There is an interesting, and mysterious, passage found in Matthew 27:50-54. Upon the death of the Lord Jesus, there was a great earthquake. The veil in the Temple separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies was torn in two, the “rocks rent” and graves were opened. This enormous physical event that occurred at the death of God in the form of man convinced the pagan Roman centurion that Jesus was indeed the Son of God.

The Kidron Valley was, and still is, a giant cemetery. Many tombs were cut into the side of the valley. There is evidence today that as a result of an earthquake the rock face of the valley fell away, leaving many of those tombs open.

This is a photo of some of the tombs. (The trash is from the Palestinian village above.)

Photo by Ronald Taylor

Matthew said that after the Lord Jesus was resurrected, many saints buried in these now-opened tombs arose, left their tombs, and went into Jerusalem where they were seen by many.

This passage raises a lot of questions. First, what happened to these resurrected saints afterward? There are many accounts in the Bible of persons being raised from the dead. We are not told, but we assume that such persons eventually died and returned to the grave. All of those restored to life had not been dead very long; their bodies were intact. Perhaps the longest was Lazarus who had been in the grave for four days (John 11:17).

The resurrected saints described by Matthew may have been dead for many years. Their bodies were gone, and yet they walked into Jerusalem and appeared to many. This indicates that they were given new bodies, just as is promised to those who will be resurrected in the future. The Apostle Paul wrote that the Lord Jesus will change our “vile bodies” so that they will be like His glorious resurrected body (Philippians 3:21).

Recall that the Lord Jesus appeared to over five-hundred people in His resurrected body (First Corinthians 15:6). He walked, talked and ate. You could touch Him. And yet He could easily move from the Spiritual realm to the Physical realm, as when He appeared to the Disciples in the Upper Room (John 20:19).

My logical conclusion of these facts is that the saints resurrected almost two-thousand years ago were part of the First Resurrection. The First Resurrection is a classification, not an event. It includes saved Believers at the time when the Lord Jesus calls us to meet Him in the air (I Thessalonians 4:16-17). It also includes those who were beheaded for the witness of Jesus during the Tribulation (Revelation 20:4-5).

Those blessed souls, designated saints by the Lord, were part of the First Resurrection. They received their resurrected bodies that were like that of the Lord Jesus. They walked and talked to many in the City of Jerusalem as a witness of the power of the Lord over death. I suspect that after they completed that witness, they were taken up to Heaven, just as those who will take part in the later Resurrection that we call the Rapture.

Glory to God for demonstrating His wonderful power over death. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!