REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 28:6
You may have come to this Easter carrying a tomb of your own —
a buried hope, a sealed door, a relationship that no longer breathes,
a faith that has quietly gone cold.
The angel’s announcement on that first Easter morning —
“He is not here; He has risen” —
was not spoken only to two women in Jerusalem.
It was spoken into this very moment of your life.
The most important question this Easter is not simply whether Jesus rose from the dead.
The deeper question is this:
What does His Resurrection mean for the dead things in your life — the very things you have already given up on in prayer?
Today’s Wake-Up Call carries your answer.
What Do “Dead Things” Really Mean?
This is not about physical death.
It is about the silent, unseen areas of life that feel:
- hopeless
- stuck
- forgotten
- no longer worth praying for
These “dead places” may look like:
- a relationship that has lost its heartbeat
- a dream you quietly buried
- a struggle that never seemed to change
a faith that feels distant and dry
RISE & INSPIRE
Wake-Up Calls | Reflection No. 94 | 5th April 2026
HE IS NOT HERE — HE HAS RISEN!
A Wake-Up Call for Every Believer Who Has Ever Stood at an Empty Tomb
VERSE FOR TODAY
“He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said.”
— Matthew 28:6
THE SCENE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
It is early morning. The sky is barely light. Two women walk to a tomb with heavy hearts, carrying the weight of grief that only those who have loved and lost can understand. They had watched Him die. They had seen the stone rolled across the entrance. They had gone home and sat in the silence of shattered hope.
And now they return — not expecting a miracle and expecting a body.
But the angel’s words stop them in their tracks: He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said.
Four words that contain the entirety of the Christian faith. Four words that split history in two. Four words that turned frightened disciples into fearless witnesses, that transformed a movement of mourners into a community of resurrection. He is not here. He has been raised.
WAKE UP — THE TOMB IS EMPTY
Today is Easter Sunday — the summit of the entire Christian year. Every Advent waiting, every Christmas joy, every Lenten fasting, every Good Friday grief has been leading to this single, shattering, glorious moment. The tomb is empty. Death has been defeated. The One who said “I am the resurrection and the life” has proved it — not with words, but with His own risen body.
This is not mythology. This is not a metaphor. This is the central, non-negotiable, world-overturning fact of Christian faith. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. But he has been raised. And because He has been raised, nothing — absolutely nothing — is the same.
The Resurrection is not a footnote to the Christian story. It is the headline. It is the point. It is the reason you are reading this reflection today.
AS HE SAID
Notice the angel does not just announce the Resurrection. He adds three words that carry enormous weight: as he said.
Jesus had told His disciples — more than once — that He would suffer, die, and rise on the third day. They heard the words. They did not understand them. Even after He said it plainly, they could not hold the promise because the cross seemed too final, too brutal, too complete a defeat.
Do you recognise yourself in that moment?
How many times has God made a promise to you that your circumstances made seem impossible? How many times have you heard His word but found your grief, your fear, your logic drowning it out? The women at the tomb had heard Jesus speak of resurrection. But on Friday evening, the stone seemed more real than the promise.
And yet — the promise was the reality all along. The stone was temporary. The word of God was eternal.
As he said. Three words that are a rebuke to every doubt, a comfort to every waiting heart, and a challenge to every believer who has ever wondered whether God will really do what He has promised. He will. He always does. As he said.
FOUR RESURRECTION TRUTHS FOR YOUR LIFE TODAY
First — Your greatest defeat may be the doorway to your greatest victory. The cross looked like the end. It was the beginning. Whatever situation in your life looks finished, closed, sealed with a stone — bring it to the Risen Christ. He specialises in resurrection.
Second — Grief is real, but it does not have the last word. The women who came to that tomb were not weak for weeping. They loved deeply, and they grieved honestly. But their grief was not the end of the story. Yours is not either. The Risen Christ meets us in our grief — and transforms it.
Third — God keeps His promises even when we stop believing them. Jesus rose as he said — whether or not the disciples were expecting it. God’s faithfulness is not dependent on our faith. He is risen whether we believe it today or not. But when we do believe it — when we stake our lives on it — everything changes.
Fourth — The Resurrection is not only about what happened to Jesus. It is about what happens to you. Paul writes that we are buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him to new life. The power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that is at work in you right now — in your discouragement, your failure, your dead ends. That power is alive. That power is available. That power has your name on it.
A PERSONAL WORD
Perhaps you have come to this Easter carrying a tomb of your own. A relationship that feels dead. A dream that was buried. A faith that has grown cold. A wound that has not healed. A door that seems sealed shut.
The angel’s word is for you today, just as surely as it was for those two women on that Sunday morning: He is not here. He has been raised. And because He has been raised, your tomb is not the end either.
The Risen Christ is not confined to history. He is alive — right now, today, in this moment — and He is walking toward you in your garden of grief, ready to call your name just as He called Mary’s, ready to say: I am here. I have not abandoned you. Death could not hold Me — and it will not hold you.
PRAYER FOR TODAY
Lord Jesus, You are risen. Truly, gloriously, wonderfully risen. On this Easter morning, roll away the stone from every tomb in my life — every dead hope, every sealed door, every grief I have stopped believing You can touch. Let the power of Your Resurrection breathe new life into me today. As You said it, so You did it. And as You have promised, so You will do it — in my life, in my family, in my future. I receive Your resurrection power today. Alleluia. Amen.
ALLELUIA — HE IS RISEN. HE IS RISEN INDEED.
WATCH AND BE INSPIRED
Companion Piece to Wake-Up Call No. 94
If you’ve just read today’s Easter reflection on Matthew 28:6 — the angel’s breathtaking announcement, “He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said” — this companion post is written for you.
The devotional opened your heart to the personal hope of resurrection power touching every “dead thing” in your life. This post now opens your mind with the historical and Gospel evidence: what the four witnesses record, what scholars across the spectrum accept, and why Jesus’ resurrection stands utterly unique in the ancient world.
Faith and reason belong together at the empty tomb. Read the reflection first if you haven’t — let it stir your spirit. Then let the evidence strengthen your confidence. Together, they point to the same living Christ who still calls your name today.
WHY THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS IS UNLIKE ANYTHING THE ANCIENT WORLD HAD EVER SEEN
A Historical and Gospel Comparison
OPENING
The angel said He has been raised. But was it real? Was it unique? And does the evidence hold up when examined honestly? Here is what the four Gospels, the historians, and two thousand years of scholarship actually say.
BEFORE YOU READ THIS
This post is the scholarly companion to today’s pastoral reflection — Wake-Up Call No. 94 — based on Matthew 28:6: He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said.
If you have not read that reflection yet, begin there. It will open your heart. This post will then open your mind. Faith and reason are not enemies. At the empty tomb, they meet.
PART ONE
THE FOUR GOSPELS — ONE EVENT, FOUR WITNESSES
The Resurrection of Jesus is the climax of all four Gospels. Each account carries its own distinctive emphasis, details, and theological focus. They are not identical word for word — and that is actually a point in their favour. Independent witnesses to the same event will naturally recall different details, approach the scene from different angles, and emphasise what struck them most. What matters is whether they agree on the essentials. They do — completely.
Across all four Gospels, five core facts are affirmed without exception.
The empty tomb was discovered early on Sunday morning by women, with Mary Magdalene named in every account. Angelic messengers announced that Jesus had risen. The initial response of the witnesses was fear, confusion, or grief — not triumphant expectation. The risen Jesus appeared alive to multiple witnesses, transforming doubt into faith. And everything happened in fulfilment of Jesus’ own prior predictions about rising on the third day.
The differences between the accounts are secondary — how many angels appeared, the exact sequence of events, and which appearances are highlighted. Scholars across the theological spectrum view these as complementary perspectives from different eyewitness traditions, not contradictions. No Gospel claims to record every detail exhaustively.
MARK 16 — THE SHORTEST AND MOST HONEST ACCOUNT
Mark’s resurrection narrative is the briefest of the four. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to anoint the body. They find the stone already rolled away and encounter one young man — an angel — dressed in white inside the tomb. He delivers the announcement: He has risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him.
The angel instructs them to tell the disciples — and Peter specifically — that Jesus is going ahead to Galilee. Then comes one of the most striking endings in all of literature. In the earliest manuscripts, Mark closes at verse 8 with the words: they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
No triumphant celebration. No tidy resolution. Just awe, trembling, and silence.
This is not the ending a forger would write. It is raw, uncomfortable, and deeply human. It captures the shock of an event so far outside normal experience that the first response was not joy but bewildered, speechless wonder. Mark’s account adds something every honest believer will recognise: the initial response to resurrection is often not a confident proclamation. It is stunned silence. And yet the proclamation came — because the risen Christ is more powerful than human fear.
Later manuscripts add a longer ending summarising appearances and the Great Commission. Most scholars consider this a later addition rather than part of Mark’s original text.
MATTHEW 28 — THE ACCOUNT AT THE HEART OF TODAY’S REFLECTION
Matthew’s account is the one on which today’s pastoral reflection is built, and it is the most dramatic of the four.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary arrive at the tomb. An earthquake occurs. An angel descends from heaven, rolls back the stone in their presence, and sits on it. The guards — Roman soldiers posted to prevent exactly this kind of event — are so terrified they become like dead men. The angel speaks: He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Go quickly and tell his disciples.
Three words deserve particular attention here: just as he said. Matthew is not simply reporting an event. He is making a theological claim. This was not a surprise. It was a promise kept. Jesus had said He would rise on the third day. The world buried that promise under stone, sealed it with authority, and guarded it with soldiers. And on the third day, the promise walked out.
As the women run to tell the disciples, the risen Jesus meets them on the road. They clasp His feet and worship Him. He repeats the instruction — go to Galilee. At the close of the chapter, the Great Commission is given from a mountain in Galilee: all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go and make disciples of all nations.
Matthew also records the counter-narrative — the chief priests bribing the guards to spread the story that the disciples stole the body. This detail is historically significant. It shows that even the opponents of the early church did not deny that the tomb was empty. They only disputed why.
LUKE 24 — SCRIPTURE, RECOGNITION, AND THE ROAD TO EMMAUS
Luke provides the most detailed and orderly account, written with the care of a historian who has investigated everything carefully from the beginning.
A group of women — including Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and others — arrive at the tomb and find the stone rolled away. Two men in dazzling clothes appear and deliver the angel’s message: Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen.
The women report to the apostles, who initially dismiss it as nonsense. Peter runs to the tomb, sees the linen cloths lying there, and goes away wondering.
Then Luke gives us the most extended resurrection narrative in any Gospel — the road to Emmaus. Two disciples are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, discussing the events of the past three days with crushed hearts. The unrecognised Jesus joins them on the road. He walks with them. He listens to their grief. Then, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explains to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself. They do not recognise Him — until He breaks bread at the table that evening. In that moment, their eyes are opened. And He vanishes.
They say to each other: Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?
They rush back to Jerusalem immediately and find the eleven gathered together with the news: the Lord has risen indeed.
Luke’s account is the most pastoral in its portrayal of grief transformed. The Emmaus story does not begin with triumph — it begins with two people walking away from Jerusalem in despair, their hopes dead. The Risen Christ meets them not in a moment of faith but in a moment of defeat. And He does it through Scripture and fellowship — through the breaking of the Word and the breaking of bread. This is the pattern of every Christian life. The Risen Christ meets us in our confusion and our grief, and transforms both.
JOHN 20 AND 21 — INTIMATE, PERSONAL, AND PROFOUNDLY THEOLOGICAL
John’s account is the most personal of the four. Where Matthew gives us drama and authority, and Luke gives us Scripture and gradual recognition, John gives us intimate, individual encounters that carry enormous theological weight.
Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb while it is still dark. She sees the stone removed and runs to tell Peter and the beloved disciple. They race to the tomb. The beloved disciple arrives first, looks in, and sees the linen cloths lying there. He goes in, sees, and believes.
Mary stands outside the tomb weeping. She looks in and sees two angels. Then she turns and sees Jesus — but does not recognise Him, mistaking Him for the gardener. Then He speaks one word: Mary.
And she knows Him instantly.
This moment is one of the most tender in all of Scripture. The Risen Christ — the Lord of glory, the one who defeated death — reveals Himself not with an earthquake or an angelic army, but by speaking one woman’s name. He knows her. He calls her. She responds: Rabboni. Teacher.
That evening, Jesus appears to the ten disciples behind locked doors, shows His wounds, breathes the Holy Spirit on them, and commissions them. A week later, Thomas — who had refused to believe without physical proof — is present when Jesus appears again. Jesus invites him to touch the wounds. Thomas does not need to. He simply declares: My Lord and my God. It is the highest Christological confession in any of the Gospels, and it comes from the mouth of the greatest doubter.
John closes his Gospel with a statement of purpose that clarifies everything: these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
PART TWO
THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE — WHAT SCHOLARS ACROSS THE SPECTRUM ACCEPT
The Resurrection of Jesus is ultimately a matter of faith. But it is not a matter of faith alone. The historical evidence surrounding these events is, by any measure, unusually strong for an event of the ancient world.
Historians evaluate ancient events using standard criteria — early attestation, multiple independent sources, the criterion of embarrassment (details unlikely to be invented), eyewitness testimony, and explanatory power. The Resurrection evidence scores remarkably well on every count.
Gary Habermas developed what is known as the Minimal Facts approach — focusing exclusively on data that enjoys broad scholarly consensus, often seventy-five to ninety-five per cent of scholars including non-evangelicals and sceptics. Five core facts emerge from this analysis.
First: Jesus died by crucifixion. This is universally accepted. It is confirmed by all four Gospels, early Christian creeds, and non-Christian sources including Tacitus and Josephus. Even the most sceptical scholars — including Bart Ehrman — affirm this as certain.
Second: The tomb was found empty. Accepted by approximately seventy-five per cent of scholars in Habermas’s survey of over two thousand academic works. The reasons include early and multiple independent attestation across all four Gospels and implied in 1 Corinthians 15. Women were the first witnesses — a culturally embarrassing detail in a first-century patriarchal society that no one inventing the story would have chosen. Most significantly, the Jewish counter-narrative — that the disciples stole the body — implicitly concedes the tomb was empty. No one in Jerusalem in the weeks after the Resurrection disputed the empty tomb. They only disputed its explanation.
Third: The disciples experienced what they genuinely believed were appearances of the risen Jesus. This is virtually unanimous among scholars. Paul lists specific witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15 in a creed dated by most scholars to within two to five years of the crucifixion — received by Paul around AD 35 to 38. The list includes Peter and the Twelve, more than five hundred people at once (many still alive when Paul wrote, making verification possible), James the brother of Jesus, all the apostles, and Paul himself.
Fourth: The disciples’ lives were radically transformed. They went from fearful, scattered deserters hiding behind locked doors to bold proclaimers willing to suffer and die for their testimony. Mass hallucination does not explain this. Legend development over decades does not explain this — the transformation was immediate and the testimony was early.
Fifth: James the brother of Jesus and Paul the persecutor both converted due to claimed resurrection encounters. James had been a sceptic during Jesus’ ministry. Paul was actively hunting Christians for arrest. Both became cornerstones of the early church after claiming to have encountered the risen Christ. These are not the conversions of credulous followers — they are the conversions of opponents.
WHAT THE NON-CHRISTIAN SOURCES SAY
Three non-Christian sources from the first and early second centuries are worth noting. They do not prove the Resurrection, but they confirm the historical context and the early explosion of resurrection-centred belief.
Tacitus, writing around AD 116, confirms that Christus was executed under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, and that the movement — which he calls a destructive superstition — spread despite the execution. The reference to a superstition that revived after the death of its founder is widely understood as an indirect reference to resurrection belief.
Josephus, the Jewish historian, writing around AD 93 to 94, refers to Jesus twice. The longer reference — the Testimonium Flavianum — mentions his crucifixion under Pilate and reports that his followers claimed he appeared to them alive again on the third day. While parts of this passage are widely regarded as later Christian interpolations, the core historical references are broadly accepted as authentic. An Arabic version of the passage is more neutral in tone and considered by many scholars to be closer to the original.
Pliny the Younger, writing around AD 112, describes early Christians gathering before dawn to worship Christ as a god. This is entirely consistent with a community whose central conviction was that their Lord had risen from the dead.
PART THREE
HOW THE RESURRECTION DIFFERS FROM EVERYTHING ELSE THE ANCIENT WORLD BELIEVED
This is perhaps the most important question of all — and the one most often misunderstood.
Popular objection: Other ancient religions had dying-and-rising gods. Christianity just borrowed the idea.
The scholarly answer — including from sceptics like Bart Ehrman — is that this comparison does not survive close examination.
The pagan myths — Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Tammuz — share a surface similarity with resurrection language, but the differences are decisive.
Osiris was killed, dismembered, and reassembled by Isis. He became lord of the underworld. He did not return to earthly life in a transformed body. He did not appear to multiple witnesses. His story is tied to the annual flooding of the Nile — a cyclical, seasonal, agricultural myth. It is not a claim about a specific historical event in a named city in a named year under a named Roman governor.
Dionysus, Adonis, and Attis are similarly cyclical — tied to the rhythms of nature, the death and return of vegetation, the turning of seasons. They are no claims that on a specific Sunday morning, in a garden outside Jerusalem, under Pontius Pilate, a man walked out of a tomb and ate breakfast with his friends.
The differences are fundamental. The pagan myths are ancient, distant, mythological, and cyclical. The Christian claim is recent, specific, historical, and singular. The pagan myths were not claimed as eyewitness events. The Christian testimony names the witnesses, many of whom were still alive when the claims were being publicly proclaimed.
The Jewish background tells a different story. Jewish resurrection belief was real and robust by the time of Jesus — rooted in Daniel 12, developed through the Maccabean period, and alive in Pharisaic Judaism. But Jewish resurrection expectation was always future and collective — the general resurrection at the end of history, when God would raise all the righteous and judge the wicked. No first-century Jew was expecting an individual resurrection in the middle of history, before the end of the age, of a crucified man who had been declared a criminal and a blasphemer.
The Christian claim was not a borrowing from paganism. It was not simply an extension of Jewish expectation. It was a mutation — sudden, specific, historically rooted, and without precedent. N.T. Wright, in his monumental study The Resurrection of the Son of God, argues that this mutation requires a historical explanation. The empty tomb and the appearances, taken together, provide the strongest available explanation for why a small group of Jewish disciples began, within weeks of the crucifixion, to proclaim that the end of history had already begun in the person of their risen Lord.
PART FOUR
THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST — HONESTLY STATED
Sceptical historians, including Bart Ehrman, accept most of the minimal facts outlined above. Their objection is not primarily historical. It is philosophical. Miracles, they argue, are by definition outside the scope of historical method, which deals in probabilities within natural laws. Alternative explanations — grief-induced visions, hallucinations, legend development, theft of the body — are therefore to be preferred, however improbable, over a supernatural explanation.
Defenders of the Resurrection — including William Lane Craig, Michael Licona, and N.T. Wright — respond that the alternative explanations fail on their own terms. Hallucinations do not explain group appearances to more than five hundred people. Theft of the body does not explain the disciples’ willingness to die for the claim. Legends do not develop within two to five years of an event among people who were present. The conversion of James and Paul cannot be explained by grief or wishful thinking. And the empty tomb stands uncontested even by the opponents of the early church.
The debate ultimately turns on one question: is a supernatural resurrection possible? If God exists, and if He raised Jesus from the dead, then the historical evidence fits with extraordinary elegance. If miracles are ruled out in advance, then any natural explanation — however strained — will be preferred. This is not a question that history alone can settle. It is a question that each person must answer for themselves.
CLOSING — BACK TO THE ANGEL’S WORDS
He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said.
Matthew 28:6
The angel’s announcement was not mythology. It was not a metaphor. It was not borrowed from a Nile flood cycle or a vegetation ritual. It was a report — given to two women at dawn on a Sunday morning — about something that had just happened in a garden outside Jerusalem.
The four Gospels record it from four angles. The historians corroborate the context. The scholars confirm the minimal facts. The witnesses — more than five hundred of them — testified to it with their lives.
And the Risen Christ, who called Mary by name in a garden, who walked with two grieving disciples on a road to Emmaus, who invited a doubting Thomas to touch His wounds, who cooked breakfast for tired fishermen by the lake — that same Christ is alive today.
As He said.
And that is the foundation on which every sealed tomb in your life can be opened.
FURTHER READING
For those who wish to go deeper, the following are recommended.
The Resurrection of the Son of God — N.T. Wright
The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus — Gary Habermas and Michael Licona
Reasonable Faith — William Lane Craig
Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? — The Craig-Ehrman debate transcript
This reflection and the scholarly companion post are written inspired by the Verse for Today shared by His Excellency, Rt. Rev. Dr. Selvister Ponnumuthan on 5th April 2026.
Category: Wake-Up Calls 2026 — Reflection #94 of 2026 | 5 April 2026
| Scholarly Companion Series | Wake-Up Call #94 | Matthew 28:6 | 5 April 2026
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