Matthew 28:2-4

CHAPTER 29

THE RESURRECTION

Mark 16:1. “ And the Sabbath passing away, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, purchased aromatics, in order that, having come, they may embalm Him.” The city of Magdala, in the land of Dalmanutha, stands on the northwestern coast of the Galilean Sea, and was immortalized by the nativity and residence of the most heroic and spiritual female disciple of our Lord, cognomened Magdalene, designative of her city. I saw it frequently while sailing over that beautiful sea on the track of my Lord, and visited it once. The other Mary here mentioned, and second in prominence only to Mary Magdalene, was the mother of the Apostle James, surnamed the Less. Salome was the honored mother of James the Greater and John the beloved apostle. The hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, furnished by Nicodemus at the time of His hurried interment on Friday evening, was only a noble beginning of that rich and royal embalmment with which they proposed to honor the One they all loved as no tongue could tell.

It is pertinent here to observe, that the disciples failed to discriminate between the prophecies appertaining to His two advents, mixing them up heterogeneously, and applied them all to His first coming; therefore we hear them certifying frequently that “when Christ comes, He will abide forever” (Daniel 7:14), which was currently enunciated by the prophets. Consequently when they all see that He is dead, the result is that they give up all hope of His Christhood but still believing that when the Messiah comes, He will abide forever. However, they still believe that He is a prophet, and the greatest of all the prophets who have ever lived upon the earth, having such power as none of His predecessors ever wielded, but unfortunately, venturing too far permitted His enemies to get the advantage of Him, and consequently lost His life in the bloom of youth, at the early age of thirty-three with the Jews, thirty being majority and fifty maturity.

Though now under the awful collapse of blighted hopes and perished aspirations, yet they love Him as no tongue can fell; and feeling assured that He is the greatest prophet God ever sent to Israel, they are determined to compliment Him with the most honorable interment, embalming His body after the Jewish method, and sparing no expenditure in procuring an abundance of the most valuable Oriental antiseptics.

History says all the apostles, and these prominent, holy women so frequently mentioned, were at the house of Rabbi Amos, a friend of Jesus in the metropolis, and were all engaged in silent mourning, alter the Jewish method of mourning for the dead seven days. Naught is heard through the long, dreary night but sighs, groans, and sobs. As deepest grief is silent, their sorrow was too great for utterance. They also spent the ensuing day and night in silent mourning, the inviolable sanctity of the Sabbath being their only guarantee against the cruel arrest, imprisonment, and execution which would, it was apprehended, certainly follow quickly the ensuing week.

Matthew 28:2-4. “ And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord, having descended from heaven, coming, rolled away the stone from the door, and sat upon it. And his countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And from fear, the keepers did quake, and became like corpses.” When the great archangel, whose countenance was like lightning, his pinions like rainbows, and his feet like pillars of fire, came sweeping down from heaven, old Earth trembling and quaking, and touched the great stone, secured by the seal of the Roman Empire, it rolled away as if struck with a score of battering-rams; meanwhile those gigantic Roman soldiers, who delighted in the thunder of the battle-field, fell in their tracks on all sides, pale and motionless as dead men. And now, the Conqueror of Mount Calvary, vacating the sepulcher, walked out, as free as a bird of paradise.