The answer to that question is found in Christianity’s observance of the Good Friday – Easter Sunday tradition. The Easter Sunday tradition is an interesting one. Notice: A group of Pharisees approached Jesus Christ one day and demanded that He give them a sign from heaven that He was truly the Messiah. He told them no sign would be given to them except one, that “as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s (Greek, ketos, pronounced KAY’-tos, meaning “a huge fish”) belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (See Matthew 12:40). Note well, Jesus said this was THE ONLY SIGN He was giving the Jewish people to absolutely PROVE He was their Messiah, so you can very well believe He performed this sign to the letter, especially since just before making that statement Jesus had said “by thy words thou shalt be justified (as having spoken the truth), and by the words thou shalt be condemned (if what you have declared proves to be untrue)” (See Matthew 12:37).
So why does the Jewish rabbi reject Him as the Messiah? Because a deluded and deceived Christianity teaches that Jesus failed to perform this sign, that’s why!!! Most of Christianity says Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, being placed in the tomb at sunset that Friday. They further teach that early Sunday morning near sunrise He arose from the dead. Now get your calculator out. We have a mathematical problem we must work out here. Count how many days and nights you have between sunset Friday and sunrise Sunday. You have the dark part of Friday and the dark part of Saturday – TWO NIGHTS! Now sharpen your pencil if you don’t have a calculator and count once more. You have Jesus Christ in the tomb the daylight part of Saturday and no more as He arose from the tomb before daylight on Sunday, having been placed in the tomb AFTER daylight Friday – ONE DAY! So, according to deceived Christianity, how long was Jesus Christ in the tomb? One day and two nights – NOT three days and three nights. And that’s WHY the Jewish rabbi will close the door in the Bible thumpers face, telling him, or her, “Jesus of Nazareth was a liar, a false Messiah for He distinctly said He would give the Jewish people but one simple sign that He was truly our Messiah, that being He would arise from the dead after three days and three nights in the tomb. Your Christian tradition reveals clearly that Jesus of Nazareth may have been many things, but he definitely was NOT the Messiah.” The rabbi might also point out that just before telling these Pharisees what sign He would give them that He was truly their Messiah He said, “By your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned.” (See Matthew 12:36-40). Had Jesus remained in the tomb for three days and three nights He would have been justified as a truthful Messiah. Since He did not – according to deceived Christianity – He was condemned by His own words.
Let me assure you that Jesus indeed was in the tomb a full three days and three nights – seventy two hours, not one minute less or more. However, Jesus Christ was NOT placed in the tomb on Friday, nor did He come out of the tomb on Sunday. Remember, when the women got to the tomb early Sunday morning, while it was yet dark, they found Him already GONE! The proper question to ask is, “How long had He been gone – a few minutes? an hour? several hours?” And remember it is the erroneous Sunday morning resurrection myth that validates deceived Christianity’s claim that God’s eternal seventh day Sabbath was moved to Sunday – in honor of Christ coming forth from the tomb on that so-called “sacred” day.
Those who buy into the Good Friday-Easter Sunday myth have no idea how slick and deceitful is Satan the devil. If one could compare the intellect and intelligence of Satan with someone like Albert Einstein, I assure you Albert would appear to be a retarded idiot beside Satan. Don’t make the mistake of thinking such spiritual “giants” as John Calvin, Martin Luther, Billy Graham and the like were immune from Satan’s clever deceptions. Human theologians ponder God’s Word for a few decades. Satan was pondering the most effective measures to employ in confusing the truth since the dawn of human history. And to say Satan is good at what he does is a gross understatement. (You can read of how he deceived the wisest man who ever lived in I Kings, Chapter 11.
I shall continue with this discussion, showing FROM SCRIPTURE ALONE that Jesus was as good as His word and indeed was in the tomb for a full three days and nights. And God forgive the blinded, Biblically ignorant preachers that have put forth a doctrine and teaching that has for almost two thousand years convinced God’s beloved Jewish nation that Jesus was a false Messiah. I pray God will be merciful to them at the judgment.
Let me assure my reader that there are multitudes, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, maybe more, who, in studying God’s Word have also had their minds opened to the truth that Jesus Christ did NOT arise from the dead on Easter Sunday, nor was He crucified on Good Friday, a clever deception spawned by Satan himself.
Jesus Christ was crucified on a Wednesday and placed in the tomb as the sun was setting that Wednesday. Counting three full nights and three full days, you will then see that He arose from the tomb as the sun was setting Saturday, NOT Sunday. He came out of the tomb at the exact same time He was placed in the tomb – as it was getting dark, not at sunrise, as the “only sign” Jesus Christ gave the Jewish people to absolutely and irrefutably PROVE He was their Messiah was that He would remain in the tomb for 72 hours, not seventy one or seventy three hours, but a full 4,320 minutes. When the women arrived at the tomb on Sunday and found Him gone, it was because He had arisen from the dead the previous evening at sunset. He had been gone from the tomb, not for a few minutes, but for hours.
What confuses so many is that the Bible says they hastened to get His body into the tomb because THE SABBATH DREW ON. Those, who fail to search the scriptures carefully carelessly assume that the weekly Sabbath is meant in this text. Not so! It was an ANNUAL SABBATH that was at hand, the First Day of Unleavened Bread, a Sabbath feast that immediately followed Passover day regardless of what day of the week Passover would fall on in any given year. Scripture clearly reveals that beside their being fifty-two weekly Sabbaths, there were seven annual Sabbaths, called high holy days or feasts. Crucifixion week had TWO Sabbaths: the weekly Sabbath and the First Day of Unleavened Bread annual Sabbath, the annual Sabbath that immediately followed Passover. It was the unleavened bread Sabbath that drew on and necessitated Jesus being placed in the tomb as the sun sat on WEDNESDAY!!! (These annual Sabbaths are described in Leviticus 23).
Jesus Christ most certainly did fulfill the ONLY sign He gave the Jewish people thereby proving that He was most definitely their long awaited Messiah. God bless you and illuminate your mind and thinking as you seek the truth in order to obey the same.
Bear in mind that the unarguable proof of just when Jesus Christ was resurrected smashes to pieces the teaching that Sunday is a holy day, a day that replaces God’s seventh day ETERNAL sabbath as the “Christian” sabbath. God willing, in future articles we will go to each and every text that seemingly, on the surface, appears to validate Sunday observance. No Bible text does such. It is only when all related scriptures are correlated and put together that one sees quite clearly that God’s seventh day Sabbath is, as scripture states, ETERNAL, changeless, and that Sunday is as ordinary a day in God’s mind as Monday, Tuesday or any other common work day.
Satan again and again has sought to nullify each and every one of the Ten Commandments. In Jesus’ day, the time period in which He came to earth to serve as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, Satan nullified and made void the fifth commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” We read of this horror in the 7th chapter of Mark’s gospel. “Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Him (Jesus), ‘Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?’ He answered and said unto them, ‘Well has Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips (their speech, what they teach and proclaim), but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, for laying aside the (fifth) commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men….And He said unto them, Full well you reject the (fifth) commandment of God that you may keep your own tradition, for Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother…'” (See verses 1 through 13).
Shortly after the founding of God’s church, Satan moved again to nullify and make void one of God’s eternal Ten Commandments. This time it was the fourth commandment he sought to make void, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” replacing that commandment with Sunday observance. Satan knew he had to have a convincing argument in order to deceive Christians into abandoning Sabbath observance and adopting HIS “sacred” day, the day of the sun, a day held sacred by sun worshipers for centuries. And Satan, at that moment, had a stroke of genius. He thought, “I know how to get them to abandon God’s eternal Sabbath. I will deceive them into believing Jesus was resurrected on Sunday, that He abolished God’s law when He died on the cross, and that Christian’s should now hold Sunday as a sacred holy day of worship in honor of their Lord having come out of the tomb on a Sunday morning!” And I believe Satan was pleasantly surprised that his deception worked so well and continues to this day.
Jesus warned His hearers time and again that the truth can be illusive and inspired the apostle Paul to urge believers to “prove all things” as spiritual error once taking hold can be almost impossible to shake off. Most Christians, though certainly not all, when reading how “the Sabbath drew on” as Christ’s disciples laid His body in the tomb FALSELY ASSUME this was the weekly Sabbath spoken of in this text in Luke 24:54, and that, therefore Jesus was placed in the tomb as the sun was setting on Friday, what many call “Good Friday.” And most Christians have no idea that the Jews had seven annual Sabbaths, called High Holy Day Sabbaths, that fell on various and sundry days of the week so that some few weeks each year had TWO Sabbaths during a given week, that being a High Holy Day Sabbath as well as the weekly seventh day Sabbath. (Again, read Leviticus chapter 23 for the listing of these seven annual Sabbaths).
When reading John 19, verse 31, many Christians FALSELY ASSUME the Sabbath mentioned in that verse was the weekly Sabbath, a Friday, ignoring the fact that this verse plainly says “that Sabbath day was an High Day” – that is, an annual Sabbath, NOT the weekly Sabbath!
Please meditate carefully on all you have read. You are being given truth untold millions of professing Christians have never had enter their minds. You are indeed blessed.
A question: “Why was Jesus Christ crucified?” I mean, “What did He do that got Him killed? What charge or charges were laid against Him by the High Priest and his cohorts that carried the death penalty, the ONLY penalty that would satisfy them when the temple officers with their Roman soldier “SWAT team” arrested Jesus and brought Him before Pontius Pilate for judgment?” The answer of scripture: SABBATH BREAKING OR VIOLATION OF THE SABBATH!!
In Luke chapter 6, verse 7, we read: “And the scribes and the Pharisees watched Him whether He would heal on the Sabbath day, THAT THEY MIGHT FIND AN ACCUSATION AGAINST HIM (an accusation they could bring to Pilate and have Jesus executed).” And, continuing in verse 11, we read, “And they were filled with madness (as angry and as hostile as human mind and heart can get) and communed with one another what they might do to Jesus.” In order to make certain Pilate executed Jesus, they added the false claim that Christ was forbidding paying tribute tax to Rome. (See Luke 23:1-2,14).
When one reads the opening chapters of the Book of Acts and arrives at the events recorded in the 6th chapter, the time frame is but 10 to 12 weeks after Calvary and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ primarily for Sabbath breaking! And yet what do we read: “And the word of God increased (began to be preached and received) more and more, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, AND A GREAT COMPANY OF THE PRIESTS WERE OBEDIENT TO THE FAITH.” (See verse 7 of that chapter). And in the previous chapters of the Book of Acts we are told that the apostles did their teaching, or recruiting of followers, in the temple precincts. Remember, this is but weeks after Jesus had been executed for supposed violation of the Sabbath. There is no way on earth the apostles were substituting Sunday observance for Sabbath observance but weeks after Christ’s death in the heart of Jerusalem, at the temple, and persuading a great company of the priests to join them. Not a single priest would have come over to their side had they preached abandonment of the Sabbath in the temple precincts or anywhere else. It is ludicrous in the the extreme to think that Sunday, the day held sacred by sun worshipers for centuries, had replaced the Sabbath among Christ’s followers. It would be similar to a Christian missionary going to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city of Islam, and, standing outside the Grand Mosque, exhorting Muslims to abandon the Koran for the Bible, or claiming Mohammad was a false prophet!!! It just wouldn’t fly. The missionary would be killed instantly in the most brutal fashion.
Why can’t these “Christian” ministers THINK? I’ll tell you why. The blinding POWER of Satan is mind-boggling. Plus, human pride enters in and these preachers think, “There is no way I can be in error in this matter. I’m a ‘reverend,’ called to preach by God Himself.”
Why does the rabbi refuse to believe Jesus was the Jew’s messiah? And, better yet, why do so many Christians refuse to believe that God’s eternal seventh day Sabbath is still valid and in force today? Any person, who is totally honest when examining the scriptures – both Old and New Testaments – especially any Sabbath-keeper – will freely admit that there certainly ARE a few passages of scripture that SEEMINGLY authorize Sunday observance. But when all the foregoing, that revelation given in the preceding, when that information is kept firmly in mind, one is confronted with the issue that Jesus Christ Himself sanctified the seventh day as HIS Sabbath at creation, was greatly angered when His own people Israel violated the Fourth Commandment – to the point of destroying Jerusalem and casting down David’s throne when they continued violating the sacredness of that day – and prophesied it would still be regarded by Him as sacred long after His resurrection and return to heaven. (See Matthew 24:20-22 and Isaiah 66:22-23).
But the primary reason many Christians cannot correlate the scriptures on this subject and see God’s truth in the matter is revealed to us by something the prophet Daniel said in his prayer to God as recorded in Daniel, chapter 9, verse 13: “As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil (war, captivity, etc.) is come upon us, yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, THAT WE MIGHT TURN FROM OUR INIQUITIES (SINS), AND UNDERSTAND THY TRUTH.” Trying to understand spiritual truth, seeking to comprehend what the scriptures really teach, while holding on to some sin in one’s life erects a mental block in the mind whereby one cannot see or understand the truth contained in those scriptures. It is as simple as that! The apostle Paul cautioned, “sin not….neither give place to the devil” (See Ephesians 4:26-27). Each and every time a believer sins, if that sin is not immediately repented of confessed and forsaken, then Satan is given the power to deceive and to blind that believer’s mind from comprehending the truth in a given matter.
Another primary reason one cannot discern what the scriptures are really saying in those few passages that seemingly authorize Sunday worship is that the Sunday-keeper just cannot bring himself, or herself, to believe that so many professing Christians could embrace such error for so long. They are oblivious to the fact that multitudes around the clock abandon Sunday worship for Sabbath observance. A great number of Sabbath keepers were once Sunday keepers! And all who do such are generally devout students of the Bible, and it is through careful and earnest searching of the scriptures that they have come to realize God never authorized any change whatsoever in the observance of HIS holy Sabbath day.
Ask a Sunday worshiper as he, or she, is exiting their car to go into some Sunday observing church what scriptures they rely on to authorize their honoring Sunday as a holy day and the spurning of God’s Sabbath day and you will quickly see how they are merely following the crowd, going along with the flow, doing what they and their friends and relatives have always done. They will be surprised that you aren’t doing the same.
In this continuing article, we will examine the primary New Testament scriptures the Sunday observer relies on to authorize their spurning of God’s eternal Sabbath and embracing the day of the sun god. Don’t allow any unconfessed sin in your life, though, as you will then give Satan the opportunity to effectively blind your mind from seeing the truth in this matter. And, I warn you, he is good at what he does.
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley