The Strangest Verse in the Bible： The Saints Who Came Out of Their Graves

There are two verses in the Bible that almost nobody reads slowly. They sit in the middle of the crucifixion, in Matthew chapter 27, and they describe something so strange that most preachers simply skip over them. The graves around Jerusalem opened, and many of the saints who had been dead stood up, walked into the city, and were seen by many people. No names. No numbers, no explanation. And then Matthew never mentions them again. So who were they? Why does only one gospel record this? And where did they go? Today, we are going to follow these people as far as the ancient texts will take us. Through the Greek of Matthew, through the prophets, through the earliest Christian writers, and even through a lost gospel that claims two of them wrote down what they saw. And at the end, I will show you why these few forgotten saints may be the most important clue in the whole story of the resurrection. Let's begin where Matthew begins. On a Friday afternoon, outside the walls of Jerusalem. Chapter 1 The ninth hour. It is the week of Passover. The city is full of pilgrims. Josephus, writing a generation later, says that at one Passover, the priests counted more than 250,000 lambs. Historians think his numbers are inflated, but the city was certainly packed, and every family needed a lamb. And Josephus tells us when the lambs were killed. From the ninth hour to the eleventh, in our time, from about three in the afternoon until five. Now look at Matthew. From the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, my God. My God, why hast thou forsaken me? The ninth hour, the same hour the knives were raised over the Passover lambs in the temple courts. Paul would later put it in a single line, For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Then, verse 50, Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, Yielded up the ghost, and Matthew does not pause. In the very next breath, four things happen at once. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept. Four Signs The curtain, the earthquake, the broken rocks, the open tombs, and each one, as we will see, points somewhere very specific. Start with the curtain. Josephus, who saw the temple with his own eyes, describes the great veil at its entrance as a Babylonian tapestry, embroidered with blue, scarlet and purple, and fine linen, like a map of the whole universe. Behind the inner veil, was the holy of holies only one man the high priest could pass through it and only once a year on the day of atonement and matthew says it was torn from the top to the bottom not from the bottom where a man could reach from the top as if the hand that tore it came from above the way The way into the presence of God, closed for centuries, was suddenly open. And in the same moment, another kind of door was opening outside the city walls. But before we follow the saints, we have to ask a simpler question. Did that earthquake really happen? Chapter 2. The Earthquake in the Mud For most of history, there was no way to check. Earthquakes leave no written receipts. Except, sometimes, they leave them in the ground. The Dead Sea. Earthquake is one of the best earthquake recorders on Earth. For thousands of years, thin layers of mud have settled on its floor, one layer after another, like the pages of a book. When a strong earthquake shakes the basin, those layers are churned and mixed. Geologists call these disturbed layers seismites. In 2012, A team of geologists, Jefferson Williams, Marcus Schwab, and Achim Brauer, published a study of a sediment core taken near Ein Gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea. They found a well-known disturbed layer, from a great earthquake in 31 BC, and above it, another one. Using the layers and radiocarbon dates, They placed this second earthquake somewhere between the years 26 and 36, the years when Pontius Pilate governed Judea. Now, let's be honest about what this means. It does not prove Matthew's earthquake. A layer in the mud cannot tell us the day or the hour, but it does tell us that a real earthquake shook this region in exactly the window when the crucifixion took place. Matthew was not describing an impossible event. He was describing the kind of event the ground itself remembers. And there is something else. Several ancient writers mention a darkness or an eclipse around this time. A Christian historian named Julius Africanus, writing around the year 220, quotes a pagan writer called Thallus, who apparently tried to explain the darkness as an eclipse of the sun. Africanus answers that this is impossible. Passover is celebrated at the full moon, And a solar eclipse cannot happen at the full moon. He also mentions Phlegon, a Greek chronicler, who recorded a great eclipse and an earthquake in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad. That is around the year 32 or 33. We only have these writers in fragments, quoted by others, so we hold them lightly. But they show that the darkness and the shaking were remembered. And argued about, very early. So the ground shook, the rocks split, and the tombs opened. But which tombs? Chapter 3. The Tombs Outside the Walls Jewish law did not allow the dead to be buried inside the city, so Jerusalem was surrounded by tombs. They were cut into the soft limestone of the hills, in the Kidron Valley, on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Along the roads leading to the gates, many of them were family caves. A low entrance, a small chamber, and narrow niches cut into the walls where the bodies were laid. After about a year, when only the bones remained, the family would gather them into a stone box called an ossuary. Hundreds of these boxes have been found around Jerusalem. Many with names carved on them. Some tombs were closed with a large rolling stone. Most were closed with a simple square block. When the ground shakes hard enough, both can move. Now notice where many of these tombs were. On the Mount of Olives, facing the temple. Jews wanted to be buried there because of a prophecy. The prophet Zechariah had written that one day the Lord's feet would stand upon the Mount of Olives, and the mountain would split in the middle, and then he adds a line that every Jew buried on that hill was waiting for, and the Lord my God shall come and all the saints with thee. The mountain splits, the Lord comes, and the saints come with him. Matthew's readers would not have missed it. The earth shakes, the rocks split, the tombs open, and the saints appear. It is Zechariah's scene, beginning to happen. But Zechariah is not the only prophet Matthew is echoing. There is one even clearer. Chapter 4, The Prophet of the Open Graves. Six centuries before Jesus, The prophet Ezekiel was carried in a vision into a valley full of dry bones. God asks him a question. Son of man, can these bones live? And Ezekiel watches as the bones come together, bone to his bone, as sinews and flesh cover them, and breath enters them, and they stand up, an exceedingly great army. Then God explains the vision. And the words, almost identical to Matthew's. Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. I will open your graves, come up out of your graves, into the land. In Matthew, the graves are opened, the saints come out of the graves, and they go into the holy city. The prophet Daniel goes further. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life. Notice the word, sleep. Matthew uses the same picture, the bodies of the saints which slept. For the prophets, death was asleep. And resurrection was the morning. And it was supposed to happen at the end of history, all at once. So why, in Matthew, does it seem to begin on a Friday afternoon, in the middle of history, with only a few? To answer that, we have to look very carefully at a strange little detail in the timing. Chapter 5, the detail almost everyone misses. Read the verses again, slowly. The graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection. The graves open when Jesus dies on Friday, but the saints come out of the graves after his resurrection on Sunday. Bible scholars have argued for centuries about exactly how to read the Greek here. Did the saints rise on Friday and wait? Or did the tombs simply stand open until Sunday morning? Either way, Matthew is careful about one thing. Nobody walks out before Jesus does. And that is not an accident. It connects to one of the oldest festivals in the lore of Moses. In Leviticus chapter 23, God tells Israel that during Passover week, on the morrow after the Sabbath, The priest must take the first sheaf of the new harvest and wave it before the Lord. It was called the first fruits, the first handful of grain offered to God as a promise that the whole harvest was coming. And when was it offered? On the day after the Sabbath of Passover week, on Sunday. Now listen to Paul writing to the Corinthians about 25 years later. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. And then he gives the order, but every man in his own order. Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Christ first, then the rest. The saints of Matthew 27 walk out only after Jesus, because they are part of the first sheaf. Not the whole harvest, just the first handful shown in advance so that everyone would know the rest was coming. And Matthew tells us they were not hidden. They went into the holy city and appeared unto many. So here is the question that has troubled readers ever since. If many people saw them, why does no one else mention them? Chapter 6. The silence of the other Gospels. Mark does not mention the saints. Neither does Luke. Neither does John. Only Matthew. This silence has been used in two very different ways. Some readers say it proves the story is a later legend. If dead people really walked into Jerusalem, surely someone else would have written about it. Others answer that every Gospel writer chose what to include. John says it plainly at the end of his Gospel. There are also many other things which Jesus did, which, if they should be written every one, the world itself could not contain the books. Luke leaves out things, Matthew includes. Matthew leaves out things, Luke includes. Silence is not the same as denial. In 2010, this debate exploded among Christian scholars. A historian named Michael Licona, in a large book defending the resurrection of Jesus, suggested that Matthew's saints might be apocalyptic imagery, a kind of symbolic language like the darkened sun in the prophets. He was strongly criticized by other scholars, such as Norman Geisler, who insisted the passage must be read as history. The argument went on for years. We will not settle that argument today. But notice what both sides agree on. Matthew placed this scene exactly where the prophets said the resurrection would begin. And the earliest Christians, the ones closest to these events, did not treat it as a small detail. They talked about it, and they had their own answers to the question of where these saints went. Chapter 7, What the First Christians Said, around the year 110. A bishop named Ignatius of Antioch was taken to Rome to be executed. On the way, he wrote letters to the churches. In his letter to the Magnesians, he writes that the prophets of old were disciples of Christ in the Spirit and waited for him as their teacher. And then he adds that when Christ came, the one they had waited for raised them from the dead, for Ignatius The saints in the tombs were the prophets themselves, the men and women who had waited for the Messiah finally meeting him. A little later, around the year 125, a Christian named Quadratus wrote a defense of the faith to the Emperor Hadrian. Only one fragment survives, quoted by the historian Eusebius. Quadratus says that those whom Jesus healed and those he raised from the dead ...were not seen only for a moment. Some of them, he says, lived on even into his own time. He is speaking about the people Jesus raised during his ministry, like the daughter of Jairus. But it shows how the early Christians thought. These were not ghosts. They were people with lives that went on. Centuries later, even the great theologians admitted they did not know the end of the story. Augustine of Hippo. Around the year 414, wrote a long letter to a friend named Evodius about these questions. And he treats the fate of Matthew's saints as an open question. Did they die again, like Lazarus, or did they rise to a life that would never end? Jerome wondered whether the holy city they entered was the earthly Jerusalem or the heavenly one. But there was one ancient book, They refuse to leave the question open, and it gives these saints names. Chapter 8. The Two Brothers in the Lost Gospel. It is called the Gospel of Nicodemus. Its first part is known as the Acts of Pilate. It was probably written in the 4th century, perhaps from older material, and in the Middle Ages it was one of the most widely read books in Europe. Its second part tells a story that does not appear anywhere in the Bible. According to this text, among the saints who rose with Christ were two brothers, Charanus and Lucius, and their father, the book says, was Simeon, the same Simeon from Luke's Gospel, the old man in the temple who took the baby Jesus in his arms and said, Lord. 'Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.' In the story, the priests of Jerusalem hear that these two men have risen, and they bring them to the synagogue to question them. The brothers ask for paper and ink. They make the sign of the cross, and each of them separately writes down what he saw in the realm of the dead. They describe a great light breaking into the darkness. The prophets rejoicing, Adam the first man being taken by the hand, and Christ leading the righteous out into paradise. And when they finish writing, they hand over their scrolls, and then the text says, they were seen no more. This is not scripture, it is a legend written centuries later, But it became the source of one of the most famous images in Christian art. In the Eastern churches, the icon of the resurrection does not show Jesus walking out of the tomb. It shows him standing over the broken gates of the underworld, pulling Adam and Eve up by the hand, with the kings and prophets waiting behind them. It is called the Anastasis. And in the West, the same story was told as the harrowing of hell. And this legend did not appear from nowhere. It grew from a handful of real verses in the New Testament. Chapter 9, Led captivity captive. In his first letter, Peter writes that after his death, Christ went and preached unto the spirits in prison. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, quotes the 68th Psalm. When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. And he explains it. He descended first into the lower parts of the earth, He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, led, captivity captive. For many early Christians, this meant something very concrete. Christ went down into the place of the dead, and he did not come back up alone. He brought the righteous dead with him, the patriarchs, the prophets. The faithful who had waited and Matthew's saints walking into Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday were seen as the visible sign of that victory. A small group appearing for a short time so that the living could see what had happened in the unseen world. So, where did they go? Chapter 10, where the Bible stops. Let's gather the evidence. The way a careful investigator would. First possibility. They rose like Lazarus. They came back to ordinary life, lived for some years, and died again, still waiting for the final resurrection. Second possibility. They rose like Jesus, in bodies that would never die again, and after appearing to many, they ascended with him, led captivity captive. Third possibility. Matthew is using the language of the prophets to tell us what Jesus' death means, rather than describing people walking through the streets. Each view has been held by serious, faithful readers. And notice that Matthew himself does not choose for us. He tells us only what was seen. Then he stops. But that silence may be the point. Because Matthew is not really asking us to look at the saints. He is asking us to look at what they point to. Right after the saints, Matthew records one more reaction. Now when the centurion and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God, a Roman soldier, at the foot of the cross. Understood what the open tombs meant before the disciples did. The first fruits had been gathered, and the first fruits are a promise. Paul describes the rest of the harvest in his letter to the Thessalonians. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. That is the day the prophets were waiting for. Ezekiel's valley, Daniel's sleepers waking, Zechariah's mountains splitting open. And on a Friday afternoon outside Jerusalem, for a few hours and a few people, the curtain was pulled back. And that day was shown in advance. So when someone asks you, what happened to the saints who rose when Jesus died? You can tell them this. They were the first sheaf of a harvest that has not finished yet. Now I want to hear from you. Which explanation do you find the most convincing? Did they die again? Did they ascend with Christ? Or is Matthew speaking in the language of the prophets? Tell me in the comments. And if you want to keep exploring the hidden corners of Scripture with me, subscribe, because the next story is already waiting.