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CHAPTER NINE

THE REALISATION OF THE RESURRECTION

and

ALL IT PORTENDS

 

THE SITE IN REVELATION

 

 THE SITE IN REVELATION

Without the resurrection, abstracted pseudo-Christianity becomes a farce, based on what is not there. With it, it is what it is, an historic exhibit of what the God of creation has done in creating, in reprobating sinful man, then in providing for his redemption. This He did in offering His own self as a sacrifice for sin, and breaching death,  as a non-sinner, and so exhibiting that eternal life which knows no rupture, ruction, disruption or corruption, and continues on past the barriers sin has placed.

This is shown in depth by Paul in I Corinthians 15 with Romans 5, by Christ in His own words in the Gospels (as in John 6, 8, 11) as in Revelation 1:18, and in the lives of the saints on earth, not only through their testimony but through the power of God in their lives, sometimes so astounding as to attest categorically the self-same power of the self-same Jesus Christ, though none other of His people has it in such measure and scope (John 1:4)..

Works wrought in faith are various, some essential to the well-being of the Church, some like healing and speaking in tongues, useful on occasion, but episodic as the case may vary, and the need. To take the former: Vast healing works through Elsie Salmon*1 (as astounding after the many deaths of World War II, soon after it, in South Africa and then in England), and at a famous African location in particular rocketed into reality in this fallen world. As to the latter, tongues,  it has been much abused, is greatly circumscribed by the apostle Paul (I Corinthians 12), and treated as to its validity and restrictions in A Question of Gifts, in terms of biblical statutes on the point.

The staggering and sustained work of healing over the years through missionary's wife, Elsie Salmon, is attested in such works as  He Heals Today and Christ Still Healing. Attestation is made of the healing of tens of thousands of people often with medically incurable conditions, with evidence even of the completion of a baby's half-formed arm in this way. Evidence is to hand. It is one of many startling different actions, some immediate, though this particular one  took some months.

Dr W.E. Sangster, for many years President of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain, wrote the forward to one of these books. He details  the  many stories he heard, and later investigation which he made. This tells of great  crowds coming to the missionary house in South Africa, to be healed. Interestingly, in the later book, Christ Still Healing, in Salmon's visit to Great Britain,  many public statements of an evidential character are made from many sources throughout the land, in detailed accounts. This gave Great Britain an opportunity at many local areas, including Scotland and Ireland, to experience directly the type of healing wrought, indeed some of the various types of restriction.

In similar vein, though in this case, in a farming area in South Africa, a famous, long term Dutch family has added to their farm workings, a hospitality and spiritual work which allows many people to stay for weeks, if so desired. In this site, in highly undramatic but continual fashion, similar healings of vast depth and large number have made it a source for many. This long-attesting case is described in detail in the work, "God's Grace The revival at Kwa Sizabantu," by Welly du Toit*2.

It contains, inter alia, a medical report. It is perhaps ironic, but not sadly so, for it harbours hope even for those who may for a time be led astray by vacuous or worse astral aspirations, that in this same book there is abundant reference to Christian … therapy. In its international scope, involving many thousands of people of many races and cultures, there is record of large numbers healed in body, mind or spirit. These matters are far removed from sensationalist opportunism, and are dealt with in comparative simplicity in the name of Jesus Christ.

How and when the Lord disposes His different gifts is up to Him; for His is the discretion. This, as in Christ's own day on this earth, may be needed to prevent  opportunism and avoidance of the deeper issues, or may be used to encourage a faithless Age, to stop pretending that if you don't have candy for a while, it means that there isn't any. Wise parents use discretion. The Lord more so!

These are works wrought in faith; but behind them are the works, the labours wrought by Christ as deity on earth, including the crucifixion for sin and the resurrection of the body for authentication, realisation and illumination of the heart, so that it can be practical, and not obliterated with the philosophic baggage of the millenia.  Above time is its Maker; above man is his Creator; above sin is its penalty, and above its penalty is God who exacts it, and exactly meets it in Himself, where faith receives the pardon and the penitent receive redemption. How categorical in Luke 24 is the remonstrance of Jesus the Christ in the presence of His disciples, when to still their sense of eeriness at seeing Him  again, He remarked that "a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see Me to have!". He added the sound words for anything scientific, those referring to testable data. "HANDLE ME AND SEE!"

How shut up many had tried to make it! Now it was on display, freely in this spiritual kibbutz.  The empty tomb shrieks to the popular mind, the living Christ speaks, a joint testimony. And many know the reality. First there is a vast interest in the death of the preacher-healer, Jesus the Christ. MANY relatives and friends of those healed, amounting apparently to many thousands of people thus amplified, were interested in His power, His preaching, His place, His prophetic fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies in ways inimitable, requiring wisdom, knowledge and capacities not given to man, but apt for Him.

How seething would have been the mockery of the citizenry if Peter's reference (Acts 2:22) to the work Christ did, had not been in accord with the verifiable realities of the preceding few years! Instead, the thing mounted, fired by fact, for there it was, death deployed as a startling introduction to life because even in HIS OWN death, there was a triumph of life, something far surpassing the raising of the dead with which He had preceded this, such as that of Lazarus (John 11). The staggering scale of might ascended from a base over three years. It fitted like a new ear-piece into deaf ears. It was HE who both died and rose: the death by man, the resurrection despite Him, the work of God alone, His own testimony.

 

THE SIGHT IN THE MIND

Here was the moment: prepared for over a millenium,  detailed data verifiable experimentally in the laboratory of history, with many components such as place of birth, of death, mode of death, meaning of death, breach of death, time of breach of death,  date of breach of death and so on, all as predicted centuries before (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9). The life of Christ met the calls of prophecy and surpassed them. . None could fault it, and here is the most ingenious work of God, that He had as if it were scientific scouts working for Him in the matter. How ? It was because Christ having paraded the follies of the Pharisees and Sadducees (as in Matthew 23 and Luke 11), had enemies of the first water, scholars both orthodox and heretical, roaming like wolves to destroy His presumed impudence, which as always, was most hurtful because His judgments were true!

In Luke 11;50-52 you see the lupine lust to destroy Him, crush His testimony, show His worthlessness, just as you see this coming to the point of seeking murder to do it, since He was impregnable in truth and power of testimony, as in John 11:49-53. If you ever read of the efforts to kill some agent who is seeking doom to a nation, here is an illustration at the theological level. I have met it myself, not just once, in Australia and in New Zealand, and less but distinctively in the USA. There is a sort of hunting desire that you can virtually smell,  as well as verify in other terms, BENT in acute belligerence and careful cunning, to have you cease to be an operative. Why ? It is often not least because you embarrass evil, expose compromise or do not bow to some Party line, which is valued as life itself by some. You focus biblical truth; they focus resistance.

The motive was there. The variety of means was there. The popularity was there. The power was there: slander and lies, money and pretence,  cover-up and corruption, when what Christ called 'whited sepulchres' showed their shark's teeth in evil desire, though their own dentition might literally be of a meeker order. The refutation by lies would not suffice concerning His actions, since fame was their name, continuity over years was their testimony, thousands were their recipients, astonishment was their reaction.  Statedly God on earth for years, as Messiah, even at that level, none could fault Him.

A cover-up death was the way, required by these facts, thus evidentially attested as was His insubvertible rightness, and incorruptible attestation, including His declaration of being the Messiah and this, deity as foretold (Hosea 13:14, Micah 5:1-3, Ezekiel 34). Death plus lies was the way to manipulate...

It was all one piece, one phalanx of mutually operative data which was impenetrable. Hence murder plus lying, this seemed  the only way, and since the  main opposition, the devil, is the father of it (John 8:44ff.), this was chosen. You can see the impetus. Thus if false witnesses do not agree, such a troublesome thing as the truth is for many, as occurred,  then stark unbelief despite demonstrable evidence, in fitting all relevant Messianic identikit prophecies, was the  way. What was to be done ? Challenge Him to state in open court that He was the Messiah and then  nail Him  metallically, for blasphemy (Mark 14). This they did.

But what about rubbing out His name. With someone like Jesus, they could not tell what further power He would use, to frustrate their endeavours (Matthew 27:63-64). Hence a guard was set over the tomb, a sound practice to inhibit surprise. If a guard can't keep Him down, after death, then what can you do ? If despite their vigilance (better than being killed for negligence, a nice Roman custom for failed guards in such cases), He 'escaped' the tomb and defeated death, then what better than a story of sleeping. A difficulty ? HOW did they know that people stole His body if they were asleep ? That is a self-contradictory testimony, instantly dismissible.

Try something else. What if He were moved to another tomb ? A few problems meet this case in just the same exuberant manner. FIRST you have to get Him  OUT. If the Romans did the moving, then it was easy: just show the body when there was talk of resurrection. They had the means and the motive combined, in that case; but they did not do it because they could not do it.

Once again, you are back to square one, the guards asserting that they slept and people took the body. That is only the first part of this excursion into fantasy,  as if fear of death was not present in guards appointed to guard such a case with such explosive significance. It would ALSO mean that if those stealing were Christians, they would be courting hell, in order to spout a deception, for lying is excluded in the kingdom of heaven, contrary to it, and fraudulence is exclusive of God in principle and in practice.  

 

THE INESCAPABLE REALITY

Did they want hell ? IF they believed Him, this was their little outing. Suppose however, that they were just interested parties, and did not want the Romans to get away with what was certainly murder, and confessedly so, since Governor Pilate had STATED that the man was innocent of cause for death, and asked them not to kill Him, finally passing on in specious folly, the guilt of the deadly deal to them (Matthew 27:21-26): what then  ? First, then they would be willing to de for someone who thus if not authentic, would have become insane! (cf. SMR Ch.  6), an imposter of due and true guilt.

Then again, they would of course have the initial exclusion of the act, as for the other cases just cited, that the sleeping guard concept is mere nonsense.

Further, how is it thought that they could induce a change from the notable tomb of wealthy Joseph of Arimathaea, to somewhere else, when the site was so obvious, having been both specifically granted by Pilate and checked by the women (Luke 23:55-56), earlier hewn out of rock and sealed (Matthew 27:62-66).

Indeed, as there seen, the implacably enraged Pharisees (cf. Matthew 23) had foreseen the danger that Christ might rise again, since to Pilate they cited His statement that after three days, He would rise again (mirrored in John 2:18-20, notable in Matthew 16:21,Mark 10:34) and sought action that would prevent this contingency! Did they lapse ? Did they all faint ?  Was their worst fear left uncovered, like a million dollar watch left on the bed in a boarding house ? Are we to contemplate insanity ? Are the forces at work to be altered from all reality in order to try to steal the body which Christ took out by His own recognizance, as arranged before man, and attested, promised and now performed! Is even sympathy to become superman, and alliance with lies to become a result of the love of Him who was and is the Truth!

Is  all  reason to depart  for the sake of such dreams ? Are zealots to become blind in mind, just as soldiers lose their sight! These women noted the place, and it was notable in its own right, prepared for a visit to it after the Sabbath, while the guards protected the place, a boulder secured it, a seal stamped it, a corpse inhabited it; and for this, the body of Christ had been sought out secretly by its owner for Christ (for fear of the Jews), gifted by formal sanction by one who gave up much to provide it, his own tomb.

What do we have ? Maximal motive, supreme power, guard set, with its own motivations and danger of death if they broke the seal, with an excuse obviously manipulative and incapable of deceiving even a child, a whole religious establishment complete with their own guards and soldiers, intent on securing the result of SHOWING that He was FINISHED and not GENUINE: and this is all thwarted ? Yes, that is so, but only by that self-same body rising as and when stated, precisely.

They could not manage it. No way presented itself. The women come, with the spices, they are met, but not by the body, told of its resurrection, reminded of the conditions, to meet in Galilee (Matthew 28:10), as Christ had told them in a very practical manner, for the aftermath of the resurrection. It was an event amongst others such as He had wrought without limit, and it had its beginning, middle and results like any other. Champions  can  KNOW their competence and not doubt; and the Lord KNEW His power, as He had from eternity, and even in flesh, for the purpose in hand. Here,  there was no limit! Life was to overthrow death, by appointed date and time, by decree, via act of deity, gloriously depicted from Psalm 22 to Hosea 13:14 till the precise predicted time in view arrived. .

Death and deceit ALONE could solve the Jewish problem of the powers-that-were, and both were indulged in, engaged, utilised to the utmost, despite the demonstrable silliness of the account of the matter (Matthew 28:13). When impossibility becomes your defence, you have none. On the other hand, when a norm of events (healing, resurrections) is the background to the case, there is no problem. It is one of a TYPE of thing done; but in this case, extrapolated to that of His OWN death. When man meets impossibility and God sustains the even flow of the ascending scale of the miraculous over years, then the case is covered as the ocean covers the bottom of the sea: they align.

The significance, the importance is this, that it meant that Christ was authenticated once again and to the utmost (Romans 1:4). His power not short-circuited even by death (as is becoming for the Almighty, in whatever format!), and it showed that the quality of the LOVE of God, to surrender to death His only begotten Son, the word of eternity, His express image planted in earth via a womb (the other phase of the humanity, alongside death), is total. There is no limit. To be sure, His love will never contradict truth, and if multitudes of aggregating sinners are wildly and chronically set on division from God, as depicted as the impact of Christ would gather (Psalm 2, Acts 2), this as foreknown as fact, then divine love does not defile reality to gain its object, does not shanghai or imprison into life: that would be gross self-contradiction, the nadir of love, a preposterous denial of the whole tenor of the Bible, the divine grief, compassion and review (as in Isaiah 48, Luke 19, Colossians 1, Jeremiah 48).

Freedom, knowledge and power are involved, not caprice or selfish seizure.  Love simply is not like that (I Corinthians 13). Missing places have their own reason in human preference, and those who are His and not His, are differentially consigned with this in view (John 3:19). In John 3, the love of God and His thrust of motivation for all, without judgment,  are specifically CONTRASTED with the opposite case in man, so that it is man and not God whose responsibility it is, in the last resort, for those missing place, subject of grief.

 However, within the truth, the love finds no restriction, and this is the nature of what faces man from the side of deity, in the Gospel. It was a love of such a testable character that when ONCE He sent His Word as man, and as His only begotten Son, even then He sacrificed Him, showing deity versus death with victory as man. This covered the case of man in all justice, so that mercy could reign in all liberty and man be restored in all reality. This was not in poetry, but through  the rasping breaths of the dying Christ, and the simple totality of His challenge to show life afterwards: "Handle Me and see!" 

These were amongst the most explosive words ever uttered, simple amid vastness, direct amidst fears, superbly assured amidst bewilderment, sovereign and supreme, as when a high jump specialist clears the bar.

What then ? There is NO desire presented in this giving context, in this loving context, for the world to be judged. On the contrary, in John 3:16ff., we see specifically that in the coming of Christ to this earth God was acting in this very motivation, that the world be not judged. This was the way and the only way to achieve this for any, and in fact, for many; but since most declined, then the other option is at length followed. This love however was the flush of fervour; while that departure of many is the duty of dismissal. Yet the love is in command, and only where rejected in its practical  application, is the thrust to save at last complete and completed in those won (John 3:15-19,36).

Right back to eternity it goes, the inexorable refusal seen in this,  "I would ... you would not," Matthew 23:37, this preference for darkness the criterion of differential judgment.

With what anguish does the Lord leave His desire, that all should be reconciled to Himself, even in heaven and earth (Colossians 1:19ff.). How then is hell to be found ? Indeed it can happen ONLY IF this gift of eternal life is despised, ignored, passed over (John 15:22 with John 3), as one passes over any opportunity in life, exalted to the heavens though it be, and the postage for this gift is via death and in the format of resurrected life, not left to rot, but raised to live. His desire is our liberty in love.

Anyone doubting the love of God has this as the referee, reference and testimony. To death, He loves (cf. Song of Solomon 8:6-7). Anyone who wanted to twiddle the dials and bring on deceit, to alter the case, still has death, since deceit has no place, and love knows its own, where it is received in reality, right back to eternity (Ephesians 1:4).

Christianity without the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is bread without flour, wind without medium for it, thought without mind, or sailing ships without sails. It is pivotal, with all things revolving about it, on the one hand, and the death itself in its testimony and purging power, on the other. Small wonder in the irreducible minimum for faith at the outset as in Romans 10:9, belief in this resurrection,  so  starkly defined in the Bible, figures!

Just as the resurrection cannot be rationally*3 dismissed, so the glory of the great God is not subject to scatter-brained denial. The conditions were predicted right down to the body not rotting (Psalm 16), a necessary act to preserve assurance, and one more identikit performance, not easy to bring to pass ... unless you are God.

Mortality becomes immortality, so breaching the appalling horror of CEASING to be a person with power and scope,  suddenly and peremptorily dismissed, disrupted, though the thoughts reached to the heavens, and the love purged, rose to the Lord. The axe of death is thus blunted and its power removed by the sin-bearing of Christ, and the intensive horror of the sudden rupture from consciousness, life and God, is overcome. It is overcome in one day indeed (cf. Zechariah 3:9, Hebrews 9), though its results are for ever, in eternal life (I Corinthians 15).

This gift renders stark the silliness of sin, which sells the Saviour for an absurd price of its own (mirrored in Judas' deal with the priests, pre-characterised in the prediction of Zechariah 11:8-13), vis--vis the cost of love, and its willingness, with the treasured regard of God for man; and it shows the folly of not seeking to show it to one another.

It is, like the power of God, what works; and as it made us, so it remakes us and makes us who believe, to be transformed and formed anew and taught and shaped so that we can see where it was dark, and grow in stature towards the ways of the Lord, where we sank far below, and appreciate one another, when this becomes an  exercise in joy, where sin no longer blinds the eyes or binds the hand (Philippians 3:12-14, Ephesians 3:14). 

Man continually and often recklessly aspires to greatness and  glory, and in forsaking the source of his power and psyche and desires, he has turned aside to vainglory and viciousness, contest and competition of spurious, furious irrelevance, killing and maiming only to grow old and die, disregarded. The greatness is there, but in the Lord, and it is not alone, as in some tyrant, but wedded to glory, for it is His goodness which astounds, and this as well as cruelty has some mirror amid man.

The provisions of God are precious and the God whose they are is infinite in glory, glorious in majesty, splendid in compassion and magnificent in mercy. Without Him, man constantly and now more and more dramatically as a race is manifesting himself to be inglorious, often horrendous, like a car out of control, with a mad driver, heading down a concrete road to the ocean immediately below. It is a form of madness that he so acts, his churning and toiling inner forces in disarray, his guidance system awry and his glory coming in pants as he destroys and is destroyed.

It is time to awake and find the Lord, to repent and seek the Lord, to believe in His provision in Jesus Christ, and through faith in Him without adornment, live life as it is given,  life which you would WANT to last forever!

Never blame God. HE is glorious.

 

 

 

 

NOTES

*1

The staggering and sustained work of healing over the years through missionary's wife, Elsie Salmon, is attested in such works as  He Heals Today and Christ Still Healing. Attestation is made of the healing of tens of thousands of people often with medically incurable conditions, with evidence even of the completion of a baby's half-formed arm in this way. Evidence is to hand. It is one of many startling different actions, some immediate, though this particular one  took some months.

Dr W.E. Sangster, for many years President of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain, wrote the forward to one of these books. He details  the  many stories he heard, and later investigation which he made. This tells of great  crowds coming to the missionary house in South Africa, to be healed. Interestingly, in the later book, Christ Still Healing, in Salmon's visit to Great Britain,  many public statements of an evidential character are made from many sources throughout the land, in detailed accounts. This gave Great Britain an opportunity at many local areas, including Scotland and Ireland, to experience directly the type of healing wrought, indeed some of the various types.

In similar vein, though in this case, in a farming area in South Africa, a famous, long term Dutch family has added to their farm workings, a hospitality and spiritual work which allows many people to stay for weeks if so desired, and in this site, in highly undramatic but continual fashion, similar healings of vast depth and large number have made it a source for many.

These matters are far removed from sensationalist opportunism, and are dealt with in comparative simplicity in the name of Jesus Christ.

How and when the Lord disposes His different gifts is up to Him; for His is the discretion which as in Christ's own day on this earth, may be need to prevent  opportunism and avoidance of the deeper issues, or may be used to encourage a faithless Age, to stop pretending that if you don't have candy for a while, it means that there isn't any. Wise parents use discretion. The Lord more so!

 

 

*2

This case is found in Things Old and New Ch.  3, esp. End-note 1A.

 

This long-attesting case is described in detail in the work, "God's Grace The revival at Kwa Sizabantu," by Welly due Toit. It contains, inter alia, a medical report.

It is perhaps ironic, but not sadly so, for it harbours hope even for those who may for a time be led astray by vacuous or worse astral aspirations, that in this same book there is abundant reference to Christian … therapy.

The bodily cases, involving in this case a specific gift of healing it seems, were undramatic in posture, unpretentious in procedure, made emphatically in Christ’s name only, without any assumptions of certainty at the physical level, in that it is ALWAYS in His OWN discretion. For all that, the rate of healing when the afflicted one was asked clearly what he/she wanted, and where spiritual purity and reality were, in Christ, the main objective, was astonishing.

It is not from aliens, imagined in the mind, that man must look for the ultimate therapy which touches all realms and regions of the being: it is to the Lord Jesus Christ. When it involves physical healing, it is Biblically to be without presumption of obligation, but with entreaty and kindness, putting His covenant and gospel above all bodily results (as in II Cor. 12:7-10). As with so much else, it is when the correct orientation occurs, that the whole matter comes to resemble the resolution of a puzzle, and individual components such as the body, tend to be seen in the light of the total situation,


On this  topic of healing, see also SMR pp. 339, 347; and The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith Ch. 9, pp. 199ff..
 
 
 

*3

In Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 7, there is exposed something of this habitual recidivism that tended to plague ancient Israel. This relates closely to our present topic, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. More of the pattern is exposed in the rest of that Chapter.

In this, there is a parallel,  that speaks! Indeed, the people threatened to stone Moses, when they feared and failed to enter the Promised Land (Number 14:10). At the brink of glory (in faith proceeding where God sends, and here entering an entire category of blessing), they not only failed, but thought of killing the leader and returning to Egypt, This has been the procedure; it was so when Christ came, when they did more than THINK of killing the Commander; and it has been the step taken with those who have stood for Christ while many have sought to avoid and evade Christ's call, even in some bodies called churches! And so the fires of Smithfield and the incredible brutality of judicial murder and slowly burning fires to incinerate living human flesh, drama of the Romanist Inquisition, proceeded.

Faith becomes an incubus, life a burden through lack of faith. Glorious opportunity and scope for glory is painstakingly sacrificed. Faith is in recess, life in rebellion, formality acts as fraud.

Not so surprising therefore was Christ's parable of the rich man and the beggar, Lazarus, neglected in his earthly life, but secure in the haven of heaven at last (Luke 16:19ff.). Give me water! send Lazarus to bring it! cries the lost rich man. There was however no way for this to happen, for there was a gulf between the two. Christ then made his famous remark, that even if one were to rise from the dead, they would not believe.

Just as faith without works is dead, since faith is a living and acting sort of thing, as is the nature of all life, so form without function is defunct, and testimony without truth is mere tedium.

This observation made by Christ, then, was in response to the rich man, in hell, asking for someone to be sent to his brothers still living on this earth; but it had a subtler impact.

bullet

Christ DID rise from the dead
and it was NOT sufficient to convince
those who could see only Rome embarrassed, the Sanhedrin incapacitated,
Israel at risk,
still blind as the well-noted tomb of Joseph of Arithmathea was evacuated (Luke 23:50-55),
that very significant, sealed and guarded one
which had been very carefully and naturally most emphatically observed
by the devoted women, who had burial duties to perform.

No one could do ANYTHING to stop the resurrection; but the Lord who had foretold that after just three days, He would rise from the dead, did as always, precisely what He had said. Because they COULD do nothing, this is what they did. Because the Lord can do ANYTHING, what was required, raising the dead body of the Saviour to life, He did.

Every simple practical force was there to prevent this fulfilment; but it was still fulfilled.

Could they not guard the body (they tried) ? could they not encircle the area (they provided soldiers and a boulder and seal) ? could they not note the prediction from a millenium before that He would rise bodily (Psalm 16) ? Would they not listen to Christ's deliberate prediction (Matthew 16-17) ? Were they strategically exempt or merely obfuscated by guilt ? Did they not realise that He answered every test, physical or mental, and so take steps ? Or did they rather do something, while God did all!

Were they to become asinine, incompetent and paralysed all at once ? Could they not do better than have a story (Matthew 28) to 'explain' it all, saying that the disciples had stolen the body while the guard slept ? for how could they know, if they slept!

But if they did not know, and were paralysed with fright as the tomb was opened by supernatural means, as dead men in fear and horror, amazement and dazed into delirium by life itself at work in the midst of death, with precise power and glorious order: then indeed you have the only natural explanation. The body went and they knew it, not as they slept, but as they were struck and dumbfounded with the divine power and presence, unable and bewildered by such supernatural almightiness.  'Sleep' was a cover up, inept for those not executed for incompetence, and irrelevant as testimony, except for this: that obviously it was a false testimony, self-contradictory in itself, as the outset. Sleep does not witness.

Just as Israel in the day of Christ, not all, but the nation as such, made of themselves an unbelieving morass deserving (and soon to obtain - A.D. 70) massive judgment, so in the day of Moses,  for wilfully refusing to enter the promised land, after myriads of miracles in multiple dimensions, without one failure, they did not believe. Thus the 40 year penalty, in the wilderness, was what they obtained, and this was their reward for reneging; just as later, it was to be something close to 2000 years, of exclusion as a NATION. In that case, it was the apostles and the converts, who were the exceptions; just as earlier, it was Moses and some others,  in the day of the Exodus, when their journey was complete, the Promised Land at hand, as later Christ was.

In the day of Christ's resurrection, and what followed, there was a larger 'remnant', as the apostles and disciples were joined by those thousands of other believers, whom their preaching was used   to gain! The remnant was large, but a remnant still; for the nation was spiritually ill.

The history of refusal had been long.

In ancient Israel, the refusal of the people to enter the land at their very feet, into which they had already sent spies who had returned intact, was not alone as an exhibit of their approach to faith ...

Did the people not rebel on the very excursion out of Egypt, crying in terms of their missing pleasures, at the onset of the Pharaoh's army, threatening to close them in to the sea. Only the opening of it could deliver them; and it opened. How many MORE times, after the 10 plagues, did they need to be reassured!

Christ, then,  did indeed put this sort of spirit well, when He indicated, in telling the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus, that though one were to rise from the dead, it would not suffice to convince that generation! It is the perennial character of disfaith, of settled, pathological, animated animus against the truth, which so acts in any Age.

 

See also The King's Counsel Ch. 3.