Faithful find fulfillment in empty tomb

Some years ago a man visiting my home told me that he had once been declared dead. “They had even wheeled me into the morgue,” he said. “But when my mother came in to look at me, she saw me move. So they took me back out and finally brought me around. My mother gave me life twice!” he exclaimed.

The story is intriguing mainly because we know that death usually enters where it knocks and stays when it enters. People who are truly physically dead tend to stay that way.

Yet in A.D. 33 an extraordinary event transpired that still has the world talking. A young itinerant Jewish religious teacher known as Jesus of Nazareth was put to death by crucifixion one Friday afternoon outside Jerusalem.

According to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Crucifixion indicate that his “death resulted primarily from hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. Jesus’ death was ensured by the thrust of a soldier’s spear into his side. Modern medical interpretation of the historical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead when taken down from the cross.”

The body of Jesus was then cleansed. The corpse was treated with 100 pounds of spices and placed in a new rock-hewn garden tomb. A large stone was rolled against the entrance of the tomb. Two Georgia Tech engineering professors visiting Israel once did a technical calculation of the likely weight of a stone large enough to block the 41/2-foot entrance of a typical tomb’s doorway. They concluded that such a rock would weigh 1 to 2 tons.

An ancient manuscript on file in the Cambridge Library of England indicates that 20 men could not have moved a rock that size. An elite Roman security force of between four and 16 men was assigned to guard the tomb.

The tomb itself had been sealed with two tamper-proof clay packs bearing the official signet ring of the Roman governor. Automatic execution by upside-down crucifixion served as an effective deterrent to any would-be grave robbers.

In spite of all this, beginning early Sunday morning, reports began to circulate that the unimaginable had happened. The tomb’s seals had evidently been broken. The stone had been moved. The grave was empty. The grave clothes were present, but vacated. The Roman guards were AWOL.

As the day wore on, these early reports were corroborated. And once, in the weeks that followed, more than 500 witnesses claimed to have seen Jesus personally – all at the same time and all in the same place.

Keep in mind that there was a tremendous incentive for Jewish and Roman authorities to produce Jesus’ body. A lifeless body would have instantly stopped the reports and pre-empted the rise of Christianity. And yet no body was ever produced.

Twenty centuries hence, circumstantial evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus has continued to build. Expert legal opinion sustaining the viability of such evidence has come from all quarters. Attempts to refute the account with such conjecture as the unknown tomb theory, the wrong tomb theory, the swoon theory, the hallucination theory, the stolen body theory, and the legend theory have themselves all proven unconvincing.

Hugh Schonfield’s 1965 treatise, “The Passover Plot,” was once popular, just as “The Da Vinci Code” is popular today. Now it collects dust on a back shelf while millions of people from every nation on earth continue to gather annually every Easter Sunday morning to sing hymns like “He Lives!” and “Up From the Grave He Arose.”

Someone recently asked me, “What is it that makes Christianity distinct among world religions? How do you sort through the thousands of worldviews out there and decide what is true and what is false?” There is a simple answer to that question: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If the Resurrection of Christ were ever disproven, I’d resign from the ministry, renounce Christianity and stay in bed on Sunday mornings. But after 2,000 years that isn’t a likely scenario. Because the tomb of Jesus Christ, alone among world religious leaders, still remains empty.

The French philosopher Auguste Comte once told Thomas Carlyle that he was going to start a new religion to replace Christianity. Carlyle said, “Good. All you have to do is be crucified, rise again on the third day, and convince the world of it. Then you’ll have a chance.”

The Rev. Daryl E. Witmer is founder and director of the AIIA Institute, a national apologetics ministry, and associate pastor of the Monson Community Church. He may be reached via AIIAInstitute@aol.com or through ChristianAnswers.Net/AIIA. Voices is a weekly commentary by Maine people who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life.