb is on the throne, yet there is only one throne.

Jesus mission on earth was to bring mankind back to God by forgiveness of sins, not to establish Himself as God. Yet He could never deny being God. So these words to His disciples are finalising His mission that we have a Father God who exists and can be reached through Jesus the Son.

This took place on the same Sunday that Jesus rose from the dead on April 19, 33AD.

Jesus RETURNED from heaven later that same day at 12:01 midnight and was standing in the midst of the 10 apostles and SAID,

"Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them,

Receive ye the Holy Ghost"

The date was April 20, 33 AD.

I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God. Jesus at this time was in the Spirit, he had put off his flesh body named Jesus and in doing so fulfilled the prophecy of "A Little While you shall not see, than in "A little while you shall see me" This "Little While" was him dying on the cross going to hell, binding the great red dragon (Satan) for a 1000 years, and freeing all the lost souls in hell and sending them all to paradise in heaven, where some went to the left side and others went to the right side of the Gulf.

My Father and your Father, my God and your God was Jesus conveying to Mary and his disciples that God is our Father and God, that his Father is the one and only true God and He is Spirit and we too are spirit.

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"9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Matt 23:9.

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Touch me not is a poor translation. Do not cling to me might be a little better. Christ is telling Mary that she is not to cling on to the old relationship after the flesh but to learn a new relationship after the Spirit since He was shortly to ascend to the Father. This took place after 40 days as Scripture records.

Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:

To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

Here we have what is also stated many times in Revelation:

12 He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, , , ,

and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new

Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and mine own new name.

. . .These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God: 15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16 . . ..

21 He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne. 22 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.

The scriptures are quite plain, but as usual people do not believe - they believe their churches.

Just like some who say they have a Faithful and Discreet slave when the evil slave has yet to be rewarded for its evil. For if the evil slave is yet to be rewarded, has the good slave really been rewarded ? !

Has the good slave really been set over all of Jesus belongings when this Jesus has all things in the universe subjected to him, except the Father? ! No, there is no human Faithful and Discreet slave that has been given charge over angels or the kings of the earth!

Rev 1: 5 and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, >>>and the ruler of the kings of the earth.<<<

Thus all church goers forget to read and understand what is plainly said.

20:17 Touch me not - Or rather, Do not cling to me (for she held him by the feet,) Mt 28:9. Detain me not now. You will have other opportunities of conversing with me. For I am not ascended to my Father - I have not yet left the world.

The verb, primarily, means to fasten to. Hence it implies here, not a mere momentary touch, but a clinging to. Mary thought that the old relations between her Lord and herself were to be renewed; that the old intercourse, by means of sight, sound, and touch, would go on as before. Christ says, "the time for this kind of intercourse is over. Henceforth your communion with me will be by faith through the Spirit. This communion will become possible through my ascending to the Father."

We all have the same Father and God.

YAHUSHUA fulfilled the symbolism of the Wave sheaf, which was offered to YHVH early in the morning of the first day of the week. At that point He returned to the throne of YHVH to receive the assurance that His sacrifice was accepted, then returned to earth for about 40 days.

The Twelfth of Never.