It was the night after the Sabbath, the Jewish holy day. The morning was drawing nigh, whose destiny it was to become the most important morning in the earth's history. It was still dark in city and countryside. At Jesus' sepulchre there was stationed, as we have said, a special guard. A company of the most reliable Roman soldiers were on duty there on special orders. These experts in death, these specialists in the trade of murder, were the worthy guardians of ignorance and superstition. These tomb guards, who had been expressly instructed and blessed by the divine priests themselves, were conscious of their importance and had no doubts of their capacity to safeguard, even though unconsciously, the honour of paganism and death. No hope of immortality, no proof of the continuation of life, no conception of the indestructibility of a living creature, was to be allowed to have an opportunity to penetrate that barrier of barbarity, stone and steel, swords and daggers.
      But in accordance with the decision of the eternal Father events happened quite differently. Before sunrise invisible and unknown forces were already stirring near the sepulchre. They gradually had such a perceptible effect that the soldiers, usually so courageous, began to feel ill at ease. The sepulchre, the most important object of their watch, attracted their gaze with a strange power. And suddenly their features grew rigid as from the inside of the sepulchre there shone out a light so strong that the thick stone walls became as transparent as glass. The radiations of light grew to such an intensity that human senses could not endure it, and the guard of death fell powerless to the ground. Consequently no eye of mortal man saw the heavenly events which happened in the sepulchre.
      But at the first rays of the morning sun it was seen that the sepulchre was empty. And still today there vibrates round the whole world the message: "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live".