By Pastor John Pruitt
Counting backward from the first day of the week, very early in the morning, what day do you think Jesus would have been crucified?
The doctrine of the resurrection is a foundational doctrine, and essential to the Christian religion. The salvation of the soul is dependent upon the truth about the resurrection. The hope of the Christian is based on the promise of the Lord Jesus that; after having been crucified and buried for three days and three nights, He would raise from the grave, go to His heavenly Father and one day return for His people to take them to glory. Paul said in I Corinthians 15:19, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” Therefore, every true Christian ought to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. You do so by worshiping Him on the first day of the week which, we understand to be Sunday. There are some who worship on the sixth day of the week or the Jewish Sabbath which is Saturday, but there is no scriptural support for that theory.
Now, class, I want you to put on your thinking caps and do a little math. Thinking about the several statements made by the Master that He would be in the grave three days and three nights, counting backward from the first day of the week, very early in the morning, what day do you think He would have been crucified? The answer will be at the end of this lesson.
The Roman Catholic Church has told us for many hundreds of years that it was Friday. Around the sixth century AD the Roman church state made a holiday out of the day of the crucifixion and called it Good Friday. Ask any Catholic priest or read the Catholic catechism and you will learn that they do not believe the Holy Scriptures alone to be the final authority in truth. They believe that the Bible plus the traditions set forth by the popes is the final authority. That is why we now have the Easter egg, Easter bunny, Easter lily, Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), Lent, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday the Sun-rise Service, and Easter Monday. Now, folks, you can look all day long and you will not find anything in the Holy Bible to support these so-called holidays. Do some homework and research it for yourself.
Before the sixth century, no Christian celebrated the holidays listed above because they had not been invented yet. It was about the third century that the Roman Emperor Constantine came to power and thought to relieve the Christians of the horrible persecution by the Jews, Pagans and Roman Government. His solution was the create a “church state.” His motive, mainly, was to bring some peace and order to the empire. Constantine, with great power of persuasion and pressure, brought in to his political circle, many Baptists who were willing to compromise the precious truths of the word of God and escape further persecution and save their own necks. With the majority of his cabinet being pagan, he planted the seeds for the Holy Roman Empire. All of the modern, man-made holidays surrounding Easter have their origins in paganism. Why, in the name of prudence and common logic would a Christian want to have anything to do with that kind of festivity?
Answer to the math question: As you may know, the Jewish day was from 6:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M.; therefore, Jesus and His disciples observed Passover in the evening at the beginning of the Jewish Wednesday, which would be our Tuesday evening at 6:00 P.M. Jesus was crucified at the third hour of the day which would have been Wednesday morning at 9:00 A.M. He was buried before the beginning of the High Sabbath according to John 19:31. Now, if you count from 6:00 P.M. at the beginning of the High Sabbath until the end of the seventh day Sabbath on Saturday evening at 6:00 P.M. it adds up to three days and three nights, just like the Lord Jesus said. Remember, the Bible says that Jesus rose from the dead early on the first day of the week. Luke 24:1 “ Now upon the first [day] of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain [others] with them.” Do the math. E-mail, johnpruitt@frontiernet.net.
