The Clerical Error That Opened a Grave

On December 16, 1944, Betsie ten Boom died in the Ravensbruck concentration camp, whispering her final words to her sister Corrie: "We must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."

Twelve days later, Corrie's number was called. She assumed she was being summoned to her own death. Instead, a guard handed her a release certificate. She walked through the iron gates of Ravensbruck into the cold December air — out of a place of death and into life. She later discovered that her release was the result of a clerical error. One week after she walked free, every woman her age in the camp was sent to the gas chambers.

Corrie ten Boom spent the next thirty-three years traveling to sixty-four countries, telling anyone who would listen what she had witnessed: that death does not have the final word.

The women in Matthew 28 walked to a tomb at dawn expecting to find death. Instead they found an empty grave and an angel's announcement: "He is not here; He has risen." They ran from that place with fear and great joy — not because the stone had been rolled away to let Jesus out, but to let them see in. The tomb was open so the whole world could witness that the grave could not hold Him. And like Corrie, they spent the rest of their lives telling others.