Alive - by Dave Smith

and Roman soldiers were placed to guard this tomb.
Notwithstanding the well-documented brutality of Roman execution
in non-Christian sources and the above clear evidence found in the
New Testament, some have still sought to question Jesus’ death on
the cross arguing, for example, that Jesus fainted rather than died,
and was mistakenly taken down by the Romans, before being buried
alive by his sympathisers! However, even critical scholars are united
in dismissing such spurious claims. Atheist Gerd Ludemann writes:
‘Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.’ 7
Dominic Crossan, someone who doesn’t believe in the physical
resurrection of Jesus nevertheless concludes: there is not the
‘slightest doubt about the fact of Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius
Pilate’. 8
Sometime after the event, the apostles and authors of the New
Testament started speaking and writing about the victory and ‘glory’
of the cross, and of how Christ died a substitutionary death for our
sins, enabling us to be forgiven, justified, made new and given access
to a relationship with God. At the time, however, the cross would
have represented a great defeat. As has been summarised: ‘It is
difficult to see how the life of Jesus could have ended in a more
undignified, obscure and shameful manner. Those who watched the
crucifixion must have felt they were seeing the verdict of history or
God, on Jesus: the cross showed that He was either a fraud or fool
and certainly a failure and just possibly all three...Somehow, out of
this most unpromising story, a radical, explosive new religion of hope
and joy developed that swept everything before it. How on earth, we
have to ask, did that happen?’ 9
The answer is by considering what happened next.
FACT 3: JESUS WAS ABSENT FROM THE