31. The Calvary Miracles
There Was Darkness … the Earth Did Quake.
The Calvary Miracles
IT WAS PERFECTLY appropriate that a career ushered in by a miracle, and a ministry replete with miracles, should conclude with a series of miracles. Jesus was dead and His lips silenced, but now God spoke in an awe-inspiring language of His own. The accompaniments of His death were startling signs to an unbelieving world, each of which underlined the tremendous significance of the Savior’s death.
The Mysterious Darkness
“There was a darkness over all the earth” (Luke 23:44). In a previous chapter, attention has been drawn to the fact that this was no ordinary darkness. God darkened the sun by means of His own. It was not caused by an eclipse. The longest eclipse can last but a few minutes, but this darkness continued for three hours. Again, it occurred during the Feast of the Passover, the time of full moon, when the moon was at her farthest from the sun.
This unique occurrence is not without extrabiblical historical support. In Egypt, when Diogenes saw the darkness, with unconscious insight he. exclaimed, “Either the Deity Himself suffers at this moment, or sympathizes with one that does.”
In the second century Tertullian challenged his heathen adversaries in the following words, “At the moment of Christ’s death, the light departed from the sun, and the land was darkened at noonday, which wonder is related in your own annals, and is preserved in your archives to this day.”
This darkness was unique and symbolical. “The darkness was not caused by the absence of the sun, the occasion of our night,” wrote W. R. Nicholson. “It was darkness at noon-time, a darkness in the presence of the sun, and while the sun was uneclipsed by the intervention of another celestial body, a darkness we might say, which was the antagonist of light and the overcomer of it…. The darkness of Calvary smothering the sun at noon! What an impressive thing! What a trembling conception of the almightiness of God!”
But why this darkness? Darkness and judgment go together. It assuredly was an awesome sign to the sign-seeking but Christ-rejecting Jews. It was an inspired commentary on the character and extent of His sufferings for us, while He was being “stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4)—sufferings so unspeakable that they were screened from profane and curious human inquisitiveness. Peter, James, and John, intimates of Jesus, were admitted into the secrets of Gethsemane, but at Golgotha God enveloped His Son’s anguish in kindly darkness.
The onlookers might well be smitten with fear at this divine and miraculous intervention. “All the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned” (Luke 23:48).
Well might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut His glories in,
When God, the mighty Maker died,
For man, the creature’s sin.ISAAC WATTS
The Miraculous Rending of the Veil
“And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (Matthew 27:51).
The Holy Place in the Temple was divided from the Holiest of All by a great and beautiful veil. It was suspended by hooks from four pillars of gold. It measured sixty feet long by thirty feet wide, worked in seventy-two squares, and was reputed to be as thick as the palm of the hand. So heavy was it that the priests claimed it took three hundred men to handle it.
The purpose of the veil needed no explanation. It was not a gateway, but a barrier. It effectively excluded the ministering priests from entering the Holiest of All. Only once a year was it drawn aside to admit the high priest—on the Day of Atonement. He entered the sacred presence-chamber to sprinkle the Mercy Seat with blood, making atonement for his own sins and those of his people.
For centuries the veil had hung gracefully in its place, but suddenly, at the very moment the Crucified uttered His loud, expiring cry, the ministering priests heard a tearing sound, and as if an unseen hand severed it by starting at the top, the veil fell apart before their awe-stricken gaze.
Who could express the solemnity of the moment when they found themselves gazing into the sanctuary where for centuries God had deigned to dwell, and into which none had dared enter under pain of death. Tradition has it that the priests, unwilling to accept the implications of this divine act, sewed up the curtain and resumed their ritual, as though no world-shaking event had taken place.
That this was a miraculous act of God was evident, for the rent was from top to bottom. Some have seen in the earthquake that accompanied the rending of the veil the cause of the phenomenon. One writer suggests that a cleavage in the masonry of the porch, which rent the outer veil and left the Holy Place open to view, would account for the language of the gospels, of Josephus, and of the Talmud. But the thickness of the veil would make that seem most unlikely. That some great catastrophe had occurred in the sanctuary at this very time is confirmed by Tacitus, and the earliest Christian tradition, as well as by Josephus, and the Talmud. So widespread a tradition must have some historical basis.
Again, if the earthquake rent a veil of such thickness, why did it not disintegrate the building at the same time? Be that as it may, it was a deeply significant sign wrought by the finger of God.
The rending of the veil signified the end of the old order and the ushering in of the new. J. Gregory Mantle sees in it a four-fold significance.
It was the end of symbolism. The old economy had fulfilled its purpose and yielded place to the new. Christ, the great High Priest, was the perfect fulfillment of the shadows and ritual of the law.
It envisaged the end of sin. The veil was rent at the very moment Jesus, who was “made … to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21), “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26).
The reign of sin and death is o’er,
And all may live from sin set free.
Satan hath lost his mortal power,
‘Tis swallowed up in victory.CHARLES WESLEY
It was the end of sacerdotalism. No longer was there any need for a priesthood and sacrificial system. The ministration of the priesthood that had held a central place in Jewish national life had come to an end.
It betokened, the end of separation. The veil that had for a millennium and a half been a barrier to God’s presence now became a gateway. Every penitent soul is now invited to enter the Holiest of All by virtue of the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:19).
The Mighty Earthquake
“And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.”
Our Lord’s victorious shout was followed immediately by a shattering earthquake. The rocks that rent were not detached boulders, but cliffs, masses of rock. Earthquake shocks are not uncommon in Jerusalem, but through divine overruling this particular “quake synchronized with the tremendous event that had just transpired in the spiritual realm, as though to attest the might and majesty of Him whose lifeless body now hung limp on the cross.”
This was no small earth tremor, for “‘the rocks rent,’ and not merely lined across with just perceptible cracks, but wrenched asunder into such fissures as to lay open the interior of the rocky graves which abounded in Golgotha.” The visitation was of such magnitude that even the Roman soldiers “feared greatly.”
This was not an isolated phenomenon attributable to natural causes. The coincidences are too striking. It; exactly coincided with two other miraculous manifestations, the mysterious darkness and the rending of the veil. It coincided with the loud cry and the death of the Son of God. It coincided with the opening of certain graves, apparently only the graves of saints.
Some have seen in this divine visitation an answer to the earthquake on Sinai that evidenced the awe-full presence of God. In the Old Testament, an earthquake often denoted God’s presence and intervention among men. “Sinai was the prophecy of Calvary. Calvary was the fulfillment of Sinai. Sinai was God’s inexorable voice of condemnation; Calvary, God’s Fatherly voice of pardon and love.”
The Momentous Appearance of Dead Saints
“And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many” (Matthew 27:52–53).
The earthquake shock and the rending of the rocks resulted in the opening of the rock-tombs similar to that of Joseph of Arimathea, in the vicinity of Calvary. It was not blind force that rent the rocks. They were rent with rare discrimination, for there was every evidence of intelligent design. Only selected graves were opened, the graves of saints. There is no evidence that graves other than these were breached by the quake.
The Persic version reads, “Saints who had suffered martyrdom rose,” and Matthew Henry asks, “What if we should suppose that they were the martyrs who, in Old Testament times had sealed the truth of God with their blood, that were thus dignified and distinguished?”
It must be noted that, while the tombs were opened at the moment of Christ’s death, the bodies of the saints are recorded to have come “out of the graves after His resurrection.” The tombs thus remained; exposed for the period the body of Christ remained in the grave. The later appearance of the saints would be all the more striking and significant, showing as it did the “better resurrection” yet to come, of which Christ was the first-fruits.
The opening of the graves was a vivid and eloquent symbolic demonstration that by His death Christ had for ever broken the bonds of death. “He death by dying slew,” and for ever robbed the grave of its terror and victory.
The resurrection of these saints was a clear indication that the prison doors of Hades had been wrenched from their hinges. The words “they were raised” surely mean what they say. They rose, but not in order that they might live again on earth. They “appeared to many,” but not to stay.
That this event is mysterious and difficult of explanation we concede. But must it therefore be apocryphal? Would not the same mode of reasoning discount our Lord’s own resurrection? It is no more miraculous than the mysterious darkness, or the rending of the veil. It gives point to the opening of the graves, for the saints who appeared were not “risen” saints but “revived” saints, as was Lazarus when called back to life. Their bodies were apparently revived for this purpose, but it was not their final resurrection.
In this momentous event we have a sign that Jesus had conquered death, and a foreshadowing of the glorious resurrection that awaits the believer.
How silently the Easter dawn unfurls
Upon the earth—soundless
As His hand, omnipotent, rolling
Away the stone before the tomb.
See Christ step forth, embodiment
Of all that cannot be destroyed,
The Lord of Life, Light, Truth and Love,
Restorer of men’s faith and hope.
Now is Christ risen from the dead!
Rejoice! Let those who worship at an empty tomb
bestir themselves;
Today He lives—He loves!MILDRED N. HOYER