Room 5 - Jesus and the First Disciples

Post date: Sep 15, 2011 4:8:23 AM

We are now back to the time of Jesus and the earliest Christian believers.  Of course there is candy and a stamp for the board, but they are tempered by a representation of the cross, and a discussion of crosses.  We also see a display of an empty tomb.  It's not quite empty.  We see inscriptions:  

"He is not here; for He is risen, as  He said." - Matthew 28:6

                            and

"Come, see the place where the Lord lay." - Matthew 28:6

And "stooping down and looking in," we see "the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself." And we understand how those first disciples began to believe in the resurrected Lord. We examine a checklist display of the kinds of encounters they had with Jesus over the forty days that followed His resurrection. 

A display poster asks, "Gruesome or Glorious?" Although Christian persecution continues into the 21st Century, the 1st Century martyrs are still the most dramatic evidence that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was not a man-made hoax conspired by a group of disciples. 

Many of the books on the sample bookshelf include apologetic messages by past and current authors who hope to point the way to Christ. Since the apostles and many of the early disciples were eye-witnesses to the life of Jesus, their story was not just based on religious belief, but on historical events that they saw, heard, and felt.  We read that it is conceivable that men such as those who flew jets into the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, would die for a religious belief.  It would be quite another to die for a lie that you made up yourself. 

A depiction of DaVinci's "Last Supper" provides a format to display many accounts of eye-witness martyrs compiled from numerous sources including Foxes' Christian Martyrs of the World. DaVinci is not the only source of artwork on the early believers.  We pause to watch a slide-show display along one of the walls, while listening to a clip from the Jesus Film playing on another monitor. And there is another sound; a video game of the Life of Christ.

We try to concentrate on another strange piece of artwork that assures us that there is a picture to be seen in the mass of green and blue waves.  It is compared to the gospel message; seemingly impossible until you "get it". 

Finally, the call of the button station and the smell of the chili wafting from the dining area pulls us back into the main room.