Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Resurrection of Christ not on Sunday
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Isaiah 30:9-11
For most people, it is a difficult undertaking to buck tradition. There is perhaps no clearer illustration of just how hard it is to throw off the habitual practices of our families and fellow countrymen than in our holiday celebrations. This is doubly true when speaking about religious holidays, such as Easter and Christmas. As often and as forcefully as one might try to proclaim the truth about the paganism and inaccuracies inherent in Easter and Christmas, the words seem to fall on deaf ears. No one wants to have his treasured fantasies burst. The attitude of many professing Christians concerning these holidays is similar to what God saw in Israel during the ministry of Isaiah. What is so difficult is that the truth sets up an uncomfortable proposition: Either we can ignore it and continue blithely in our deceitful, ungodly ways (risking, of course, God's condemnation), or we can accept it and change our lives to conform to it (endangering our relationships with family, friends, and society). It seems to be a no-win situation, each choice fraught with troubles. Most people, despite their purported status as believers, prefer to shrug off the inconvenient truth so as not to rock the boat in the here-and-now. They will worry about what God thinks about their decision later. Yet, to a Christian, there should be no dithering about a choice like this. Jesus tells us in Luke 12:4-5, "And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!" When a real Christian is presented with truth, he embraces it out of reverence for God. As Christ also says, "He who is of God hears God's words" (John 8:47). He later said to His disciples, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. . . . He who does not love Me does not keep My words" (John 14:21, 24). It is as simple as that. Consider one of these stubborn truths that exposes perhaps the most glaring inconsistency of the entire Easter scenario. Jesus Himself says in Matthew 12:38-40: Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from You." But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." This is not a difficult concept. Jesus says quite plainly that He would be buried for three days and three nights, just as Jonah languished three days and three nights in the great fish's belly (Jonah 1:17). Jesus says elsewhere, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" (John 11:9), and He obviously knew that nighttime also covered twelve hours. Since a full day is made up of twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night (see Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, etc.), doing the simple math brings us to the unassailable conclusion that Jesus prophesied, as the only sign of His Messiahship, that He would be buried for 72 hours. Now, try to cram 72 hours - three days and three nights - between about sundown on Friday and sunrise on Sunday. Not even Superman could do it. In fact, it comes out to about half that time. Hmm. So, let us consider this logically. If Jesus Himself said He would be in the grave for 72 hours, but He was actually "in the heart of the earth" only 36 hours, then Jesus was a liar, guilty of sin, and His sacrifice to take the sins of the world upon Himself was useless. We have no Savior. However, through the resurrection from the dead, Jesus did live again and ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven. This means that He did not lie. He was in the grave for exactly three days and three nights, and then the Father returned Him to life in glory. He lives now as our High Priest and soon-coming King. Thus, the Good Friday-Easter Sunday tradition is a bald-faced lie. It is a chronological impossibility. Even the traditional Easter text of John 20:1 says plainly that, when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb "while it was still dark" on that Sunday morning, the tomb was already empty. Easter sunrise services have no biblical basis - in fact, since Jesus was put into the tomb just about at sunset, He would have been resurrected at that same time (see Matthew 27:57-60; Mark 15:42-46; Luke 23:50-54; John 19:38-42). Will this truth change any minds? Has it changed yours?
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Bucking Tradition
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Zechariah 9:9
This verse prophesies Jesus' triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, and it is the basis of the traditional Christian holy day of Palm Sunday. However, the Bible's chronology shows that Christ's entrance did not occur on a Sunday. John 12:1 says, "Then six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was who had been dead, whom he had raised from the dead." After Mary anoints Jesus' feet, the next time marker appears: The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out, "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. The King of Israel!" (verses 12-13). If one is not paying attention, Palm Sunday seems plausible, but closer inspection proves otherwise! When Jesus comes to Bethany, it is six days to the Passover, or the ninth of Abib/Nisan. The next day, the tenth, Jesus enters Jerusalem, five days before the Passover (counting inclusively). The tenth of Abib/Nisan is special because it is the day that the Israelites were to take the Passover lamb into their homes and keep it until the fourteenth day (Exodus 12:3-6). Therefore the people of Jerusalem symbolically select Him as their Passover lamb. If His triumphal entry occurs on Sunday, five days before Passover, the Passover must occur on Thursday, the fifteenth of Abib/Nisan—not Friday! This alone destroys the Friday crucifixion—Sunday resurrection argument. The truth is that Christ enters Jerusalem on a Sabbath, is crucified on Wednesday, the fourteenth of Abib/Nisan, and rises from the dead 72 hours later as the Sabbath ends.
Staff
Was Jesus Resurrected on Easter Sunday?
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Luke 24:21
To most, counting as we do, "today is the third day since these things happened" (in reference to the first day of the week) would place the crucifixion on the previous Thursday, not Wednesday. However, this simple mathematical explanation is a bit superficial. Those who look at the counting of days from an inclusive point of view say that the disciples' phrasing points to the previous Friday, since the Jews would have counted the current day, Sunday, along with Saturday and Friday to arrive at their three days. This would seem to support the traditional Good Friday-Easter Sunday scenario. Yet, Jesus said, "The Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). Everywhere else, the Gospels support a 72-hour burial from Wednesday at sunset to the weekly Sabbath at sunset. Can this verse in Luke 24 be a contradiction? There are two ways of resolving this apparent inconsistency. The first considers that the disciples are not referring just to the three days of Jesus' burial. Then what are they talking about? They actually say, "Today is the third day since these things happened." To assume that they refer only to the crucifixion is to ignore the context of the passage. In verse 18, Cleopas exclaims, "Are You the only stranger in Jerusalem, and have You not known the things which happened there in these days?" From the summary of what they told Him, we can conclude that the disciples recounted the whole string of events that occurred in what we now call Crucifixion Week—and those events did not end with Jesus' death and burial. Matthew 27:62-66 informs us that on the day after Christ's crucifixion—Thursday—the Jews went to Pilate to ask that a guard be set on the tomb, and he told them to do it themselves. They may have done it immediately, but they may have waited until sunset, since the day was a High Day, a holy day Sabbath, the first day of Unleavened Bread. So, on either Thursday or early Friday, a guard was set, making it the last activity surrounding the "big news" that the disciples told the resurrected Jesus about. They could then say that it had been three days since the last of "these things" had occurred. The second, and perhaps best way, to understand this comment, is to take it in its most natural sense. The immediately preceding thought is that the disciples "were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel." The sign that Jesus had given to them was of being "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). The sense of the ensuing comment, however, is that their hopes were dashed because the three days and nights of the sign had already passed! The idiomatic phrase reads literally, "One is passing this day as the third," implying "the third day has passed." In essence, they were not saying that it was the third day of Jesus' sign but, unfortunately, that the third day was already up!
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
In the Heart of the Earth
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John 20:1
Mary Magdalene arrives at the grave early on the first day of the week while it was still dark—and Jesus has already been resurrected! So much for Easter sunrise services! Even if one thought Christ rose at dawn on Sunday, counting back 72 hours (three full days and three full nights) brings one to dawn on Thursday, and God's Word explicitly says that Christ was buried at sunset! Yes, Jesus rose from the grave, but not on Sunday, the day traditional Christians call "the Lord's day." If He did, He could not be our Savior because He would have failed to fulfill the one sign of His Messiahship: three days and three nights in the tomb. Jesus rose on the day of which He says He is Lord: the true seventh-day Sabbath (Mark 2:28).
Staff
Was Jesus Resurrected on Easter Sunday?
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John 20:1
It is not surprising to find no reference to Jesus or the early church involved in the wavesheaf ritual. However, they were very much aware of it, and it clearly shows in the accounts of Jesus' resurrection. In almost all translations, John 20:1 is rendered, "On the first day of the week. . . ." In Greek, this phrase is te mia ton sabbaton. Sabbaton can be used in a singular or plural sense to designate "Sabbath" or "Sabbaths" or "week" or "weeks." Notice what Bullinger in the Companion Bible says about this Greek phrase: The first day of the week = "On the first (day) of the Sabbaths" (pl.). Gk—Te mia ton sabbaton. The word "day" is rightly supplied, as mia is feminine, and so must agree with a feminine noun understood, while sabbaton is neuter. Luke 24:1 has the same. Matthew reads, "towards dawn on the first (day) of the Sabbaths," and Mark (16:2), "very early on the first (day) of the Sabbaths." Our understanding of the importance of the wavesheaf in relation to both Christ's acceptance and the count to Pentecost should lead us to see that the gospel writers were establishing the exact day of Christ's acceptance. This day was the first day in the count to Pentecost since He was not only the wavesheaf offering, but He was also the beginning of the spiritual harvest.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Countdown to Pentecost 2001
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John 20:1
Comparing the various biblical accounts with the traditional teaching reveals that Jesus could not have risen with the sunrise on Sunday morning. Notice John 20:1: "Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb" (our emphasis throughout). Jesus had already been resurrected! If this part of the "Easter story" is incorrect, what else is wrong? Taking all the clues together, we find that the Bible indicates a Wednesday crucifixion and a late Sabbath—Saturday—resurrection, since, to fulfill the sign of His Messiahship, He had to remain in the tomb a full three days and three nights or 72 hours (for a complete explanation, see "After Three Days"). Most professing Christians believe that Christ's resurrection focuses on the fact that, having suffered crucifixion and then being buried in the tomb, He was dead, but three days later, He was alive again. As far as it goes, this is true. Jesus Himself writes to the church at Smyrna in Revelation 2:8: "These things says the First and the Last, who was dead, and came to life." However, we must be careful not to be satisfied with the basic truth that He returned to life, for if we do, it does a grave injustice to the spiritual magnificence and significance of the event. His was no ordinary resurrection, if any resurrection could be considered so. Other resuscitations down through history have been shown to be what we would call "reviving from clinical death": The person's heart stops, his breathing halts, and in fact, he is dead, yet suddenly, he returns to life. In a similar way, just a short time before His own death, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11), and later, at Christ's death, "many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many" (Matthew 27:52-53). These people were all returned to physical life, and while they are astonishing miracles and must have caused untold wonder and joy among their grieving relatives, their mortality was merely postponed. They would die again. Jesus' resurrection was something altogether different: He was raised to everlasting life; He would live forever! In his first sermon on the day of Pentecost, Peter informs the gathered crowd, "God [the Father] raised up [Jesus], having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it" (Acts 2:24). Paul explains what happened in a similar way in II Corinthians 13:4, "For though He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God." Finally, the risen Christ Himself says to the apostle John, "I am He who lives, and who was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen." (Revelation 1:18). The life that the Father returned to Him was not mere physical life but the immortal spirit life of God. Because He has passed from death to life, He makes our salvation and eternal life possible. Paul writes in Romans 6:8-9, "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more." He puts it succinctly in Romans 5:10, ". . . we shall be saved by His life," that is, the life He now lives as our Savior and High Priest. Hebrews 7:24-25 tells us, "But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them." In His final prayer with His disciples, Jesus begins with this thought: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him" (John 17:1-2). In these verses, we see hints of a momentous product of Christ's resurrection that contains weighty implications for us. Paul writes in Hebrews 1:3, ". . . when He had by Himself purged our sins, [Jesus] sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." Peter also mentions this in his Pentecost sermon: "This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear" (Acts 2:32-33). Because He was raised from the dead, having paid for our sins in His sinless body, the Father has exalted Him to sit with Him on His throne, where He has the power and the authority to "pour out" the Holy Spirit on the elect, giving them the ability to have a relationship with God and to have eternal life through a similar resurrection. Paul writes in Philippians 3:8, 10-11: "Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, . . . that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, . . . if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead." In this way, He is "the captain of [our] salvation" (Hebrews 2:10), the archegos, the Forerunner and Trailblazer, who opens the way before God's people and makes it possible for them to attain what He has. And this potential is not limited to some kind of quasi-angelic existence, for the apostle John writes, ". . . when He is revealed, we shall be like Him" (I John 3:2). Paul concurs in I Corinthians 15:49: "As we have borne the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man [Jesus]." Man's potential reaches to the divine! The resurrection of Jesus Christ is nothing to be taken lightly. We would do well to consider it deeply since it is so vital to God's purpose and to the eternal future of God's elect.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Raising Our Conception of the Resurrection
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