It was only a couple of hours from Jerusalem, but with our late start Matthias and I would be pressed to make it home before dark. We were trying to put some distance between us and the terrible events of the last few days, but they were too much a part of us.

“I wonder if He really was the Messiah,” I said. “Surely the Messiah wouldn’t have been executed like a common criminal.”

“Cleopas, how could the Messiah have let Himself be killed at all?”

“He was supposed to liberate us from our oppressors. He promised that from the start—or so we thought.”

“I never expected it to end this way,” Matthias said.

“I still don’t know if I believe the women who went to the tomb. There was a glimmer of hope when they burst into the room where we were gathered, excited and out of breath, but...”

“Peter and John saw the empty tomb too, and they believe. At least John does,” I told my friend.

“People are saying that we took His body while the guards slept—that we faked His resurrection. We know that’s a lie because none of us had left each other’s sight, but someone else could have taken His body. …”

Our discussion went in circles. What had happened to Jesus?

We were interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up behind us. Someone was in an even bigger hurry than we were.

“Why so sad?” the man said in a lighthearted tone that caught us off guard. “You both look like you just lost your best friend.”

He’d only just caught up with us. How did this stranger know our innermost thoughts? “You might say that,” I replied.

“Surely it can’t be that bad,” the stranger said.

“Where have you been?” I asked. “Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“You must have heard about Jesus?”

“Tell me what you know.”

“He was a prophet out of Nazareth, and He did some amazing miracles! He fed thousands with one boy’s meal. He healed people who had been blind or deaf or crippled from birth. He even raised the dead! And when He spoke, there was power in His words!”

Then I told the stranger what had happened in the last week—the mock trial, the people turning on Jesus after He’d done so much for them, the verdict, the beating, the humiliation, the crucifixion, and finally the story of the women finding the empty tomb.

“It sounds like you have your doubts about that last part,” the man said.

“Wouldn’t you?” I asked.

Instead of answering, the stranger asked, “Don’t you know the Scriptures—that these things were all part of God’s plan, which He revealed by Moses and the prophets? They knew it was going to happen like it did, and of all people, you, His followers, should have known too.”

How did this stranger know we were Jesus’ followers? We hadn’t said anything about that. “What prophecies are you talking about?” I asked.

The stranger seemed to know all the Scriptures—by heart! “Let’s start at the beginning,” he said.

“In the Garden of Eden, after the serpent tricked Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, God told the serpent—who was really Satan—‘Because you have done this, cursed are you! I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.’1 Don’t you see? The Messiah on the cross—that’s the serpent striking His heel. And the Messiah rising from the dead and ultimately defeating Satan’s plan—that’s the serpent’s head being crushed.

“Why do you think God was pleased when Abel sacrificed a lamb?2 And why did God command Moses to tell His people to sacrifice lambs without spot or blemish to atone for their sins?3 God was trying to show what the Messiah would do. The Messiah was the Lamb without blemish, sacrificed for the sins of the world.4 The ceremonies, the sacrifices—all of these things were merely foreshadowings of events that are now unfolding before your eyes.”

The more this stranger shared with us, the more the smoldering embers of our faith began to glow.

“Speaking of ceremonies, didn’t you just come from celebrating the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread? You know those ceremonies—you’ve done them every year for your whole lives. You also know why Moses commanded them—as thanksgiving to God for delivering our fathers from slavery in Egypt. Through Moses, God instructed His people to kill an unblemished lamb and smear its blood on their doorposts. All those who believed and obeyed were spared, ‘passed over,’ when God went through all of Egypt and killed the firstborn of every household. Again, this was a foreshadowing of the Messiah’s sacrifice, which delivers the believer from death.5

“And what about the sin offering and Day of Atonement? What is God trying to teach us with these? Can the blood of an animal actually pay for our sins? Is justice served? And why do these sacrifices need to be repeated every year? If such sacrifices atone for our sins, then why do they need to be offered again and again? Could it be that they were all intended to point to a greater sacrifice that was yet to come? And could it be that this greater sacrifice has just been made?”1

The stranger was full of questions and we had few answers, but he was a patient teacher.

“Isn’t this what the prophet Isaiah spoke concerning the Messiah’s death? ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth.’—Doesn’t that sound like your Jesus and the sham of a trial you described a couple of miles back?—‘He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.’—There it is again, the sacrificial lamb. ‘And they made His grave with the wicked, but with the rich at His death.’—Didn’t you say that He was executed with criminals, but buried in a rich man’s tomb?—‘And He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.’”2

We were silent as it started to become clear to us that God had had a hand in all these things.

“If your Jesus was the Messiah, and if the only thing required for the forgiveness of sin was His death, then why do you suppose He also suffered that scourging at the hands of His executioners?”

Again, we had no answers.

“Isaiah tells us in that same passage, ‘By His stripes we are healed.’3 What does that mean—‘By His stripes’—by His wounds—‘we are healed’?—Just as the Messiah’s blood was shed for the salvation of the spirit, His body was broken for the healing of the body. The crown of thorns, the scourging, the nail and spear wounds—they were all to atone for your infirmities. The Messiah saved your souls with His blood, but He also purchased healing for your bodies with His sufferings. To save your bodies, it took His body.”

“My heart was pounding so hard from excitement and joy that I thought it would burst!”

The stranger continued, “What did Jesus say on the cross?”

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

“That is just as King David prophesied.”4

As he explained more Scriptures, I realized that many of the other things that had happened to Jesus were just as it was written there—the crowds shouting as He entered Jerusalem; the betrayal, the blood money, the cruel mocking; the soldiers casting lots for His garments, then piercing His hands and feet but not breaking any of His bones.5 All of these things had been written hundreds of years earlier, and they were all about the Messiah. Everything suddenly made sense! But the stranger was not finished.

“David also said, ‘God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave.’6 That’s an interesting word—‘redeem.’ Do you know what it means? It means to ransom—to buy another’s freedom. That’s what the Messiah’s death was all about—setting the believer free from death’s due. It’s right there in the book of Hosea—‘I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.’7

“As our father Abraham offered his only son in sacrifice to God, God offered His only Son in sacrifice for all, but with one very big difference. Abraham didn’t have to go through with his sacrifice, but God did.

“Just as Noah’s faith and obedience saved mankind—the ark providing a way of escape for him and his family and the animals—the Messiah, in dying for sinners, made a way of escape for all who will believe.

“And just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the fish’s belly before being delivered, so your Jesus promised that He would be delivered from death after three days, just as Hosea had also prophesied—‘After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight.’1

“Can you see it? These Scriptures all point to this very time.”

My heart was pounding so hard from excitement and joy that I thought it would burst! Jesus’ death was not an accident or a mistake! It all happened exactly as God had planned!

No sooner had the stranger finished, than we found ourselves in front of my house. He said he needed to keep going, but when I insisted that he at least stay for supper, he agreed.

As is our custom, I asked my guest to bless the food. He offered thanks to God, broke the bread, and gave some to each of us. Suddenly we recognized that the stranger was actually Jesus Himself, our risen Savior!

Then just as suddenly—Poof!—He vanished.

Matthias and I were so excited about what had happened that we ran back to Jerusalem that same night to tell Jesus’ other followers what had happened—how our hearts had burned within us while He talked to us on the road and opened to us the Scriptures.2 I still can’t stop talking about it! ■

(Curtis Peter Van Gorder is a full-time volunteer with the Family International in the Middle East.)

1Genesis 3:14–15

2Genesis 4:1–4

3Leviticus 17:11

4Matthew 26:28; John 1:29; Ephesians 1:7; 1 John 1:7

5Exodus 11:4–7; 12:1–13

1Leviticus 16:15; 23:27; 2 Corinthians 5:21

2Isaiah 53:6–9,12

3Isaiah 53:5

4Psalm 22:1

5Zechariah 9:9–10; Psalm 41:9; Zechariah 11:12–13; Isaiah 50:6; Psalm 22:16–18; Zechariah 12:10; Psalm 34:20

6Psalm 49:15

7Hosea 13:14

1Matthew 12:40; Hosea 6:2

2Luke 24:32