On last year's Easter Sunday morning, I was scrolling through Facebook and was met with all these "He Is Risen" posts being shared by a number of people. It irked me to the point where I felt compelled to post something, so I gave what I reckon is the simplest argument that dismantles Easter's credibility.
'If Easter is indeed about the death and resurrection of Jesus, dying on Good Friday, and being raised on Easter Sunday, how can you fit 3 days and 3 nights (72 hours) between these two days?
"For as Jonas 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 12:40An example where scripture doesn't fit into this tradition of men.'
Chris includes this point in his "Easter: Christians Celebrating Abomination"(
https://www.creationliberty.com/articles/easter.php) and uses this helpful visual to better understand the problem. Simply, if Jesus died on "Good" Friday, then Jesus would have rose again on Monday in order for three days and nights to have passed according to Matthew 12:40.
Anyone claiming to respect the authority of scripture can't ignore this clear contradiction. Or at least they can't ignore it as easily as they seem to ignore evidence of any pagan connections.
It was interesting the responses, a couple agreed and I had one scoffer, but only a couple tried defending it. The main defense consisted of baseless claims that the Jews count days differently and that partial days were included in the count, so that it wasn't actually a full 72 hour period.
In my responses I explained that no matter how you try counting between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning, there's no way that you can get 3 nights between them, there's only Friday and Saturday night. This point without a doubt shows the incompatibility of Easter with Scripture.
Next I explained how we know that Jesus' tomb was found empty on Sunday morning (Mark 16:1-6). Now we know that Jesus died on the preparation day, the day before a Sabbath. Most preparation days are Fridays which is before the weekly Sabbaths on Saturday. We learn from John that this preparation day was for a high Sabbath (which would have been the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.)
"The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away." - John 19:31The high Sabbath doesn't have to fall on the same day as the weekly Sabbath, Saturday, and therefore the preparation Day doesn't have to be a Friday. And seeing three days and three nights can't fit between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning, it definitely was not a Friday.
The final point I made was "seeing as the tradition of Easter is passed down by the Catholic Church, it's no wonder they got this most basic fact wrong (3 days 3 nights), seeing as they don't care at all what scripture has to say. Nor is it even necessary to celebrate Christ's resurrection annually; it's something we should always be celebrating."
Now comes in Mike Winger. My friend sent me Winger's "13 Bible Contradictions refuted: Evidence for the Bible pt19" (
https://youtu.be/uoLYyyqijfU?t=1069), along with the comment that he was now content with the timing of Easter. The relevant contradiction doesn't have anything to do with Easter directly, but it does justify its timing.
At 17:49, Winger addresses the seeming contradiction between Christ saying that He will rise again the third day and Matthew 12:40 where He says that He would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The contradiction is perceived as follows:
If Christ rose on the third day, then that means He wasn't in the tomb for three days and three nights, because He would have risen before the third night which is after the third day. And if Christ was in the tomb three days and three nights, then that means He would have rose on the fourth day, not the third day. Because if He rose after the third night, that would make it the fourth day.
Mike's solution is that three days and three nights is an idiom, that doesn't actually mean a 72 hour period. He points to multiple Old Testament passages, such as 1 Samuel 30 12:-13, where similar seeming contradictions appear.
Mike gives the modern misuse of the word literally, such as "I literally died" (when the speaker obviously has not died), as a comparison to how the Jews were using the phrase "three days and three nights." He claims this was just the way Jews used the phrase and was to do with how they considered time, citing the Babylonian Talmud as his only support for this assertion. He puts it down as a "peculiarity of language."
I hope others find this argument as absurd as I did. It took me a little while to realise, but I think the seeming contradiction Winger is trying to address is easily resolved by considering that Jews count their days from sunset to sunset.
"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." - Genesis 1:5So the nighttime is considered first and then the daytime. So when Christ rose the third day, He had already been in the tomb for three nights. The correct way of counting: night 1, day 1, night 2, day 2, night 3, day 3 = Resurrection Day.
It helped that this way of considering days was engrained in my mind when my family and I "kept" the Sabbath when growing up, which starts on Friday's sunset and at Saturday's sunset. But it's still surprising to me that something so simple was overseen, and instead Winger settled with a very questionable resolution. The blinding of the Easter tradition was likely a big factor (not to mention general blindness.)
Lastly, I eventually stumbled across 2 very short videos from a very deceitful Hebrew Roots ministry. While they are corrupt, they make a very sound argument in these videos that effectively and thoroughly explains the matter while showing the absurdity of the Easter timing. Here are the links, but if you rather not watch it I explain and expand on their argument below, but the video's visuals are useful. (Part 1 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RVxGgo0D08 Part 2 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzVSrrCpOS8)
The argument they present is as follows:
- They begin by quoting Matthew 12:40 - "so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." The phrase 'in the heart of the earth, referring to the amount of time Jesus' body spent in the tomb.
- Next they quote John 11:9 - "Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world." Therefore by Jesus' own words we know that when He talks about a day in terms of time, He is talking about a period of 12 hours, and correspondingly there are 12 hours during the night. This evidence that supports the fact that Matthew 12:40 must be talking about a 72 hour period when it talks about three days and three nights.
- According to Matthew 27:46 Jesus died around the ninth hour of the daytime, which would be about 3:00pm. Which is close to the evening hours so they do not count this as part of the three days and three nights. I reckon that its plausible to have taken until just before sunset to place Jesus inside the tomb, so I find this to be reasonable.
- "Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils." - Mark 16:9 As discussed before, the Jews count their days beginning at sunset, so early the first day would be Saturday night. This is supported by John 20:1 - "The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre." Mary arrived at the tomb on the first day of the week, around the time of sunrise, which would be Sunday morning, and the tomb was empty.
- Counting back from Saturday night three day and three nights, brings us to Wednesday night. So Jesus would have died on Wednesday day. John 19:31 shows the day Jesus died was the preparation Day and the following day was a Sabbath. The first day of Unleavened Bread is a high Sabbath. (Lev 23:7) This is further supported by Mark 16:1-2 - "And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun." The Sabbath that past could not have been the weekly Sabbath, because there would have been no time to buy the spices between the end of the weekly Sabbath and the following first day of the week. Indicating there must have been two sabbaths, the high and weekly one. So she would have bought the spices after the high Sabbath on the Friday.
I find this to be quite a sound and comprehensive argument. But it's worth noting that sound arguments like these showing the errors of the Catholic-Pagan holidays seem to be used to draw people into Hebrew Roots / Sabbath keeping beliefs, by afterwards presenting arguments that also sound reasonable but are actually fallacious. I remember growing up and my dad making a big deal about the pagan origins and contradictions of Christmas and Easter and I speculate that opened his mind to the Sabbath keeping cult we were apart of. It seems that anyone who steers clear from Easter, Christmas and the like are either sanctified born again Christians, or a works-based Sabbath "keeper" of some sort.
I hope this wasn't too difficult to follow. I certainly got confused thinking through the days. I would greatly appreciate correction to any of the conclusions I've made if there are any errors and for further insights anyone is able to offer.
