Tim Keller writes: ‘Jesus has said to his disciples, “I will rise on the third day.” He said it in Mark 8, again in Mark 9, and yet again in Mark 10. Given that repetition, something curious is going on. On the third day after Jesus’s death, there are no male disciples around; these female disciples do appear, but they are bringing along all the expensive spices and perfumes with which a dead body was customarily anointed. Nobody is expecting a resurrection. If you were the Gospel writer Mark, trying to write a credible piece of fiction, and you have had Jesus saying repeatedly to his disciples that he would rise on the third day, wouldn’t you have at least one disciple thinking this through after Jesus’s death and saying to the others, “Hey, it’s the third day. Maybe we ought to go take a look at Jesus’s tomb. What can it hurt?” That would only be reasonable. But nobody said anything like that. In fact, they did not expect a resurrection at all. It didn’t occur to them. The angel in front of the empty tomb had to remind the women: “You will see him, just as he told you.” If Mark had made up this story, he wouldn’t have written it this way. – And here’s the point: The resurrection was as inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us today.’

Excerpt from JESUS THE KING by Timothy Keller, from the devotional on YouVersion, day 9 of 9