No 31

(The Revivals to Life in the Calvary Graveyard)

This is the last of the six miracles that we have seen in our studies. They were drawn from the Bible and the commentaries were from a book entitled “The Six Miracles of Calvary” by the Christian author William R Nicholson (1822 – 1901) and updated by Dan Schaeffer.

We considered “The Opened Graves” in study # 244 and we will now look at the actual revivals or resurrections. The Gospel of Matthew has this to say of this event “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.” (ch 27:52,53). No indication is given in the text as to who these persons were, or how many of them were there or who did they go and see; there is, however one very important fact in the text – they were saints! The Bible gives us six other examples of dead people resurrecting : a) The son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17); b) The Shunammite’s son (2 Kings 4); c) The resurrection caused by the bones of Elisha (2 Kings 13); d) The daughter of Jarius (Mark 5); e) The son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7); f) Lazarus (John 11). In all these cases, the people were resurrected but undoubtedly died a natural death late on. The revivals to life in the Calvary graveyard were probably similar in nature although the Bible is silent in all these cases.

But let us speculate for one moment on the impact the Calvary resurrections would’ve had on the people of Jerusalem (holy city). For one, the immediate relatives of these people must’ve been overwhelmed and since news of this sort travels fast, all of Jerusalem knew of this miraculous event very quickly. Only God Himself knows how many people became believers because of it. This was no small event and it was during a time when much sorrow was in the hearts of Jesus’ followers (Luke 24 : 13-17 on the road to Emmaus). Each of these resurrected saints of Calvary probably became flaming evangelists knowing what had happened to Jesus and that He had also resurrected; they must’ve been ecstatic and bubbling over with joy. This is the type of joy we ought to have when we speak to people about the resurrected Christ. Jesus Himself said to Thomas “…blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” (John 20:29b). We believed because one day someone told us about Jesus Christ and we placed our trust in Him based on what the Bible says “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:” (Eph 2:8). I am sure that this was the message that the resurrected Calvary saints proclaimed.