Day of the Living Dead

No, this post is not a review of some B grade movie that you watched at a drive-in in 1968. This post has to do with one of the more puzzling scriptures regarding : events surrounding Jesus' death on the cross and His subsequent resurrection. In Matthew 27: 51-53 we find that these things happened:

1. The curtain separating the holy place from the holy of holies was rent.
2. Luke (23:44,45) and Mark (15:33) add that the sun stopped shining for about 4 hours.
3. Earthquakes occurred and rocks were split open.
4. Certain individuals rose from the dead and went into Jerusalem!
   

Point number 4 leads to many good questions, including these:

1. Who were these people?
2. When did their resurrection happen?
3. Was their resurrection temporal or permanent?
4. What did they do after they were resurrected?
5. What body were they resurrected to?
6. What happened to them after their mission, whatever it was; was accomplished?

Let's first set the stage by dealing with the facts, which include timing, qualification, quantity and purpose.

1. Timing - these individuals were resurrected AFTER Christ's resurrection, not before.
2. Qualification - the verses tell us that these were saints (NIV - holy). There is no mention of unrighteous being resurrected.
3. Quantity - the verses tell us that many resurrections ocurred.
4. Purpose - rather than being resurrected to just resume their earthly life, there seemed to be a mission or reason for this - they went into the holy city (Jerusalem) and appeared to many people.

Before going any further, let's address the question of what bodies they were resurrected into! We are not told, but we can deduce from scripture that there are two possibilities:

1. Their natural, physical body (pre-glorification)
2. Their supernatural, spiritual body (post-glorification). I will refer to this as the resurrection body.

There is a third possibility that does not have scriptural precedent, and that is that they were resurrected into a temporary body for that specific reason that was neither their natural or supernatural body. I will reject this possibility as mentioned that I find no precedent, and also this would be aligned more with a worldview of reincarnation (resurrected into a temporary body for a period of time) rather than resurrection.

Biblical precedents do exist for individuals resurrected or raised into their natural bodies. These include:

1. The widow's son raised by Elijah (1 Kings 17:17-24)
2. The Shunammite's son raised by Elisha (2 Kings 4:18-37)
3. Anonymous dead man who was raised after his post-mortem body touched Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:20-21)
4. Jairus' daughter raised by Jesus (Matthew 19:18-26)
5. The widow's son raised by Jesus (Luke 7:11-17)
6. Lazarus raised by Jesus (John 11:38-44)
7. Tabitha raised by Peter (Acts 9:37-41)
8. Eutychus raised by Paul (Acts 20:9-21)

Note that these examples span both Old and New Covenants, and were thus performed by pre and post cross individuals. Although not explicitly stated, we infer that these individuals lived the remainder of their lives and then died a natural death. The next question then is there any Biblical precedent for anyone who was resurrected or raised into their resurrection body? Other than Jesus, I'm not aware of any. Because of this distinction I will then use two different terms to refer to the activity of bringing back someone from the dead:

1. Raised - the action of God's supernatural power reuniting or restoring the spirit to the natural (temporal) body.
2. Resurrected - the action of God's supernatural power reuniting or restoring the spirit to the supernatural (eternal) body.

Noe (Shattering the Left Behind Delusion pp. 64-67) postulates from a full preterist position that the individuals spoken of in Matthew were resurrected, not raised (again using my definitions above). He then explains that upon death, the believer immediately obtains their resurrection body for all eternity. Although he makes a good case, I would not say that his arguments are convincing. First, my point above regarding precedence for resurrection over raising. Second, his addressing of the problem of "bones in the ground" is lacking. As we know for various reasons bodies are exhumed today. If the resurrection reunites the spirit to it's temporal body and then that body becomes eternal, there would be no "bones in the ground" which seems to be consistent with 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18. Third, as Hanegraaff points out (Resurrection, p. 112) this reasoning has already been addressed by Paul who...

...denounces such notions as godless chatter and explicitly condemns Hymenaeus and Philetus for saying that the resurrection had already taken place (2 Timothy 2:16-18)

Finally, there is the problem of where our resurrection bodies reside. Revelation 21 & 22 tell us about our final destination, heaven. Paradise lost becomes paradise restored and this happens AFTER the Great White Throne judgment, not before it. Noe's model has us receiving our resurrected bodies PRIOR to the home that we will live in with them which seems to be contrary to scripture teaching on the resurrection. Therefore, I conclude that the people spoken of in Matthew are RAISED to their physical bodies and then experienced a natural death - again!

Now, let's look at the quantity or numerical assignment. The Greek word for "many" is polus (Strong's 5118) and is also translated elswhere as "more numerous" and "greater numbers". Contrasting that with other Greek words also translated many such as hikanos that indicate simply a large number, we deduce that the use of this word denotes a superior quantity rather than a sufficient quantity. Therefore, it is possible that not just many but more than 50% of the righteous dead in graves around Jerusalem were raised. Is it possible to actually assign a physical number? Josephus in his historical works estimates that over 1, 000,000 (one million) Jews were killed in the destruction of Jerusalem approximately 37 years after this event, so it is not unreasonable to think that the average population was around a million in this timeframe. I'm not sure how we would quantify a percentage of living residents to those in the grave who were righteous, but again the usage of the word polus we could very conservatively see several hundred persons who were raised in the Matthean event. What is interesting though is that we have no (to my knowledge) external sources talking about these raisings, and I would think that this event would have made quite an impact.

These people were raised for some kind of a purpose, as they went into Jerusalem "and appeared to many people". Because we know that they were righteous, and surmising that they located people who knew them (probably family, friends and co-workers) they most likely were not calling the unrighteous to repentance but comforting the righteous in revelation that Jesus had indeed conquered death. Why do I not believe that these people were evangelizing? In Luke 16:19-31 we find Jesus telling the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man. To summarize the story, the Rich Man was unrighteous and upon death entered the place of torment where Lazarus entered paradise (referred to as Abraham's Bosom). Upon realizing the error of his ways, the Rich Man appealed to Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers so that they would repent and not make the same mistake. Abraham responds in a curious way - let's look at the conclusion of the story:

And he (the Rich Man) said, 'Then I beg you, father (Abraham), that you send him (Lazarus) to my father's house - for I have five brothers - in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.' "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' "But he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!' "But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'"

Additionally, from Acts 1&2 the missionary command and the pentecostal event had not yet occured. If they had been sent to Jerusalem to evangelize, they would preceded the Holy Spirit given by Jesus himself for and what benefit would that have been? We conclude then from post-mortem pre-resurrection (whew!) evangelism is not a valid model and can be discarded.

Putting it all together

We conclude then that possibly hundreds of people that rose from the grave as recorded in Matthew 27 re-entered their natural bodies, and went into Jerusalem not to evangelize but to bring comfort and encouragement to their loved ones who were already believers, and then they died a natural death.

We assume (as this is an argument from silence) that the lack of external evidence may lend credence that the event happened, as the witnessing to believers would have reinforced the rapidly emerging belief system in the resurrection and their emergence would have been greeted with great joy in the somewhat private venue of family. If the raised people were sent primarily to evangelize, they would have been public oriented and then some evidence may have produced. Sure, it's weak but that's why I label it as an assumption! pre-pentecost evangelists which is unlikely.

OBJECTIONS: Hebrews 9:27 states that is appointed once for men to die (not twice!), and then the judgment. This event then would be a violation of that principle. How do we reconcile that? One answer may be that the Hebrews author is not attempting to establish an edict, but to underscore the fact that there will come a time when death (i.e. separation of body from spirit) would occur and then judgment, which is the object of the sentence. Additionally, miracles in the Bible typically involve a suspension of natural laws. Therefore, we may conclude that Hebrews 9:27 does not stand in objection to Matthew 27.