Jesus' Tomb 

Since it was strictly against Jewish law to bury a crucified person in a Jewish cemetery, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, being aware of the law, had decided that they would bury Jesus in a new tomb that had been recently carved out of solid rock in Joseph’s garden. This private tomb was located just north of Golgotha, a short distance across the road that led to Samaria. No one had ever been buried in this tomb, and it seemed to them that it was the proper resting place for the Master's body.

The Jewish authorities planned to dispose of Jesus’ body in an open pit like that of a common criminal. But Joseph of Arimathea, along with Nicodemus, had appealed to Pontius Pilate to release the Master's body to them so that they could give it a proper burial. With the signed order in hand, they returned to Golgotha, and after some resistance from the Sanhedrin, they were able to take the body of Jesus to the tomb.

At about four-thirty on Friday afternoon, Joseph, Nicodemus, John Zebedee, and a Roman centurion carried the Master’s body the short distance north from Golgotha to Joseph’s property across the road that led to Samaria. The tomb was in a garden on a hillside on the eastern side of the road. The entrance to the tomb also faced east.

The tomb was a chamber that measured about ten feet square that had been carved out of solid rock. Joseph and Nicodemus proceeded to wrap the body with large bandages that had been saturated with embalming solutions of myrrh and aloe. They subsequently tied a cloth around his face and finally wrapped the body in a linen sheet and placed it on a shelf in the tomb. When the body had been placed, the centurion ordered his soldiers to roll the doorstone into place at the entrance to the tomb. Joseph and Nicodemus then sorrowfully returned to Jerusalem for the Passover according to the law of Moses.

If the followers of Jesus were unmindful of the fact that Jesus had promised to resurrect on the third day, the Jewish rulers were not. The Sanhedrin sent a committee to Pilate the next day, requesting that he take steps to safeguard the tomb from Jesus’ followers, lest they come and steal the body and then claim that their Master had risen from the dead. Pilate supplied them with ten soldiers to secure the tomb. To these ten, the Sanhedrin added ten of their own guards, and these twenty men went to the tomb. They rolled another large stone to the entrance of the tomb and placed the seal of Pilate on the stones, ensuring they would not be disturbed without their knowledge. These twenty men then stationed themselves on watch at the tomb up until the time of the resurrection.

When Jesus resurrected from the tomb at two minutes past three o’clock in the morning on Sunday, April 9, 30 CE, he did so, not as a spirit, and not in his mortal body, but in a form that was in between material and spiritual reality. This transition state of existence is a form that, at one time, can be unaffected by ordinary matter, as a spirit would be; at another time, it can become visible to mortal beings, seemingly material. In this case, Jesus simply passed through the stone walls of the tomb to the outside in this unique transition form, a form that all mortals will experience after their death and resurrection in the worlds on high.

Jesus’ material body was not part of his resurrection experience. When the form of the resurrected Jesus emerged from the tomb, his material body remained as it had been left by Joseph and Nicodemus. The large stones that had been placed by Pilate were not moved, and the seal of Pilate remained intact. The soldiers remained on guard and unaware that the body that they were guarding had risen to a new and higher form of existence.

Everything that had to happen to effect this resurrection of the Master happened in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where the material body was lying, wrapped in the burial cloths. On Friday, Jesus laid down his life; on Sunday morning, he took up his life again in a glorified form.

At ten minutes past three o’clock that morning, the chief of archangels petitioned Gabriel to release the material body of Jesus for immediate dissolution. The celestial hosts wished to be spared the sight of Jesus’ material body slowly disintegrating; they planned to use a technique of near-instantaneous dissolution of the body through the acceleration of time.

To proceed, the celestials had to remove the body from the tomb. Unlike the transition form in which Jesus was resurrected, his material body was physical, literal, and lifeless; it could not pass through the stone walls of the tomb. Accordingly, an angelic corps was assigned to roll away the stone that was in front of the tomb to remove the body for dissolution. It was a huge stone, and it rolled within a groove that was chiseled out of solid rock, thus opening and closing the tomb.

When the Jewish and Roman guards saw this stone seemingly moving on its own, they became extremely afraid and confused, and all of them ran from the scene.

The "empty tomb" has become a mainstay of Christian theology, but the fact of the empty tomb is not the truth of the resurrection of Jesus. The association of the finding of the empty tomb with the undoubted fact of the Master’s resurrection led to the conclusion that he had been resurrected in his mortal body. Both facts are true, but the conclusion drawn from those facts is not.

The tomb was empty, not because the body of Jesus had been resurrected, but because the celestials had performed their special dissolution of the body, a return of the "dust to dust" without the delay of ordinary time or the usual slow processes of decay and decomposition.

When Mary Magdalene and the other women ventured out to the tomb at about three-thirty in the morning, they worried about how they would move the stone so that they could properly take care of Jesus’ body. But when they arrived, they found the stone rolled aside, and upon further inspection, they found the tomb empty, but the grave cloths intact, causing them a considerable fright. But soon after, Jesus made his first resurrection appearance to Mary at the entrance to the tomb. And he subsequently made a second appearance to Mary at the tomb later that morning.

Upon hearing from the women that the tomb was empty, Joseph of Arimathea and David Zebedee went to the tomb and found it just as the women had described. They were the last ones to see the tomb because, at seven-thirty that morning, the high priest sent the captain of the guards to remove the grave cloths. He wrapped all of them up in a large linen sheet and threw them over a cliff.