# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S51
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. 1902. 51

Gospel of Mark is to be read: "After that, he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country. And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them"? According to the one report they believed, according to the other not. What is truth there? And so one need only take the report of any one evangelist, it is said, and one will always find that it does not agree with the others. If, then, it was indeed wrong and unfair to condemn Jesus because the testimonies about him did not agree, so it is also wrong and unfair to demand faith in the resurrection of Jesus, because the witnesses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and also the other apostles, especially Paul, do not agree with one another.

But is it really so, that the disciples and apostles of Jesus are found to be false witnesses, that they testified against God that he raised up Jesus, whom he did not raise up? Thank God, no! In the history of the resurrection of Jesus too the Scripture contains no self-contradictions. We will go the way tried hitherto and seek to make clear to ourselves, from the report of the four evangelists, what happened on the first Easter day.

a. In the night from Holy Saturday to Easter Sunday there still stood at the closed tomb the watch of soldiers set by Pontius Pilate. Matthew tells us at the end of the 27th chapter that this watch was granted by Pilate at the request of the Jewish authorities. Otherwise, it was represented to him, the disciples of Jesus might come, steal the body, and tell the people, Jesus is risen from the dead, and so the last error might be worse than the first. Pilate in this too again went along with them; the tomb was secured with guards and the stone sealed with an official seal. The men of the High Council had therefore evidently not forgotten what Jesus had once said: "I will rise again after three days." They had not misunderstood this, even if not completely, while the disciples of Jesus, as the evangelists repeat again and again, did not understand what was meant by it and in their present state of mind did not think of that word of the Lord. To be sure, the members of the High Council, when they thought of the possibility that Jesus might become alive again, pictured to themselves under this no other life than the former one had been, which would at some time have to end again with death.

The first news, then, that Jesus had come forth from the tomb in a wonderful manner was received in fact not by the disciples of Jesus but by his enemies, and indeed through the watch posted at the tomb. There was a great earthquake, we read in Matthew; the angel of the Lord came down from heaven, drew near and rolled the stone from the door of the tomb and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning