The traditional way to celebrate the Easter season is to celebrate Friday (good Friday) as the day they crucified Jesus, and Sunday morning as the time of His resurrection. However, this contradicts how God commanded Christ's death and resurrection to be observed.
First, we must decide who we will believe. Almighty God and His holy scriptures, or are we going to follow the traditions of man? Surely, if you seek the truth, your only source of information and inspiration can be from the bible.
Pro 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
When you are seeking a matter, please do not forget the Old Testament. Too many people today regard this book as being old and irrelevant to our modern day and age. But what does the word of God have to say on this matter?
2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.
All scripture means exactly what is says. ALL SCRIPTURE, both the old and the new testaments.
One point I would like to make here is simply this. God The Father and Jesus Christ had all eternity prior to their creating the earth to work out how everything was going to happen, and in what order. They have made no mistakes, and there is absolutely nothing left to chance, or anything that was an afterthought. They carefully planned the entire creation to draw our attention to something enormous.
Therefore, surely we can trust that the order of events at the time of Christ's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection, as recorded in the scriptures, is exactly correct down to the hour. When Jesus kept the Passover meal in the early hours of the 14th of Nisan, just after sunset, He did not get His timing wrong, and when He died on the cross in the late afternoon of that same day, again, He did not get the timing wrong.
Whenever Jesus speaks, we should pay very careful attention to what He is saying. God Himself has given this excellent advice in the following verse.
Mar 9:7 Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
The first thing I will say in this short introduction is this. The most important piece of scripture we need to unravel this mystery is in Mat 12:39.
Mat 12:39 He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah."
The leaders of the Synagogue were challenging Jesus and wanted a sign from Him to prove He was their Messiah. His answer is in the verse above. PLEASE LISTEN TO HIM. These people wanted a sign and Jesus gave them one, and please understand that there was only going to be one sign. And that was the sign of Jonah, as recorded in the next verse.
Mat 12:40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
This is vital to comprehend correctly. Only one sign, the sign of Jonah, three days and three nights. So how long is this ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE? The answer is clear at the very start of the bible in Genesis chapter one. This is recording the events of the creation week.
Gen 1:13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
Unfortunately, I do not have room enough to display all of this verse, but here in verse 13 we see the perfect description - ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE - of three days and three nights. When we come to verse 13, we have seen three periods of day and three periods of night, and even today, that can only add up to 72 hours.
If Jesus was not this long in the tomb, then He is an impostor, a fraud, and not the Son of God as He claims to be.
If you read this book, PLEASE LISTEN TO HIM!!!