Mark 16:1-20

SUMMARY 15:1616:20

This closing section of Mark, like the corresponding section in Matthew, contains two proofs of the divinity of Jesus. The first is found in the darkness that covered the earth during three hours of his suffering. It is common, when we would make a comparison to indicate the impossibility of an undertaking, to say that you may as well attempt to blot the sun from the heavens. But this, God did, in effect, when the noonday sun was shining on the dying agonies of Jesus. It was accomplished by no natural eclipse, for the moon was on the opposite side of the globe (the moon was always full at the Passover); but it was done by the simple fiat of Jehovah. No stroke of His almighty hand since the sun was created has been more wonderful. It finds its only conceivable explanation in the fact that Jesus was dying. Was Jesus, then, an imposter? Or was he, what he claimed to be, the Son of God? Let a man stand, by imagination, for three hours amid that awful gloom, as did the Roman centurion, and then answer the question.
But the crowning proof in the grand series which Mark has presented, is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. No power but God's could have raised him from the dead, and this power could not have been exerted in behalf of a pretender. That he was raised from the dead, then, is proof demonstrative that he was all that he claimed to bethe Christ, the Son of the living God.

It has sometimes been admitted, that to prove so extraordinary an event as the resurrection of one from the dead, would require most extraordinary evidence; and certainly it would in the case of any ordinary person; but in the case of Jesus, who had wrought so many miracles in proof of his divinity, who had repeatedly declared that he would arise from the dead, and who had died amid the most astounding manifestations of the divine displeasure toward his murderers, his resurrection was an event most reasonably to be expected, and it ought to be believed on the most ordinary testimony. Indeed, after having lived as he did, and having died as he did, his failure to arise from the dead would have been the most astonishing circumstances in his wonderful career. Such a life ending in the unbroken slumber of the grave, would have been an everlasting puzzle to the world. But such a life, followed by a glorious resurrection from the dead, attains a fitting consummation, and rounds out to completeness the most extraordinary personal history known in the annals of earth or heaven. The proofs of this event, furnished by Mark, are briefly thesethat an angel appeared to a company of women in the empty sepulcher, and told them that Jesus had arisen; that he himself appeared alive that morning to Mary Magdalene; that he appeared the same day to two male disciples as they walked into the country; that he appeared afterward to the eleven as they sat at meat; and that, having given them a commission to preach salvation through him to every creature, he ascended up to heaven, and subsequently worked with the disciples by signs following, as they went everywhere preaching the Gospel. Closing his testimony in the midst of a world which at the time of his writing was being filled with these last-mentioned signs, and which was still able to disprove by living witnesses all that he had written, if it were not true, he laid his pen aside, and sent forth his graphic narrative to challenge contradiction, and to do its part in the regeneration of mankind. We thank God that it has lived and come down to us; and as we pass it on to generations which shall come after us, we smile to think of the blessings it will bear to millions yet unborn, and of the undimmed radiance with which every sentence in it will shine when the sun shall have been blotted out forever, and the harvest of God shall all be gathered in. (J. W. McGarvey)