3064.—The Day of Crucifixion
By Editor
I understand that Jesus was crucified on Wednesday and rose from the dead on the Sabbath day, as the sun went down, which is called Saturday now. How do you explain it? We are told in the Roman Catholic Church that Jesus was crucified and died on Friday and rose the first day of the week. How could Jesus die on Friday and then rise on the first day of the week? for He tells us in Matt. 12:40 that He must remain in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. L. D. J. 1. It does not make a thing true or untrue if the Catholic Church teaches it, or any other body of people. There are a good many truths which the Roman Catholic Church holds. The question is, Does the claim stand the test of the Word? 2. “Three days and three nights,” according to the common Bible usage, does not mean absolutely seventy-two hours. “Day and night” is an expression used for a day. It may be only a part of a day, and yet is many times called a day. It may be only a part of a day and a night on each end of the period and a whole day between. It would still be called, in the common acceptation of the term, “three days and three nights.” 3. “The heart of the earth” does not mean the grave necessarily. It is the only place where the expression is used in the Bible, and it is purely arbitrary to say that it means the grave, and that therefore Jesus must be three days and three nights in the grave. 4. To us it seems very clear that “the heart of the earth” means in the hands of the powers of earth. Satan is the “prince of this world.” Jesus tells us just before His arrest by the power of Rome, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.” John 14:30. Again, “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” John 12:31. There began the three days and three nights when our Lord was placed in the hands of the powers of darkness. Previous to that His time had not yet come. Now His time had come. The events which were to fall within these three days are given again and again as His betrayal, mocking, crucifixion, and the third day He should rise again—the third day from the time when He was betrayed into the hands of men. Just a little after, Jesus said that the crisis of this world had come, and that “the prince of this world” should “be cast out.” The traitor found Him in the garden with His disciples; and as they came to take Him, our Lord said, “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” That is, the hour of the power of darkness began right then when they came to arrest Him; and this too is in harmony with what our Lord said in John when He prayed, “Father, save Me from this hour.” He asks, “What shall I say? Shall I say, Father, save Me from this hour?” But He must suffer for man, and so He resigns Himself into God’s hands, and declares, “But for this cause came I unto this hour.” And there began, in that hour, the awful time of agony which could end only with His resurrection. That arrest seems to have been on Thursday night. The time then included all of Friday, all of Sabbath, and a part of the next or first day. Mark reads concerning that first day, 16:9, “Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week.” The Syriac New Testament has it very clear, “And on the first day of the week He arose.” 5. But what of Matthew 28:1? That ought to be interpreted by the other Gospels, and this is very easily done by connecting the 66th verse of the chapter previous, to the first verse of the 28th chapter. In the original there are no chapter headings, no verses, nothing to separate those clauses; and so we read, “So they went, and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch in the end of the Sabbath.” That is what the Jews did. They were so anxious that Christ should not arise from the dead that they even overcame their compunctions of false Sabbath-keeping, and went to Pilate and demanded that they have a watch so that He would not rise from the dead. And so this watch is set in the end of the Sabbath; but as the first day of the week began to dawn came the resurrection. 6. It seems to us that this understanding of the text makes it clearer than any of the other various methods by which men seek to bolster up something which would make Christ rise on the Sabbath day, just as tho that would make the Sabbath a holy day; just as tho His rising on the first day would make the first day of the week the Sabbath! The “Thus saith the Lord” is worth more than a great many imaginations of men.