The Empty Tomb on Resurrection Sunday: The Greatest Miracle in History that Changed Everything

St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain... If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins... But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead."

1 Corinthians 15:54-55 "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"

Matthew 28:6 He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.

In his book Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell notes, "After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history."

While many theories have come and gone and come again trying to explain the Resurrection away, they all end up having major holes in their arguments. Not to mention, none of them can account for the explosion of the unique religion of Christianity in the 1st century. Nor can they explain why the Apostles all willingly went to their horrific martyrdoms for a known lie. They all claimed their faith was grounded in the reality that they had personally seen Jesus Christ risen and alive after his crucifixion. His tomb was empty.

If the Resurrection is false, then all the churches across the world might as well become bowling alleys. But the if it is true... well, then that changes everything, for literally everyone.

An acronym I learned years ago helps explain the truth of the Resurrection. It is FEAT.

F is for Fatal Torment on Good Friday. E is for Empty Tomb on Easter Sunday. A is for Appearances that Our Lord made afterwards. T is for Transformation of the disciples from fearful cowards to heroic martyrs, not to mention the lives changed throughout history ever since.

Fatal Torment begins with the fact of Our Lord's suffering and death on Good Friday. William Lane Craig summarizes, "There is a virtual consensus among New Testament scholars, both conservative and liberal, that Jesus died on the cross, that He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and that His death drove His disciples to despair."

In 1986, the American Medical Association released a statement regarding the physical death of Jesus Christ. A team of doctors concluded, "The major pathophysiologic effect of crucifixion was an interference with normal respirations. Accordingly, 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 Empty Tomb thus becomes key in all this. There is simply no denying that the claim of the tomb being empty on Easter Sunday goes back to the very origins of the Christian movement. The Gospel accounts, as well as St. Paul's statements, all take place in the first generation of believers, whereas it is noted by scholars that even two generations is not enough time for legends and embellishments to begin circulating. We have eyewitness testimonies recorded for us among the very first Christian letters concerning the empty tomb.

It is truly perplexing to conceive of a Christian movement growing the way it did had the tomb still been occupied by a body. Attempts have been made to explain the empty tomb away but they have never been intellectually satisfying to any degree.

Craig writes, "The empty tomb story is uncolored by the theological and apologetical motifs that would be characteristic of a later legendary account." It was speculated as early as the days of the Apostles that the body had been stolen, which does not explain how the cowardly Apostles pulled off such a task while the tomb was being closely monitored by a Roman guard. The fact that this early charge of stealing the body is recorded for us shows even primitive attempts from enemies of truth at trying to come up with an explanation for the tomb being empty.

Others tried pushing the theory that Jesus was not truly dead and that He emerged Himself, which means He defied all medical and physical logic by surviving the scouring, the crucifixion, the spear to the heart, waited until Sunday, pushed the stone back from the entrance to the tomb, and snuck past the guard. Now this is truly the stuff of fable and legend.

An interesting side fact in all this is that the testimony initially comes from women who discover the empty tomb. It is well documented that in this historical setting, women were not even allowed to be eyewitnesses in a court of law because their testimony was seen as untrustworthy. One would think the New Testsment writers would have noted that it was men who made the initial discovery.

Craig notes, "Any later legend would certainly have made the male disciples to discover the empty tomb. The fact that women, whose testimony was worthless, rather than men, are the chief witnesses to the empty tomb is most plausibly accounted for by the fact that, like it or not, they were the discoverers of the empty tomb and the gospels accurately record this."

D.H. van Daalen has noted, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.”

A further point is made by Joachim Jeremias that the very concept of a physical Resurrection from physical death, prior to the end of the world, was a foreign concept to Jewish thinking of that day. He writes, "Ancient Judaism did not know of an anticipated resurrection as an event of history. Nowhere does one find in the literature anything comparable to the resurrection of Jesus. Certainly resurrections of the dead were known, but these always concerned resuscitations, the return to the earthly life. In no place in the late Judaic literature does it concern a resurrection to glory as an event of history."

The Appearances of Our Lord are well documented and again demonstrate how Christianity boomed in this era, despite the reality of the crucifixion.

Acts 1:3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

Acts 2:32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

This passage from St. Paul is revealing, as he says to his readers in Corinth that among these witnesses of the Risen Christ, some were still alive as of his writing. Dr. Gary Habermas comments on the literary style of this by noting, "It’s ultimately rooted in eyewitness accounts."

The Transformation of the Apostles, as well as of hardened sinners throughout history (myself included) provides the most compelling aspect of the Resurrection, a supernatural miracle rooted in recorded history which confounds the wise and inspires the humble.

St. Peter, for example, goes from being the man who denied even knowing Jesus on the eve of His Passion to the man who emerges on Pentecost Sunday to boldly preach that all must repent and be baptized. St. Paul goes from being a known tormentor and persecutor of the early Christian movement to composing the bulk of the New Testament and undergoing numerous missionary travels to proclaim the Risen Christ that he personally encountered. Both of these men end up becoming martyrs for their conviction in Christ being raised from the dead.

Some ancient accounts even note that St. Peter witnessed his wife and children being killed before he himself was crucified upside down. As he watched this happen, he called out to his family, "Remember Christ!"

Since the first century, the scores of men and women and children from every walk of life and out of every culture imaginable who have given their lives to Christ, often times culminating in their own martyrdoms, continues to be the ongoing witness to the truth of the Risen Lord.

Jesus Christ truly suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried. And He then rose from the grave, victorious and triumphant over death. And He offers eternal life to all of us who believe, repent, and carry our crosses with Him to the end. May you place your trust and obedience in our Savior, our King, our Messiah, our Lord. The tomb is empty. He has risen. Alleluia.

Photo of the empty tomb taken by the author of this article in November 2019.