“Honey, I'm Home!”

Monday, February 24, 2014

I was reading your post on "ghosts", and it got me thinking of the situation in the Bible where the spirits arose from the dead and appeared to people just after Jesus had been crucified.  This has always intrigued me.  Do you think this was a one-time thing specific to the crucifixion?  Not that we could ever know, but I've always wondered who they appeared to and how those people responded to it.

Sincerely,
Post-Mortem Ponderer

Dear Post-Mortem Ponderer,

Matt 27:50-53 describes events that happened immediately after Jesus breathed His last breath.  The temple veil was miraculously torn from top to bottom, rocks were rent asunder, the earth quaked, and some of the faithful who had died were raised from the dead and appeared to people in Jerusalem.  This was a one-time event because all of these things were used to point to the fact that Jesus really was the Christ.  Matt 27:54 says that these events caused people to confess Jesus as the Son of God.  Just as further clarification, even the people raised in this event wouldn’t be characterized as ghosts because the physical bodies were raised from the dead and came out of the tombs… ghosts don’t have bodies.

As for the last part of your question: we too have often wondered how people reacted to their dead loved ones coming back to life.  It certainly would have been quite the event – which, of course, was the point.

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