Every word of God is tested… Proverbs 30:5

 We are certain Jesus died.  We are certain He was buried.  We are certain His body was missing on the morning of the first day of the week.  What more evidence can we obtain from the empty tomb?

 “In the public preaching to those who were not believers…there is an enormous emphasis on the fact of the resurrection but not a single reference to the empty tomb. Now, why?....There was no point in arguing about the empty tomb. Everyone, friend and opponent, knew it was empty. The only questions worth arguing about were why…and what its emptiness proved. -- J.N.D. Anderson

 Anderson also said: “…the apostles from the very beginning made many converts in Jerusalem, hostile as it was, by proclaiming the glad news that Christ had risen from the grave – and they did it within a short walk from the sepulcher. Any one of their hearers could have visited the tomb and come back again between lunch and … afternoon tea.”

 Paul Althus via Wolfhart Pannenberg: “The situation demands that within the circle of the first community one had a reliable testimony for the fact that the grave had been found empty. The Kerygma could have not been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned.

You never hear anyone in the early centuries claiming the tomb was still occupied. Instead you hear excuses for why it is empty. Even today empty tomb is troubling: Body stolen, wrong tomb, swooning Jesus, etc.

Marble tablet inscribed in Greek From unnamed Caesar. First half of first century. In Louvre Roman law concerning exhumation and reburial Scholars view it as evidence of Jesus as it pertains to the empty tomb. Written either by Tiberius or Claudius

Supplies sanctions for destroying, extracting or moving with wicked intent those who have been buried And for those who have “moved sepulcher-sealing stones” “But if [someone does], I wish that [violator] to suffer capital punishment under the title of tomb-breaker.”

Matthew 28:11-15 – “…some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priest everything that had happened….they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, ‘You ae to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’” Story is necessary because the tomb is empty.

12 th century (1100s) account circulated by anti-Christian Jewish propaganda. States that when the “queen” heard that the elders had slain Jesus, buried him and that He was risen, she ordered them within three days to produce the body or be killed. Judas? Said, “…it was I who took the fatherless from his grave…and I have hidden him in my garden and led a water brook over the place.” Says he produced the body. Obvious medieval mythology

Early Christians seem to have paid no attention whatsoever to the empty tomb. No pilgrimages. No veneration. No mention. They seem to have concluded that the tomb was nothing because it was empty and unimportant. The important thing was the resurrection.

John 20:3-7 – “So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb….the other disciple… came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there….And so Simon Peter also came…and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself.”

J.N.D. Anderson – “We should suddenly have noticed that the body had disappeared….the body cloths, under the weight of 100 lbs. of spices, once the support of the body had been removed, would have subsided or collapsed…. John 19:39 – Nicodemus brings 100 pounds of spices.

Linens lying there – indicating they had been undisturbed except to have been emptied of the body. The head cloth “twirled” – indicating the criss-cross winding pattern again left undisturbed and slightly separated from the body linens. What about this makes them “believe”?

Grave clothing indicates the body simply disappeared. Grave robbers likely wouldn’t stop to unwrap the body. If they did they would not have rearranged the clothing so it was “lying” there. Or placed the head cloth back in place as though undisturbed. Undisturbed?! Tomb is empty because Jesus resurrected.

Grave clothing indicates the body simply disappeared. Grave robbers likely wouldn’t stop to unwrap the body. If they did they would not have rearranged the clothing so it was “lying” there. Or placed the head cloth back in place as though undisturbed. Undisturbed?! Tomb is empty because Jesus resurrected.