The Three Literal Days in the Heart of the Earth and the Lord's Day (Sunday) Resurrection

This is a subject that I confess I hadn't studied in any great depth before, as much as more so-called 'important' topics in God's Book, beginning (as none would dispute!) with salvation. It is enough to know (and believe!) that "He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." 1 Corinthians 15:4; be these partial or full days. There are biblical arguments for "both sides of the fence" as it were, but as for me, I am now fully persuaded that our Lord and Saviour spent a full literal three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, as Matthew 12:40 avers.

If you would refer to my last post on this subject, I copied this from a book I purchased (for the miserly sum of 10p!) last month from a charity shop on the Western Isles where I live. I read it once, then twice, then thrice, checked out all the Bible verses quoted therein, and copied it letter and word by my fingertips on this ere blog to make sure I had fully understood its import before posting it. I hand sketched the crude diagram on my last post so to graphically understand it, not just for my own benefit, but for any whom God would send to this blog of mine.

Notwithstanding the above, regarding "The Lord's Day" (the first day of the week, or now the eighth or Resurrection Day), the Christian Sabbath is now on the day we call by the (pagan) name Sunday. There are many who would have us falsely believe that it was Constantine in AD 321 who instituted the Sunday Sabbath, when all this man did (for his own ends...) was institute what was plainly written in the Scriptures. The written word plainly declares that:

Upon the first day of the week (pagan Sunday!) when the disciples came together to break bread... Acts 20:7.

Upon the first day of the week (pagan Sunday!) let every one of you lay by him in store...1 Corinthians 16:2.

Did these Christian Jews dishonour the Jewish Sabbath day? Or Is the resurrected Lord; the Son of man Lord of the sabbath day or no? And He said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. Mark 2:27-28. Today, the unbelieving (religious) Jews continue to observe the seventh (non resurrection-day) Saturday sabbath, confused Messianic Jews do the same; so what day is the Christian sabbath? 

John wrote I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, Revelation 1:10. What day? His resurrection day.

Mark wrote Now when Jesus was risen early the first day (Sunday) of the week.. Mark 16:9.

The so-called long ending in Mark's Gospel (16:9-20) in the Authorized Version (Textus Receptus, the Received Text) has been removed (or bracketed with variations) from many modern Bible versions. Although missing in the Vatican and Sinai manuscripts, it is found in almost every Greek manuscript which contains Mark's Gospel. In addition it is quoted by Church Fathers including Irenaeus and Hippolytus in the second and third centuries (thus predating the two 'old' manuscripts, Vatican and Sinai).

Gentile Christians have long honoured the first day of the week as the Christian sabbath, traditionally, and rightly so.

Was Jesus Really Three Days and Three Nights in the Heart of the Earth?

Was Jesus Really Three Days and Three Nights in the Heart of the Earth?

Lifted from pages 33-39 of FALSE VIEWS BY MODERN MAN by Ian R.K. Paisley.

MATTHEW 27:62

The A.V. reads:-

"Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate."

The T.E.V.* reads:-

"On the next day-that is, the day following Friday - the chief priests and the Pharisees met with Pilate."

Once again the Romish error that Christ was put to death on Friday is written into the text. This, of course, is without any textual warrant whatsoever.

The following statement from the able pen of the late Dr. R.A. Torrey should be studied in this connection:-

WAS JESUS REALLY THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE HEART OF THE EARTH?

By Dr. R.A. Torrey.

Matthew, in the twelfth chapter of his Gospel and the fortieth verse, reports Jesus as saying: "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale ("sea monster", R.V. margin), so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." According to the commonly accepted tradition of the Church, Jesus was crucified on Friday, dying at 3 p.m., or somewhere between 3 p.m. and sundown, and was raised from the dead very early in the morning of the following Sunday. Many readers of the Bible are puzzled to know how the interval between late Friday afternoon and early Sunday morning can be figured out to be three days and three nights. It seems rather to be two nights, one day and a very small portion of another day.

The solution of this apparent difficulty proposed by many commentators is that "a day and a night" is simply another way of saying "a day", and that the ancient Jews reckoned a fraction of a day as a whole day, so they say there was a part of Friday (or a very small part), or a day and a night; all of Saturday, another day, or a day and a night; part of Sunday (a very small part), another day, or a day and a night.

There are many persons whom this solution does not altogether satisfy, and the writer is free to confess it does not satisfy him at all. It seems to him to be a makeshift, and a very weak makeshift.

Is there any solution that is altogether satisfactory?

There is.

First Fact.

The first fact to be noticed in the proper solution is that the Bible nowhere says or implies that Jesus was crucified and died on Friday. It is said that Jesus was crucified on "the day before the sabbath" (Mark 15:42). As the Jewish weekly sabbath came on Saturday, beginning at sunset the evening before, the conclusion is naturally drawn that as Jesus was crucified the day before the sabbath He must have been crucified on Friday. But it is a well-known fact, to which the Bible bears abundant testimony, that the Jews had other sabbaths beside the weekly sabbath which fell on Saturday. The first day of the Passover week, no matter upon what day of the week it came, was always a sabbath (Exodus 12:16; Leviticus 23:7; Numbers 28:16-18). The question therefore arises whether the Sabbath that followed Christ's crucifixion was the weekly sabbath (Saturday) or the Passover sabbath, falling on the 15th of Nisan, which came that year on Thursday. Now the Bible does not leave us to speculate in regard to which sabbath is meant in this instance, for John tells us in so many words, in John 19:14, that the day on which Jesus was tried and crucified was "the preparation of the Passover" (R.V.), that is, it was not the day before the weekly sabbath (Friday), but it was the day before the Passover sabbath, which came that year on Thursday. That is to say, the day on which Jesus Christ was crucified was

Wednesday.

John makes this as clear as day.

The Gospel of John was written later than the other Gospels, and scholars have for a long time noticed that in various places there was an evident intention to correct false impressions one might get from reading the other Gospels. One of these false impressions was that Jesus eat the Passover with His disciples at the regular time of the Passover. To correct this false impression John clearly states that He eat it the evening before, and that He Himself died on the cross at the very moment the Passover lambs were being slain "between the two evenings" on the 14th Nisan (Exodus 12:6, Hebrew and R.V. margin). God's real Pascal Lamb, Jesus, of whom all other Pascal lambs offered through the centuries were only types, was therefore slain at the very time appointed of God.

Everything about the Passover lamb was

Fulfilled in Jesus

(1) He was a lamb without blemish and without spot (Exodus 12:5). (2) He was chosen on the 10th day of Nisan (Exodus 12:3), for it was on the tenth day of the month, the preceding Saturday, that the triumphal entry into Jerusalem was made, since they came from Jericho to Bethany six days before the Passover (John 12:1-that would be six days before Thursday, which would be Friday),and it was on the next day that the entry into Jerusalem was made (John 12:12 and following verses) that is, on Saturday, the 10th Nisan. It was also on this same day that Judas went to the chief priests and offered to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:6-16; Mark 14:3-11). As it was after the supper in the house of Simon the leper, and as the super occurred late on Friday, that is after sunset, or early on Saturday, after the super would necessarily be on the 10th Nisan. This being the price set on Him by the chief priests, it was the buying or taking to them of a lamb which according to law must occur on the 10th Nisan. Furthermore, they put the exact value on the lamb that Old Testament prophecy predicted (Matthew 26:15, compare Zechariah 11:12). (3) Not a bone of Him was broken when He was killed (John 19:36, compare Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12; Psalm 34:20). (4) And He was killed on the 14th Nisan between the evenings, just before the beginning of the 15th Nisan at sundown (Exodus 12:6, R.V. margin).

If we take just exactly what the Bible says, viz., that Jesus was slain before the Passover sabbath, the type is marvellously fulfilled in every detail, but if we accept the traditional theory that Jesus was crucified on Friday, the type fails on many points.

Traditional View

Furthermore, if we accept the traditional view that Jesus was crucified on Friday and ate the Passover on the regular day of the Passover, then the journey from Jericho to Bethany, which occurred six days before the Passover (John 12:1) would fall on a Saturday, that is, the Jewish sabbath. Such a journey would be contrary to the Jewish law. Of course it was impossible for Jesus to take such a journey on the Jewish sabbath. In reality His triumphal entry into Jerusalem was on the Jewish sabbath, Saturday. This was altogether possible for the Bible elsewhere tells us that Bethany was a sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem (Acts 1:12; compare Luke 24:50).

Furthermore, it has been figured out by the astronomers that in the year 30 A.D., which is the commonly accepted year of the crucifixion of our Lord, the Passover was kept on Thursday, April 6th, the moon being full that day. The chronologists who have supposed that the crucifixion took place on Friday have been greatly perplexed by this fact that in the year30 A.D., the Passover occurred on Thursday. One writer in seeking a solution to the difficulty suggests that the crucifixion may have been in the year 33 A.D., for although the full moon was on a Thursday that year also, yet as it was within two and a half hours of Friday, he thinks that perhaps the Jews may have kept it that day. But when we accept exactly what the Bible says, namely, that Jesus was not crucified on the Passover day but on "the preparation of the Passover", and that He was to be three days and three nights in the grave, and as "the preparation of the Passover" that year would be Wednesday and His resurrection early on the first day of the week, this allows exactly three days and three nights in the grave.

To sum it all up,

Jesus Died about Sunset on Wednesday.

Seventy-two hours later, exactly three days and three nights, at the beginning of the first day of the week (Saturday at sunset), He arose again from the grave. When the women visited the tomb just before dawn next morning, they found the grave already empty. So we are not driven to any such makeshift as that any small portion of the day is reckoned as a whole day and night, but we find that the statement of Jesus was literally true. Three days and three nights His body was dead and lay in the sepulcher. While His body lay dead, He Himself being quickened in the spirit (1 Peter 3:18) went into the heart of the earth and preached unto the spirits which were in prison (1 Peter 3:19). 

This supposed difficulty solves itself, as do so many other difficulties in the Bible as meaning exactly what it says.

It is sometimes objected against the view here advanced that the two on the way to Emmaus early on the first day of the week (that is, Sunday) said to Jesus in speaking of the crucifixion and events accompanying it: "Besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done" (Luke 24:21), and it is said that if the crucifixion took place on Wednesday, Sunday would be the fourth day since these things were done. But the answer is very simple. These things were done just as Thursday was beginning at sunset on Wednesday. They were therefore completed on Thursday, and the first day since Thursday would be Friday, the second day since Thursday would be Saturday, and "the third day since" Thursday would be Sunday, the first day of the week. So the supposed objection in reality supports the theory. On the other hand, if the crucifixion took place on Friday, by no manner of reckoning could Sunday be made "the third day since" these things were done.

There are

Many Passages in Scripture

that support the theory advanced above and make it necessary to believe that Jesus died late on Wednesday. Some of them are as follows: "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). "This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days" (Matthew 26:61). Thou that destroyest  the temple and buildest it in three days, save Thyself" (Matthew 27:40). "Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while He was yet alive, After three days I will rise again" (Matthew 27:63). "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be killed and after three days rise again" (Mark 8:31). "They shall kill Him, and when He is killed, after three days He shall rise again" (Mark 9:13, R.V.). "They shall scourge Him, and shall kill Him, and after three days He shall rise again" (Mark 10:34, R.V.). "Destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands" (Mark 14:58, R.V.). "Ah, Thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save Thyself" (Mark 15:29). "Besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done." (Luke 24:21). "Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt Thou raise it up in three days? But He spake of the temple of His body. When therefore He was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said" (John 2:19-22).

There is absolutely nothing in favour of Friday crucifixion, but everything in the Scripture is perfectly harmonized by Wednesday crucifixion. It is remarkable how many prophetical and typical passages of the Old Testament are fulfilled and how many seeming discrepancies in the Gospel narratives are straightened out when we once come to understand that Jesus died on Wednesday and not on Friday.

The T,E.V.* is however, prepared to write into the New Testament the Good Friday Romish tradition, although by so doing it makes the Testament to contradict its own plain statements.

Again, no wonder Cardinal Cushing, a leading Roman Catholic prelate in the U.S.A., is on record as saying that his "expert consultants did not seek a single change in the text of the T.E.V.* before approving it for Catholic use".

Moreover, the Cardinal, as R.C. Archbishop of Boston, gave the T.E.V.* his official approval and had his imprimatur inserted therein.

*The T.E.V. (Todays English Version) was renamed the Good News Bible in 2001.