As Resurrection Day approaches, my mind goes to the graves of the enlightened and inspired. The final resting places of religious figures, particularly, are the destinations of pilgrims and tourists from around the globe.
The tomb of the prophet Mohammed can be found in Saudi Arabia. Gautama Buddha’s cremated remains are scattered in shrines throughout the world. Baháʼu’lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, is buried beneath an ornate shrine in Acre, Israel. Go to Jerusalem, though, and you will search in vain for the final resting place of Jesus of Nazareth. Sure, you can visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. But you’ll find that the whole gaudy edifice is built around a tomb that is most definitely empty. And I thank God that it is. An occupied tomb would prove Jesus to be a false messianic messenger. What would we do with His claim to be the Messiah? What of His assertions to be equal with God? What of His promises to be the resur- rection and the life? To be able to save humanity from the power of sin? To bring the future Messianic kingdom? Indeed, if tourists and pilgrims could visit the final resting place of Jesus’ body, today, they would be visiting the tomb, not of a prophet or a good teacher, but of a blasphemous liar, who spent three-plus years convincing others to join Him in His messianic delusion. C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, made a similar point when he wrote: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” Further, an occupied tomb would mean that Jesus did not have the power over sin and death that He claimed to have. He told His disciples that no one could take His life away; but that He had the power to die and to come back from the dead (Jn. 10:17-18). If Jesus’ body were still in the grave, it would demonstrate that He did not have such power. To the contrary, it would prove that Jesus was a sinner, Himself, who had to face judgment for His own sin. And what of those of us foolish enough to believe in Him? The truth is, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then we who have entrusted our lives and eternities to Him would rightly be the laughing- stock of the world. As the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “...if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable” (1 Cor. 15:17-19). Many may follow the dead-end streets of Islam, Buddhism, Baháʼí, and others. But the very fact that the graves of their founders can be visited today is powerful testimony that they could not solve the problem of their own sin, let alone that of the world. There was only One who claimed He could and proved it with an empty tomb. He is risen. He is risen, indeed.
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AuthorTy Perry is a writer based in metro-Detroit. Archives
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