Epic Fail: How a Pagan Tyrant Saved the Empty Tomb

When news of the Lord's resurrection spread across the known world, it created a hunger for relics: souvenirs to cherish, evidence to weigh. The search began for pieces of the cross, the lost burial shroud, or the holy grail. As recently as 1989, a popular Indiana Jones movie reminded us how that elusive cup from the Last Supper still resonates with us.

Some marvel at the Shroud of Turin. Research scientists armed with computers cannot explain how that negative image of a crucified man was produced in a linen cloth, and the latest research has moved its date back toward the first century. But there’s another piece of history that is far more compelling. Consider this as Resurrection Sunday draws nigh.

The burial place of Jesus Christ was never marked with a tombstone because the Lord vacated his tomb less than seventy-two hours after being sealed inside. The immediate response must have been that Christ's memorial was a thriving church, not an abandoned grave. Why pay your respects at a final resting place where no one is finally resting? Still, we tend to remember the places where history happens don't we?

You already know that Constantine the Great dispatched his mother, Helena, on a mission to locate and protect historical sites associated with the New Testament. In 325 AD that search brought her to a site now familiar to us as the holy sepulcher. Local Christians and historians like Eusebius confirmed this was the location. But this brings us to the fun part of the story. There was already a temple marking the spot!

Are you ready for this? Earlier in 130 AD- only three generations after the resurrection- the Roman Emperor Hadrian had plotted to humiliate Jerusalem and elevate the glory of Rome over those arrogant Christians and their stubborn God. He learned that the two most beloved locations in town were the places remembered for the crucifixion and resurrection of this Christus figure a century before. Hoping to insult these fools and rob them of their sacred heritage, he ordered builders to bury those adjacent sites beneath tons of dirt buttressed by massive walls and paved with great stones from the ruins from AD 70. He renamed the city Aelia Capitolina, and on that enormous platform he erected a grand Roman temple. A statue of Venus desecrated the place where the cross had once stood. Over the site remembered for the tomb, a statue to Jupiter towered. And the result was such a glorious spectacle that a pagan tyrant must have assured himself a certain carpenter-martyr would finally be forgotten forever.

Hadrian’s supreme insult ultimately served to preserve the site of the Lord’s death and resurrection for another 180 years, until better times could arrive. When Helena’s workmen removed the temple and excavated beneath the platform, they found a tomb that had previously been venerated for generations, plus a crucifixion site nearby to the east. There was evidence of an adjacent garden as well. It was all as the gospels had described it.

More recently in 2016, when work was undertaken to protect and restore the actual tomb itself, historians glimpsed the area underneath the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the first time in centuries. There they found other Jewish burial spaces, still occupied, dating back to the time of Christ. This once again confirmed that astonishing truth the men of Christ's inner circle were willing to give their lives for.

As you celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus this weekend, give thanks for the sacrificial work of Christ who paid for our sins and offered us a new destiny in Heaven with him. But take an extra moment to say thank you for the way God harnessed the contempt of a pagan autocrat to preserve the very space where Christ’s greatest miracle of all unfolded. History is littered with dead religions. In Jesus, we face the future with a living hope.

Find Timothy's new book, The Epic Life: Revelation, Resistance, & Revival, plus other blogs like this at our website, TimothyFloydAuthor.com. The book is also available wherever fine books are sold.