You’ve got to hand it to the chief priests and Pharisees: They did their best. They did their level best to keep Jesus in his tomb. After successfully overseeing his execution, they remembered that he had not only predicted his death but also spoken of some kind of resurrection. Wanting to make sure his disciples didn’t manufacture a way of sneaking his body out of the tomb, they asked Pilate to guarantee the situation. “Order the tomb to be made secure until the third day,” they demanded, “lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first” (Matthew 27:64).
Pilate reminded them they already had access to troops they could assign to the task. The soldiers who guarded the temple could also guard the tomb. “Go, make it as secure as you can,” he told them (27:65). “As secure as you can” could almost have been words of prophecy. “So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard” (27:66).
And I can’t help but wonder: Did the angels
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