Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

If you're doing our New Testament plan, today we finished our first and second books,

and if you're doing the whole Bible, we finished our 40th and 41st books.

Congratulations. It's also

kind of a big day in Bible reading plans regardless because it's resurrection day. In 1 Corinthians

15, when Paul writes about this moment 30 years after the fact, he says, if Christ has not been

raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. The death and resurrection of

Christ is the hinge point of history and the foundation of our faith. Roughly three days have passed

since Jesus was crucified, and it's now the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning. While it's still

dark, there's another earthquake that happens concurrent with the appearance of an angel, and it seems

they may be

working in tandem to roll the stone away. We've talked about this before, but angels always appear as

human males, which is one reason why Mark's Gospel may refer to the angel as a young man. Angels are

often dressed in white, and while scripture never shows them with wings or halos, their appearance is

usually described as radiant or like lightning.

There are some scripture-based theories that they may be very large, like bigger than shack big,

and when they encounter humans, they often open with the phrase, fear not.

Probably because of their size and because it seems like they can travel at the speed of thought and manifest out of thin air.

Angels are maybe terrifying. So when the guards see the angel, they basically become catatonic.

But here come Mary Magdalene and Bonus Mary, we're not sure exactly which Mary she is or

if we've even met her before, and Joanna and Salome.

Here's something worth pointing out before we get too deep into this.

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