Daily Manna
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Topic: The empty tomb 3
Reading: Matthew 27:57-66, 28:1-15
Scripture: He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee. (Luke 24:6)
Note: The suggestion from the chief priests and the Pharisees to the soldiers to take a huge cash bribe as incentive for replacing the evidence of a great earthquake, the descending of the angel of the Lord from heaven and the lightning countenance which they saw, with the rather meek idea that the disciples stole the body while all four soldiers were simultaneously asleep on duty at the peril of their lives, circulated for a while but it didn’t survive for very long.
The question reasonable people began to ask was, “If all the soldiers were really simultaneously asleep, which is practically inconceivable, how could they have known what really happened?” Also, the extravagant evidence of moving the great stone additionally sealed by the mean Roman guards without generating any noise to awaken the supposed sleeping soldiers was laughable. The fear-struck disciples of Jesus who were all in hiding after Christ’s death for fear of following their Master to an early grave, miraculously had the audacity and the brazen effrontery and time to navigate through armed Roman soldiers, strip the body of the grave clothes and carry the body without the slightest noise awakening the sleeping soldiers.
These soldiers witnessed the great earthquake, the angel of the Lord descending from heaven and his lightning countenance. What they heard and saw was enough to make them opt for flight due to fright as against the horror of harsh interrogation and sentencing to possible death from the priests and Pilate.
Food for thought: Jesus Christ was incontrovertibly confirmed as the Son of God when he defied the horror of the grave and broke the hold of death over humanity by rising from the dead.
Declaration: And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” (Mark 15:39)
© Author: Rev Fred Aboe
