Jesus's Death Assured

1 Nephi 19:10

And the God of our fathers, who were led out of Egypt, out of bondage, and also were preserved in the wilderness by him, yea, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yieldeth himself, according to the words of the angel, as a man, into the hands of wicked men, to be lifted up, according to the words of Zenock, and to be crucified, according to the words of Neum, and to be buried in a sepulchre, according to the words of Zenos, which he spake concerning the three days of darkness, which should be a sign given of his death unto those who should inhabit the isles of the sea, more especially given unto those who are of the house of Israel.

Make no mistake, Christ died. When Jesus's body was removed from the cross and laid in a sepulchre, He was as surely and completely physically dead as any mortal man can be. Enemies and friends alike witnessed His death and were quite certain that Jesus was dead. 

The assurance of Christ's death was important for two reasons. First, He had to die to complete the atonement. For thousands of years, ritual animal sacrifice symbolized the final great sacrifice of Christ. It was not enough to simply draw some blood from the animal. It had to die to fully represent the sacrifice of Christ. Thus, Christ had to die to fulfill the law of atonement.

Second, Christ had to die for the resurrection to be real. For Jesus to break the bands of death, He first had to descend fully into death, and only then could He initiate the process of resurrection not only for Himself but for all mankind. 

If the people of Jerusalem were not absolutely sure of Jesus's death, they could have dismissed stories of His resurrection as a trick or a fluke. Because everyone was quite sure of His death, however, they had to treat the resurrection at face value. They could either accept it or reject it, but they could not be ambivalent about it. Either Jesus returned from the grave, or He did not. But no one could reasonably assert that He had merely passed out and then woke up.

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