Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
8 7 2026
When the Dead Walked Into Jerusalem
One of the Greatest Miracles We Hardly Ever Talk About
Have you ever read a passage of Scripture and wondered why God chose to say so little about something so enormous?
Matthew 27 has always done that to me. Right after Jesus dies on the cross,
Matthew tells us the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, the earth shook, the rocks split, and then…
almost as if it were just another event, he tells us that many of the saints who had died
were raised and later walked into Jerusalem where they appeared to many people.
Then Matthew simply moves on. No names. No explanation. No description of what happened after that.
I’ve often wondered why.
Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable. Every verse has a purpose. Some passages explain doctrine in great detail, while others leave us with just enough information to make us stop, pray, and think. I believe this is one of those passages. God obviously wanted us to know this happened, but He chose not to tell us everything. Perhaps that’s because He wanted our attention focused on what the miracle pointed to instead of the miracle itself.
To be fair, there are many events in the Gospels that are only recorded once. The widow’s son at Nain, the coin in the fish’s mouth, the healing of the bent-over woman, the ten lepers, Malchus’ ear in the Garden, even the raising of Lazarus appears in only one Gospel. So Matthew isn’t unusual in recording something the others leave out. Still, this particular miracle seems almost too large to fit into just two verses.
Can you imagine what Jerusalem must have been like? What if someone knocked on your front door…
and standing there was a relative or close friend…
whose funeral you attended months or even years earlier? Someone you helped bury.
Someone you mourned. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would ever forget that conversation.
I doubt anyone living in Jerusalem forgot it either.
The Bible doesn’t tell us what these resurrected saints said, and I think we should be careful not to claim more than Scripture says. At the same time, I have a difficult time believing that God raised them and sent them into Jerusalem without purpose. Their very presence proclaimed something no one could deny. Death had been interrupted. Something extraordinary had happened, and everyone who saw them had to wrestle with one question. Could Jesus really be the Messiah?
What also captures my attention is where God sent them. He didn’t send them into Galilee where so many had already followed Jesus. He sent them into Jerusalem, the very city that had rejected Him. The city that cried out, “Crucify Him.” The city that had just witnessed the greatest injustice in human history. To me, this feels like another incredible expression of God’s mercy.
Even after His Son had been rejected, the Father was still calling people to repentance.
He was still extending grace. He was still giving them another opportunity to believe.
Matthew also records something else that happened at exactly the same moment. The veil in the Temple was torn from top to bottom. That wasn’t simply another miracle to amaze the crowd. That veil represented the separation between a holy God and sinful people. Only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, and only once each year with the blood of a sacrifice. When Jesus died, that barrier was removed forever. No more sacrifices. No more waiting for another lamb. No more wondering if enough had been done. Jesus became the final sacrifice for every person who would ever place their faith in Him.
I’ve often wondered if Matthew intentionally placed these two miracles side by side because they explain each other. The torn veil tells us that Jesus opened the way to the Father. The opened graves tell us that He also defeated death itself. Hebrews 2:14 says that through His death He destroyed the one who had the power of death. Think about that for a moment. Jesus used death to defeat death. The resurrection of those saints wasn’t the main event. It was evidence that something far greater had just taken place.
There is another small detail that I don’t think should be overlooked. Matthew calls them “saints.”
These were men and women who trusted God before Jesus ever went to the cross.
Their resurrection reminds us that the saving work of Christ reaches backward as well as forward.
Every believer who has ever been saved, whether under the Old Covenant or the New Covenant,
has been saved because of Jesus Christ. His sacrifice wasn’t an afterthought.
It was God’s eternal plan from the very beginning.
As I thought about all of this, another question kept coming back to me.
Why did God include these two short verses? I certainly don’t think it was to satisfy our curiosity.
If that had been His purpose, He would have told us much more.
I believe He wanted us to see what these resurrected saints pointed toward.
They were living proof that Jesus was exactly who He claimed to be.
His death opened heaven, and His resurrection guaranteed ours.
The miracle wasn’t really about those saints. It was about the Savior.
Sometimes I wonder if we become so familiar with the resurrection that we lose our sense of wonder. We celebrate Easter every year. We read these verses every spring. We’ve heard them so many times that they almost seem ordinary. Yet nothing about them is ordinary. At the very moment Jesus gave His life, heaven declared that everything had changed. The barrier between God and man was gone. Death had been defeated. Hope had been secured. The empty tomb three days later simply confirmed what heaven had already begun announcing at the cross.
Maybe that’s why Matthew said so little. He didn’t want our eyes fixed on resurrected saints.
He wanted them fixed on the One who raised them.
They eventually died again. Jesus never will.
And because He lives, every man and woman who belongs to Him will live also.
If God went to such extraordinary lengths to convince Jerusalem that Jesus was the Messiah,
what has He been using to convince you…and have you been listening?
“What part of this hit home for you this morning? What are you carrying today that needs prayer? If you’d like, send me a prayer request here. Let’s invite the Holy Spirit in together. (where two are gathered.) You are not walking alone. Just hit reply…
I read every response.”
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Sarah Groves Somethings Changed
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