Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Easter Sunday
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Matthew 12:38-40
To Catholics and many Protestants, Good Friday is a semi-holy day commemorating the day Jesus died nearly two thousand years ago. These same people celebrate Easter Sunday two days later, rejoicing that Jesus rose from the dead. What has always been confusing is how normally reasonable people can observe these days that are so woefully contradictory to the biblical accounts of Christ's death and resurrection. And this is without getting into the obvious pagan fertility symbols of bunnies and eggs that have nothing whatsoever to do with the awesome significance of the death, burial, and resurrection of mankind's Savior. Probably the most glaring contradiction involves Jesus' own statements, made several ways at several times, that define the period of His burial as 72 hours - no more, no less. For instance, He gave only one sign of His Messiahship: that He would be "in the heart of the earth" three days and three nights (Matthew 12:38-40). Three days and three nights are six periods of twelve hours each (see Jesus' own definition of a "day" in John 11:9-10), equaling 72 hours. In other places, Jesus says "in three days" (John 2:19-21), "the third day" (Mark 9:31; Luke 9:22; etc.), and "after three days" (Mark 8:31; see Matthew 27:63). When we put these different phrases together, we are boxed in to 72 hours exactly: One second after 72 hours would not be "in three days," and one second before 72 hours would not be "after three days." Thus, He must have lain in the tomb for exactly 72 hours - three days and three nights to the second - just as He said He would, proving He is our Savior. Now, let us assume He rose on Sunday at dawn. If we go back exactly 72 hours, we come to Thursday at daybreak, not Friday. The Bible, however, says that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus put Jesus into the tomb as the sun was setting (Mark 15:42-46; John 19:39-41; see also Matthew 27:57; Luke 23:54). There is no way to get exactly 72 hours between a sunset and a sunrise - no matter how one might try to fudge the numbers! So, we can see that a Sunday morning resurrection cannot be true! If He was buried at sunset, He must have risen from the grave at sunset to fulfill the sign. The Gospel accounts do not record the time of His resurrection; they only tell us when His followers - the women who came early to the tomb, as well as Peter and John just a little while later - first knew He had indeed been resurrected. Early Sunday morning was when they came and found the tomb empty. In fact, He had been gone for about twelve hours by that point! The Seventy Weeks Prophecy in Daniel 9:27 tells us which day the crucifixion occurred: "Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. . . ." Many prophecy buffs have tried to make this sound as if it speaks of the end-time Beast, but only Christ Himself fits these clues. Jesus brought the New Covenant during His ministry, and His death put an end to the sacrificial system by His "once for all" offering of Himself for our sins (Hebrews 9:23-28). As this prophecy shows, His crucifixion occurred in the middle of the week - a Wednesday. This fits the timing perfectly. Put into the grave late on Wednesday, as the sun was setting, He remained in the tomb for exactly 72 hours, rising at sundown as Saturday, the seventh-day Sabbath, ended. This is the only scenario that fits the biblical record.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
What Makes This a 'Good' Friday?
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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
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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