A number of supernatural signs accompanied the death of Christ, certifying that, on the cross, something truly momentous was happening. Scripture says:

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matt 27:50–54)

This passage has long fascinated me and I have heard wonderful sermons on verse 50, of course, and on verse 51, the miraculous tearing of the temple curtain (from top to bottom, as only God could do), and I have even heard mention of the shaking of the earth in connection with Christ’s death, but I do not think I have ever heard a sermon on verses 52 and 53. I did preach on this passage once, in England, many years ago, to about six people (including my family) so I know at least a remnant of God’s people has heard something about this passage.

The End Of The Beginning

For those of us who live on this side of the cross, who possess that for which those under the types and shadows longed and hoped (1 Pet 1:12), it can be easy to forget how momentous was the death and resurrection of Christ. It is possible for Bible-believing people to take for granted what transpired but that we must never do. Everything turns on what happened on Golgotha. All of history looked forward to it and all history looks back to it. What happened there was the end of something great and the beginning of something greater.

After the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, they tried to hide themselves: “And they heard the sound of Yahweh Elohim walking in the garden in the Spirit of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Yahweh Elohim among the trees of the garden” (Gen 3:8).¹ Childishly, God’s image bearers, endowed by God with righteousness and every gift,² and offered eternal blessedness and communion, on condition of “perfect and personal obedience,”³ freely chose to try to become wise in their own eyes (Gen 3:6; Prov 26:12) and plunged themselves and all humanity into death and corruption. They did not gain what they hoped. They did, however, quickly realize that they were naked before the Lord (Gen 3:7). They knew that they needed a covering before the God who holy, holy, holy (Gen 3:7; Isa 6:3).⁴

That holy God came to them, as the Hebrew says, “in the Spirit of the day,” which is an elliptical way of saying that God the Son in his pre-incarnate state, came to them “in the Spirit of the day of judgment.” Our first parents were in grave jeopardy. He came to interrogate them about what they had done: “But Yahweh Elohim called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9).⁵ God the Son was not playing Marco Polo in a swimming pool. It was not that he did not know where they were. He knew perfectly well where they were and what they had done. He was asking why they were not where they were supposed to be. “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Gen 3:10). Adam, the federal head of all humanity, who was acting on our behalf, in whose loins we were, admitted that they were naked, and, as criminals often do, indicted himself and his wife. The Son, through whom all things came into being, without whom nothing has come into being that has come into being (John 1:3), did not create our first parents to be afraid of him that way. He created them for communion with himself. They were afraid because they had sinned and they knew it, and they knew what the penalty of sin is, death (Gen 2:17; 3:11; Rom 6:23).

Our gracious and merciful Lord did not leave them without hope. After he pronounced the curse upon Satan (Gen 3:14), them (and us), he also announced the gospel (Gen 3:15). The serpent will strike his heel but the Son will strike the serpent’s head. He also imposed temporal suffering (Gen 3:16–19), but he did more. Yahweh Elohim “made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (Gen 3:21). In the good news of Genesis 3:15 and in that sacrament of bloodshed and hide, the Son pointed that little church to the fulfillment we see on Golgatha.

For thousands of years the church under the types and shadows looked forward to another day, when the Lord would come in the “Spirit of the day” to crush the serpent’s head and set them free from the curse and its consequences. This hope unifies all the epochs of redemptive history until the cross. All these periods constitute the beginning, but when we get to Golgatha and the Suffering Servant of the Lord on the cross, the beginning comes to an end.

The Beginning of the End

When our Lord cried out, the second time, he “yielded up his spirit,” (Matt 27:50). He died. At the moment of Jesus’s death the Lord exercised the same power he exercised in creation but this time he exercised it for our redemption. He split the temple curtain, that device whereby he had separated his people from his holy presence. The tabernacle, a miniature of the temple, was that place where the Spirit of the Lord would be present. It was place for the ark of the covenant (Exod 25:10–16). It is the location of the mercy seat (Exod 25:17) and the cherubim (Exod 25:18). Something awesome was to transpire at the mercy seat. At Jesus’s death, that curtain of separation was split because, upon his resurrection and ascension, Jesus of Nazareth, who died on the cross, would take up residence in the true tabernacle, the heavenly holy of holies on the basis of his own blood (Heb 9:12, 25–27).

At the cross, at the decisive moment, as he shook the earth while thundering the law at Sinai (Heb 12:26), now he shook the earth again. It was as though David could see this very moment when wrote,

The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him, thick clouds dark with water. Out of the brightness before him hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds. The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And he sent out his arrows and scattered them; he flashed forth lightnings and routed them. (Ps 18:4–14)

Jesus’s cry did reach his Father’s ears. Thick darkness did descend at Golgatha (Matt 27:45). In that moment, the weird and terrible place became the temple and the cross became the mercy seat for us and Jesus’s blood was sprinkled on it for us (Lev 16:14).

Next, the rocks were split. Again, this was not the first time the Lord had split a rock. “He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep” (Ps 78:15). The Psalmist is reflecting on the miracle at Horeb,

“Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. (Exod 17:6)

We need not speculate about the significance of the striking and the rock since the Holy Spirit tells us, “and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Cor 10:4).

At Golgatha, what had been shadowy and figurative became utterly real. The serpent struck his heel even as he struck the serpent’s head. Our salvation cost our Savior his life. The water that poured forth from his side (John 19:34) was for our salvation. That water became to us “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Finally, the tombs were opened. What had been suggested in types and shadows for millennia was now a reality. In his death Jesus had conquered death. His death literally opened tombs. Sin truly no longer has dominion (Rom 6:14).

As we have seen, a number of extraordinary things occurred in conjunction with the death of our Lord, but as dark as that moment was the good news was also manifested: “the tombs were also opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised (ἠγέρθησαν), and coming out of the tombs with (μετὰ) his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared (ἐνεφανίσθησαν) to many” (Matt 27:52–53).⁶

This is the beginning of the end. Some believers, whether before Christ’s advent or after, we are not told, who had already died were raised to new life but, apparently, they did not come forth until Jesus was raised on the third day. Calvin wrote,

Since the opening of the graves was the presage of a new life, that the fruit or result appeared three days afterwards, because Christ, in rising from the dead, brought others along with him out of their graves as his companions. Now by this sign it was made evident, that he neither died nor rose again in a private capacity, but in order to shed the odour of life on all believers.⁷

To presage is to anticipate. Jesus’s resurrection was the beginning of the new creation, and blessedly Jesus, as Calvin said, brought companions with him.

To be sure, there are many questions to which we have no sure answers. What became of those who were raised and who emerged from the tomb with Jesus on the third day? We do not know and Scripture does not say.⁸ Why raise only some? Again, we do not know certainly. One possible answer is that the Lord was supplying witnesses to Jerusalem of the reality of Christ’s resurrection. After all, things are to be settled by two or three witnesses (Deut 17:6; Matt 18:16; 2 Cor 13:1: Heb 10:28). Jesus supplied an abundance of witnesses. People who were known to be dead appeared alive in Jerusalem and were seen by others. The verb Matthew uses might be translated, “were manifested.” Those resurrected saints were a manifestation of the inbreaking of the end of all things. We can only imagine the conversations that occurred in Jerusalem in those days.

The resurrection inaugurates a new age, “the age to come” (Matt 12:32; Heb 6:5; Eph 1:21). We are given a brief glimpse of what is to come when Christ returns. The dead in Christ shall be raised (1 Thess 4:16). It has already happened once. Death has been conquered. Christ will soon crush Satan under our feet (Rom 16:20).

notes

1. The traditional translation of “cool of the day” makes little sense here as it is unlikely that either Moses or the Holy Spirit is making climatological observations. “Spirit of the day” is a literal translation and is suggestive of something profound about to take place. See Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Two Age Press, 2000), 128–29. Kline explains, “adapting the mode of his self-revelation to the judicial purpose of his coming the Lord approached the judgment site in the awesome glory of his Theophanic Presence. So he ever comes on the day of judgment, the day of the Lord, the day of the covenant servants’ accounting before the Face of their Lord. It is that kind of fearful advent that is reported in Genesis 3:8. . . . The key phrase describing God’s approach through the garden, traditionally translated “in the cool of the day,” should be rendered “as the Spirit of the day.” “Spirit” here denotes the Theophanic Glory, as it does in Genesis 1:2 and elsewhere in scripture. And “the day” has the connotation it often has in the prophets’ forecast of the great coming of judgment (cf. Also Judg 11:27 and 1 Cor 4:3). Here in Genesis 3:8 is the original day of the Lord, which served as the prototypal mold in which subsequent pictures of other days of the Lord were cast.”
2. Heidelberg Catechism 9, “deprived himself and all his posterity of those divine gifts.” See R. Scott Clark, The Heidelberg Catechism: A Historical, Theological & Pastoral Commentary (Lexham Academic, 2025), 74–77; Belgic Confession, art. 14: “He lost all his excellent gifts.”
3. Westminster Confession of Faith 7.2.
4. Belgic Confession, art. 23: “That is enough to cover all our sins and to make us confident, freeing the conscience from the fear, dread, and terror of God’s approach, without doing what our first father, Adam, did, who trembled as he tried to cover himself with fig leaves. In fact, if we had to appear before God relying—no matter how little—on ourselves or some other creature, then, alas, we would be swallowed up.”
5. My translation.
6. My translation.
7. John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, transl. William Pringle vol. 3 (Logos Bible Software, 2010), 325.
8. “Another and more difficult question is, What became of those saints afterwards? For it would appear to be absurd to suppose that, after having been once admitted by Christ to the participation of a new life, they again returned to dust. But as this question cannot be easily or quickly answered, so it is not necessary to give ourselves much uneasiness about a matter which is not necessary to be known. That they continued long to converse with men is not probable; for it was only necessary that they should be seen for a short time, that in them, as in a mirror or resemblance, the power of Christ might plainly appear. As God intended, by their persons, to confirm the hope of the heavenly life among those who were then alive, there would be no absurdity in saying that, after having performed this office, they again rested in their graves. But it is more probable that the life which they received was not afterwards taken from them; for if it had been a mortal life, it would not have been a proof of a perfect resurrection. Now, though the whole world will rise again, and though Christ will raise up the wicked to judgment, as well as believers to salvation, yet as it was especially for the benefit of his Church that he rose again, so it was proper that he should bestow on none but saints the distinguished honour of rising along with him.” Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 3.325–26.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

---

RESOURCES

• Subscribe To The Heidelblog!
• Download the HeidelApp on Apple App Store or Google Play
• Browse the Heidelshop!
• The Heidelblog Resource Page
• Heidelmedia Resources
• The Ecumenical Creeds
• The Reformed Confessions
• The Heidelberg Catechism
• The Heidelberg Catechism: A Historical, Theological, & Pastoral Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2025)
• Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008)
• Why I Am A Christian
• What Must A Christian Believe?
• Heidelblog Contributors
• Support Heidelmedia: use the donate button or send a check to

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

---

Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

  More by R. Scott Clark ›