The Resurrection

189:2.1At ten min­utes past three o’clock, as the res­ur­rected Je­sus frat­er­nized with the as­sem­bled mor­ontia per­son­al­i­ties from the seven man­sion worlds of Sa­ta­nia, the chief of arch­an­gels—the an­gels of the res­ur­rec­tion—ap­proached Ga­briel and asked for the mor­tal body of Je­sus. Said the chief of the arch­an­gels: “We may not par­tic­i­pate in the mor­ontia res­ur­rec­tion of the be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence of Mi­chael our sov­er­eign, but we would have his mor­tal re­mains put in our cus­tody for im­me­di­ate dis­so­lu­tion. We do not pro­pose to em­ploy our tech­nique of de­ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion; we merely wish to in­voke the pro­cess of ac­cel­er­ated time. It is enough that we have seen the Sov­er­eign live and die on Uran­tia; the hosts of heaven would be spared the mem­ory of en­dur­ing the sight of the slow de­cay of the hu­man form of the Cre­ator and Up­holder of a uni­verse. In the name of the ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences of all Neb­a­don, I ask for a man­date giv­ing me the cus­tody of the mor­tal body of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth and em­pow­er­ing us to pro­ceed with its im­me­di­ate dis­so­lu­tion.”

189:2.2And when Ga­briel had con­ferred with the se­nior Most High of Eden­tia, the arch­an­gel spokesman for the ce­les­tial hosts was given per­mis­sion to make such dis­po­si­tion of the phys­i­cal re­mains of Je­sus as he might de­ter­mine.

189:2.3Af­ter the chief of arch­an­gels had been granted this re­quest, he sum­moned to his as­sis­tance many of his fel­lows, to­gether with a nu­mer­ous host of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all or­ders of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties, and then, with the aid of the Uran­tia mid­way­ers, pro­ceeded to take pos­ses­sion of Je­sus’ phys­i­cal body. This body of death was a purely ma­te­rial cre­ation; it was phys­i­cal and lit­eral; it could not be re­moved from the tomb as the mor­ontia form of the res­ur­rec­tion had been able to es­cape the sealed sepul­chre. By the aid of cer­tain mor­ontia aux­il­iary per­son­al­i­ties, the mor­ontia form can be made at one time as of the spirit so that it can be­come in­dif­fer­ent to or­di­nary mat­ter, while at an­other time it can be­come dis­cern­i­ble and con­tactable to ma­te­rial be­ings, such as the mor­tals of the realm.

189:2.4As they made ready to re­move the body of Je­sus from the tomb prepara­tory to ac­cord­ing it the dig­ni­fied and rev­er­ent dis­posal of near-in­stan­ta­neous dis­so­lu­tion, it was as­signed the sec­ondary Uran­tia mid­way­ers to roll away the stones from the en­trance of the tomb. The larger of these two stones was a huge cir­cu­lar af­fair, much like a mill­stone, and it moved in a groove chis­eled out of the rock, so that it could be rolled back and forth to open or close the tomb. When the watch­ing Jew­ish guards and the Ro­man sol­diers, in the dim light of the morn­ing, saw this huge stone be­gin to roll away from the en­trance of the tomb, ap­par­ently of its own ac­cord—with­out any vis­i­ble means to ac­count for such mo­tion—they were seized with fear and panic, and they fled in haste from the scene. The Jews fled to their homes, af­ter­ward go­ing back to re­port these do­ings to their cap­tain at the tem­ple. The Ro­mans fled to the fortress of An­to­nia and re­ported what they had seen to the cen­tu­rion as soon as he ar­rived on duty.

189:2.5The Jew­ish lead­ers be­gan the sor­did busi­ness of sup­pos­edly get­ting rid of Je­sus by of­fer­ing bribes to the traitorous Ju­das, and now, when con­fronted with this em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion, in­stead of think­ing of pun­ish­ing the guards who de­serted their post, they re­sorted to brib­ing these guards and the Ro­man sol­diers. They paid each of these twenty men a sum of money and in­structed them to say to all: “While we slept dur­ing the night­time, his dis­ci­ples came upon us and took away the body.” And the Jew­ish lead­ers made solemn promises to the sol­diers to de­fend them be­fore Pi­late in case it should ever come to the gov­er­nor’s knowl­edge that they had ac­cepted a bribe.

189:2.6The Chris­tian be­lief in the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus has been based on the fact of the “empty tomb.” It was in­deed a fact that the tomb was empty, but this is not the truth of the res­ur­rec­tion. The tomb was truly empty when the first be­liev­ers ar­rived, and this fact, as­so­ci­ated with that of the un­doubted res­ur­rec­tion of the Mas­ter, led to the for­mu­la­tion of a be­lief which was not true: the teach­ing that the ma­te­rial and mor­tal body of Je­sus was raised from the grave. Truth hav­ing to do with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and eter­nal val­ues can­not al­ways be built up by a com­bi­na­tion of ap­par­ent facts. Al­though in­di­vid­ual facts may be ma­te­ri­ally true, it does not fol­low that the as­so­ci­a­tion of a group of facts must nec­es­sar­ily lead to truth­ful spir­i­tual con­clu­sions.

189:2.7The tomb of Joseph was empty, not be­cause the body of Je­sus had been re­ha­bil­i­tated or res­ur­rected, but be­cause the ce­les­tial hosts had been granted their re­quest to af­ford it a spe­cial and unique dis­so­lu­tion, a re­turn of the “dust to dust,” with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of the de­lays of time and with­out the op­er­a­tion of the or­di­nary and vis­i­ble pro­cesses of mor­tal de­cay and ma­te­rial cor­rup­tion.

189:2.8The mor­tal re­mains of Je­sus un­der­went the same nat­u­ral pro­cess of el­e­men­tal dis­in­te­gra­tion as char­ac­ter­izes all hu­man bod­ies on earth ex­cept that, in point of time, this nat­u­ral mode of dis­so­lu­tion was greatly ac­cel­er­ated, has­tened to that point where it be­came well-nigh in­stan­ta­neous.

189:2.9The true ev­i­dences of the res­ur­rec­tion of Mi­chael are spir­i­tual in na­ture, al­beit this teach­ing is cor­rob­o­rated by the tes­ti­mony of many mor­tals of the realm who met, rec­og­nized, and com­muned with the res­ur­rected mor­ontia Mas­ter. He be­came a part of the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of al­most one thou­sand hu­man be­ings be­fore he fi­nally took leave of Uran­tia.