<p>20:7 <em>And the napkin that had been upon his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself- </em>As noted on :6, for napkin to be rolled up meant the body had miraculously come out of them; for the myrrh would have glued them to the body in such a way that a person reviving and fighting their way out of the wrappings would have torn them; and they were neatly rolled up, not torn.</p><p>It does us good to reflect soberly and deeply upon the events of the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. To reconstruct in our own minds what really happened, that we might know Him the better. That on a day in April, on a Friday afternoon, on a hill outside Jerusalem, 1970 years ago&hellip;there really was a man lead out to crucifixion. And that three days later, in a dark tomb, a tightly wrapped body came to life, and in a microsecond was standing outside his burial garments. The only sound would have been of the graveclothes collapsing or subsiding as the support of the body inside them was removed. The napkin wrapped around His head (cp. Jn. 11:44) would suddenly have become a crumpled turban. The clothes would have been like a discarded chrysalis from which the butterfly has emerged. John saw the linen clothes &ldquo;lying&rdquo;, but according to one authority the Greek word can apparently stand the translation &ldquo;collapsed&rdquo;. That John saw the clothes &ldquo;lying&rdquo; is repeated twice, and the first time it is placed in an emphatic position in the Greek sentence- &lsquo;He saw, as they were lying or &lsquo;collapsed&rsquo;, the linen clothes&rsquo;. John also records his deep impression that the head napkin was not with the other clothes, but by itself. Apparently it was normal practice to bind the body and the head in graveclothes, but not the neck. It could be that John is saying that he was most struck by the way there was a slight gap between the collapsed body bindings and the head napkin- the gap where the neck of Jesus had been. This head napkin was &ldquo;wrapped together&rdquo;, but here we can with fair confidence say that the Greek word means more &lsquo;twirled&rsquo;. The word aptly describes the rounded shape which the empty napkin still preserved. And so John saw the stone slab, the collapsed graveclothes, and the shell of the head cloth, with a gap between the two where the Lord&rsquo;s neck had been. And John &ldquo;saw this and believed&rdquo;. Now of course it is possible to reconstruct the whole scene otherwise. What I am saying is that in our personal following of the Lord we love, we each&nbsp;need to try to reconstruct for ourselves how it would have been. The artless style of the inspired records encourage us in this- one only has to compare them against the fantastic Apocryphal Gospels, with their descriptions of Jesus bursting from the tomb in power and glory, to see in the most obvious terms what is inspired and what isn&rsquo;t.</p>