James Paul

“Matthew records that at the moment Jesus died, when the temple curtain was torn in two, ‘The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.’ When the power of heaven flooded out through the tear in dimensions, it came in such a sudden rush that people were raised from the dead, right there and then. But Matthew clearly states that they were raised with physical bodies, not just as souls, and that they went into Jerusalem and ‘appeared to many people’ (Matthew 27: 51–53). Furthermore, when the disciples encountered the risen Christ for themselves, they met a physical Jesus who had a body that could be touched and that could eat food. Death had begun to work backwards. The power of heaven was coming to earth not to take the disciples away to a ‘spiritual’ bliss but, just as in the healing miracles of Jesus, it had come to undo all the disintegrating effects of evil and sin that were the result of humanity’s rebellion against God, even the ‘chain of death’ itself.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?