Early on Sunday morning Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph arrived at Jesus’ tomb immediately after a severe earthquake happened that was accompanied by what modern science would call an earthquake light or ball lightning, but that Matthew says was an angel who actually caused the earthquake by rolling away the stone from the tomb and perhaps opening the door into Sheol itself where death could no longer hold Jesus and the souls of His righteous saints. The two Marys had arranged with a number of other women who had followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem to further attend to His dead body since it was but hastily interred Thursday evening by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. The start of the sabbath for the first day of Unleavened Bread was just beginning that evening as they laid Him in the tomb, which lasted until Friday evening. Since the seventh day Sabbath followed immediately and ended at sunset on Saturday evening, only now were they able to complete His burial according to their custom. The guards keeping watch over the tomb had witnessed the angel—or whatever was their understanding of the angel—remove the stone and sit upon it, but when the two women arrived briefly afterwards the angel had evidently moved or was in the process of moving into the tomb, so that as they looked up, “they saw that the stone had been rolled away”. Because these same two Marys had seen Joseph and Nicodemus (and likely others working for them) roll the “extremely large” stone against the entrance of the tomb to seal it (Mar 15:46-47, 15:4) they immediately recognized that something was amiss, but perhaps didn’t immediately recognize the brilliant light that the guards had observed, for the day was dawning and it was evidently moving into the tomb. But upon entering the tomb to attend to the body they were alarmed to find the angel “sitting at the right, wearing a white robe” and Jesus’ body gone (Mar 16:5). While the guards had shook for fear and become like dead men at their sight of the angel, the women having a greater reverential fear of the Lord and His authorities also had a greater spiritual perception to recognize the angel as a less fearsome young man. But they were still “affrighted” by his presence, as is the typical reaction we find throughout Scripture when people encounter God’s holy angels.
What did the angel immediately say to the women, not only to address their alarm concerning his glorious presence, but their bewilderment about what had happened to Jesus’ body? See Mat 28:5-6. Seeing the tomb was empty, what thought would have immediately crossed their minds that the angel’s words would have just as immediately addressed? For what several reasons might their first thought have been that they had come to the wrong place? Consider that they were hardly expecting Jesus’ battered body could be resuscitated to life, as all those previously raised from the dead had been, and if somehow it was, that it would still be the natural, physical body they had known, not the spiritual body to which it was raised as the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead. I.e., they fully expected to find His dead body there, or perhaps as a remote hope that He might somehow have come back to life. Since His body wasn’t there they would naturally assume that they must be in the wrong place or, after establishing they were in the right place, that someone must have moved His body; cf. Joh 20:2,13. Regarding their initial thought that they must be in the wrong place, see also Joh 20:1 and recall that it was late on Thursday evening after a day of great duress when they had seen His body interred, and an earthquake had just occurred that was severe enough that a natural man would suppose it had caused the extremely large stone sealing the entrance to have been rolled away by it; such a shaking would also have been disorienting in itself.
Consider that God knew the women would be confused and doubt themselves (just as we would) and so sent an angel to confirm they were in the right place; what does this indicate about the darkness that hangs over fallen humanity, causing us to doubt and preventing us from perceiving true reality, but God’s desire for our eyes to be opened to see clearly? Cf. Mat 4:16, Joh 8:12. How many things did the angel say to the women to assure them that they were in the right place, and how would each individually and all of them together have left no room for doubt that they were in the right place and the reason the body wasn’t there was because He had in fact been raised from the dead? See again Mat 28:5-6. And yet, what does Mar 16:8 and Joh 20:1-2 seem to indicate about how they still doubted themselves in regard to what they had experienced actually being real? Why was that? Cf. Joh 12:28-29, Act 12:7-10 and consider that after the angel departed and could no longer be found they would just as naturally have wondered as Peter did, or as we would, if what they had seen was real. Again, how does this help us to further understand the great darkness that hangs over fallen humanity, to the extent that we are so completely separated by our sins from the truth of the spiritual realm, which is actually an integral part of the whole of our reality, that it is only with great difficulty that we in faith even believe it exists, much less that it is actually near to us? How does this help explain why people are so slow to believe, and so prone to not believe? How does it also help us to understand how important it is to stand upon God’s word as the only sure foundation of the true reality and believe it as true, regardless of how contrary it may seem to our fallen nature?
Who were the other righteous saints along with Jesus that the angel loosed from Sheol?
Some New Testament passages suggest that Jesus descended into Sheol or Hades upon His death, perhaps to Abraham’s bosom where the souls of the righteous who died in faith were held captive by death until Jesus came. When He was raised, it is supposed that He led those captives out of the captivity of death, who would then have ascended with Him to the Father to remain in His presence until His second coming. At that time, they will receive the fullness of their salvation when they, along with those who since then have died in Christ, will return with Him to be reunited with their resurrection body. See Eph 4:8-9, 1Th 4:14, 1Pe 3:19.