Welcome to Bible Believers Fellowship. I am Pastor Greg. I want to provide an introduction to this study that is titled, The Death, Burial, and Resurrection. You are listening to Part 1 of 2. Every year, nearly the entire Christian world follows appointed days to recognize various events at the end of the life of Jesus Christ. Two that most all of the mainline churches follow are Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Well, there are some problems with this. And in this study we are going to see that the day of the week of Jesus' crucifixion is known and would be called Good Wednesday. We'll see that Easter is a completely false title to be given to Resurrection Day. And no matter what day Jesus died and resurrected on, it would not fall on the same day of the week every year. That's simply impossible. Now before going into this study, we don't want there to be any misunderstanding. While we disagree with most Christians on their annual observances of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we are not accusing them of being unsaved or heretics because of this error on their part. But error is error, and we would encourage all believers to simply get real about these things. We also want to make it clear that we're not on a crusade to fix the whole world. This message is provided primarily for the benefit of those attending our local church meetings. However, we do make these messages available for all, free of charge, on this radio station, as well as by internet and on DVD and CD disc upon request. So with that introduction, we invite you to remain with us and listen to part one of two and then join us later for part two of this important message on the real facts of scripture and history regarding the death, burial and resurrection. Amen. Some of you may not be aware of it, but today is Easter and Easter is the wrong word, but the purpose of the holiday is to celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so we don't nitpick about the word Easter. The word appears in the King James Bible in Acts 12 forward. It's a reference to a pagan holiday and a pagan Herod the Edomite was observing that holiday. we try to major on the majors. And one of the things that I'm glad about are there are churches today who normally don't preach the gospel, don't really talk about anything but me, me, me and self, self, self. But this one time of the year, they're going to talk about the gospel. The problem is I'm just talking from my own experience, but also from many, many people I know. The gospel itself, comes off as a fairy tale. It comes off as some kind of a myth. And Christians are largely to blame because we celebrate a thing called Good Friday every year, for example, and supposedly Good Friday every year is the year the day that Jesus died on the cross. Now, let me ask you a very basic, simple question. Do you know what day you were born on? You know what day? All right. I was born on September 18th. I was actually born on a Thursday, September 18th. That day does not fall on a Thursday every year. OK, now, how does Good Friday always fall on a Friday? It's a miracle. You see the point? And the point is that it's just not true. Why resort to falsehood when we've got the truth? Of course, he rose from the dead after 6 p.m. Saturday. Now, by Jewish reckoning, that was Sunday morning. By our reckoning, it's actually Saturday evening, still between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. I believe it was right after 6 p.m. Now, that date If he was crucified on Nisan 14, then 15, 16, 17, so Nisan 18, that very morning would be the morning that's called Sunday morning. So Nisan 18, Sunday morning, that was on our calendars, you know, somewhere in April, March or March, April. But that date isn't going to always fall on a Sunday. You see my point? So you go to church and you have preachers standing up and they have special services every year on Friday saying, this is the day that Jesus died on the cross. It's not true. I don't want to lie to you, folks. Today is not the day that Jesus rose from the dead. And we're going to see in a minute, I'll give you that information so you can know this year, but it'll be different next year. Once in a while, I think it's every seven years, it actually does land on a Sunday. But you say, you may think I'm splitting hairs, but I'm here to tell you folks that we need to stand with the truth. I don't believe Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life, wants us to celebrate the death, burial and resurrection based on falsehood and lies. And I think it's a faith building exercise for you to realize this ain't no fairy tale. This is real, folks. Jesus really did die on a cross and pay for your sins. And if you don't accept that, you pay for your sins. And that means you go to hell for eternity if you are not saved. That's it. You either accept what Jesus did on that cross or you do it for yourself and that'll take forever. And that's the reason why I think we should stick with the reality. Now you see, I want you to kind of get this in your mind. You've got each column being a day. Nissan 14, Nissan 15, Nissan 16, Nissan 17, Nissan 18. We're not talking about an automobile. We're talking about the Jewish month, the first month, Nissan, also known as Habib. And that represents a particular day in time. And so we're going to go through this in a moment, but understand that the Jewish calendar is different from our calendar. Folks, you may not know this, you're a bunch of pagans. Okay? January, February, March, all named after pagan gods. Sunday, sun god. Moon day, moon god. Saturday, Saturn. a god. We named our planets after gods. People say God knows the name of every planet, but you know something? I'll guarantee you God doesn't call it Saturn. He doesn't call it Jupiter. He's got his own names. He's got every star named, and I'll guarantee you they're not like B425 or C... You know what I mean? That's how we've named most of our stars. You've got a name now, but if you're saved, you've got a new name written down in glory. Amen? Amen. So we're going to get into this because it is real. It is factual. It is history. It's a real day with a real anniversary. Ginny and I were married November 19th, 2005, a day that will live in infamy. The Ohio State Buckeyes beat the Michigan Wolverines. Our anniversary doesn't land on a Saturday every year. I'm glad that she's real fluid about this, and we celebrate whenever we get the time. Amen? I mean, we celebrate our anniversary. It doesn't have to be on the 19th. But the 19th doesn't land on a Saturday every year, but the 19th is a day that we have every year. And the same thing is true about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ we're going to see. It's a real day with a real anniversary. You see, I've grayed out the area we're not going to talk about for the moment. We are going to talk about Nisan 14. Now, you'll see each day is given basically a main theme. Nisan 14 was the Passover. It was also called the Preparation Day. I don't have time to give you all that, but I hope that you read your Bibles, and if you read your Bible, Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus, you get this story about the Passover. That's when, you remember the story of Moses? Charlton, played by Charlton Heston. And Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, and that night, they were to take a lamb, they've actually taken on the 10th, they took a lamb on the Nisan 10, and they examined that lamb, for three days. And on the fourth day, they then sacrificed that spotless lamb. That was a picture of Jesus. And the blood they took on their house and put on the doorpost, representing the blood of Jesus Christ. If you look at it, it looked like a cross on every Jewish door. And that is called Passover. That took place on Nisan 14. That's a picture of Jesus Christ, and that's the day Jesus died. Nisan 14. That day was preparation day also for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is where they went through the house and made sure there was no leaven. And then the next day, Nisan 15, was a Sabbath day that began the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the Sabbath day, they had a final Sabbath. of unleavened bread. Now, that's just a crash course on a couple of the feasts that you need to learn about in the Bible, in the Old Testament. Now, I believe it's kind of one of those things where it's hard to say absolutely. But I believe that Jesus died in 30 A.D. And in 30 AD, Nissan 14 landed on a Wednesday, according to our reckoning. And it's Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the fourth day of the week in the Bible. You notice the Bible never talks about Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. It's the first day of the week is Sunday, as we call it. Second day of the week is Monday. Third day of the week is Tuesday. Fourth day of the week is Wednesday. And that's the day that Nissan 14 landed on. in 30 A.D. Now, all this happened on Nissan 14, but I hope you take the time sometime just to read through Matthew, read through Mark, Luke and John, and see everything that led up to that and what happened when they set Jesus up. Judas betrays Him for 30 pieces of silver. They take Him in the middle of the night, which was illegal, And they send him to Pontius Pilate, to Herod. He'd already stood before Caiaphas, the high priest. All this was illegal. All of it violated Jewish law. And on this day, actually it's the middle of the night still, we see in John 19, 14 and 15, it begins by saying, and it was the preparation of the Passover. And about the sixth hour, he saith unto the Jews, Behold your king! But they cried out, Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him! Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. That's midnight. That should not be happening. According to Jewish law, that's illegal. But at the sixth hour of the night, they reckon their time. Actually, a day begins and I say six. It's around it's dusk. OK, and so if you count dusk at six p.m., then that puts this at midnight. And if you count just from six a.m., that's the night and then the day. It would actually begins then, let me rephrase that, it goes from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. is the night and then 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. is the day. That's how a Jew, and in the Bible that's what we're dealing with, that's how the Jews reckon the day. Today actually started at 6 p.m. last night. And the first half of that day is the night, which went till 6 a.m. We are now, is it about noon? So we are now in the 6th hour of the day, and at the 12th hour of the day, which will be around 6pm dusk, that's the end of Sunday. But you and I, we're pagans, we don't think that way. You and I think of right up to midnight, and a lot of us, I don't know about you, but I take it all the way to the next morning. If it happened at 3am, it happened last night. See? So that's one of the problems we have when we read the Bible, is taking our minds and how we think and straightening out with how it actually is laid out in the Scripture. So that's the sixth hour, about midnight, and it says, "...they delivered him therefore unto them to be crucified, and they took Jesus and led him away." Now, Nisan 14 would begin, or had begun, at 6 p.m. And so this is midnight. So Nisan 14 is a long day in history because of all the huge events that took place in that one day. Then this is still Nisan 14, but this is in the day, the third hour of the day they crucified him. That means it's at 9 a.m. So at 9 a.m. on Nisan 14, And I'm going to tell you ahead of time, we'll repeat this, but this year, that was yesterday. This year in Israel, at Israel time, this adds another layer of confusion here, that's Israel time, 9 a.m. That means Saturday morning at 2 a.m., our time, would have been the time that Jesus was crucified. Because we're seven hours behind Israel. If it's 9 a.m. there, it's 2 a.m. here. Now, Mark 15 reiterates that when the sixth hour was come, now this is noon, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, which is 3 p.m. So from noon to three p.m., there's a three hour darkness in the middle of the day. Now, a lot of people get hung up on whether or not there was a solar eclipse on the day that Jesus was crucified, because they think that this is a solar eclipse and therefore that's what caused the darkness. Folks, the Bible doesn't say it was a solar eclipse. And yeah, I've been... Do you remember the one we had back in the late 90s? And our mid-90s, around 96 or something like that, it was over like that. I mean, it was shocking how fast it was over with. It didn't last three hours. Eclipses don't last three hours. This is not a solar eclipse. Now, most of you, when you go out and read about this, they're going to go on and on about solar eclipses. Right there, you know you're dealing with somebody who you don't need to listen to. Because this is not a solar eclipse. Folks, God is God. He can do what He wants. He made the sun stand still. You've got to be kidding me. You know, your problem is you just don't believe in God. If you believe in God, He's able to change the laws He set up for science. He can change gravity. And He did. Jesus ascended and He wasn't in an airplane or some alien spaceship that you hear on History Channel. is the law giver, he can change those laws anytime he wants to. And in this case, there was this three hour darkness that came over the whole land, it says, and at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is being interpreted, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And Jesus cried with a loud voice and gave up the ghost, which is his spirit. He died. Notice he gave it up. He died at his own command. And that was at the sixth hour of the day, that began at the sixth hour of the day, the whole darkness, and ended at nine. So there's 3 p.m. So here you have Ohio time. Midnight betrayal was at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The Native Americans that were over here. Oh, you know, I believe the darkness was over the whole earth. And it would have been dark. It would have been heading towards evening, but it got dark real early that day. Someone told me there's actual records where they found where there's drawings or something that show this event happening unexplained. There was no solar eclipse. There's no explanation to it. I haven't seen that myself, but if any of you find that, please let me know. I'd love to just have that information. But the crucifixion then would have happened at 2 a.m., the time of death, 8 a.m. Real happenings, real events. And there's the hill. Mike Taylor recently was there. I know the Ballard's have been there. Any of the others been over there to see this? The thing that I talk to, everyone I've talked to who's going over there, who's a believer? You talk to people who aren't believers, they seem to not... Get it. But you talk to believers and they walk up and they see this hill and even more so from a distance. This is a close up, but from a distance, they say it's just shocking that it looks so much like a skull. And that's why it's called Golgotha, the place of the skull. Now, again, mythology, fairy tales. Mike can tell you he went with a crew over there and he tried to explain to them that that church of the, what do they call it, where the crucifixion they claim took place? No, that's the tomb. Which one is where they actually claim he was crucified? They call it something else. Huh? No, that's where he ascended. That's where he was buried. But there's another place where they say he was crucified. Huh? The Holy Sepulcher is where the burial tomb is. But anyway, they'll tell you it's over here, and they build a church on that place. And they have no basis for that at all. Constantine's mother, in about the 4th century, walked around Jerusalem, and I just joked, I mean, I can see this old lady going, oh, I feel it, right here's where he was crucified. Build a church. And then she walked around somewhere else, and oh, right here's where he was buried. They don't have anything but that. That's why they build those churches, those big multi-million dollar cathedrals over there, baseless. No basis at all in reality. But you go over there and you look for a place, the Bible calls it the place of the skull. There it is. It's a real place. That's not Thomas Kincaid. How many of you knew he passed away yesterday? Yeah, he's 54 years old. I believe he's a believer. He's with the Lord. He wasn't just in it for the money. But he made a lot of money, and as I said, his tens of millions of dollars over the last couple of decades he made on those paintings and where he's at now, that's chump change. Amen? But yeah, amen. So that's a real place there. Now, the second column would be Nissan 15. And this was a high Sabbath. Now, the reason that's important to understand is because the Bible says that there was a Sabbath the day after the crucifixion. That is the only real reason why a lot of people claim that he died on a Friday, because Saturday is Sabbath, seventh day, right? The problem is, a lot of these guys don't know their Bible and they don't understand that there was a high day, an annual Sabbath, the day after Passover every year. And this year it happened to land on Nisan 15, which was a Thursday. And that's why there was a Sabbath mentioned immediately. And then after the Sabbath, there was a resurrection also. There's two Sabbaths in that week. And because people don't read their Bible, listen. They don't care. OK, that's it. They don't care. If you care, you read your Bible. If you care, you turn off that TV. If you care, you skip a little golf. Amen? He doesn't golf, I just mess with him. And then comes Nissan 16. And I'll come back and mention some of those things on the chart in a minute. But on Nisan 16, that's the day that the Pharisees came after the high day Sabbath. They couldn't do that on Wednesday because it was time to go. It was dusk. They didn't have time to go seal the tomb. The next day was a Sabbath. They couldn't break the Sabbath. So then the next day, which is Friday, They actually went and asked that the tomb be sealed until the third day. Notice they didn't say for three days. Why? Because it was already one day down. It was in the second day. They wanted it now sealed so that on that third day he couldn't come out. And that's why they did that on Friday. And that's also the day that the ladies prepared the spices. If you have a Good Friday crucifixion, the women couldn't have gone and bought spices, because the Sabbath was starting then, and then he rose from the dead at the end of the Sabbath. There's no shops open. Legally, they weren't allowed to purchase anything. So there's absolutely no way he was crucified on a Friday. It's just not true. And that's what they did on the non-Sabbath day between the crucifixion and the resurrection. There was only one non-Sabbath day where they could buy spices and prepare the spices. And that's the day they did it. Now, there's the tomb. That's a real place. Wasn't somebody married at that tomb? The Ballard's had their wedding vows done. Was it Zola Levitt who actually did the... In the garden. In this area in front? Right about here? Well, actually, it was up some steps and there were flowers. You act like you enjoyed that. It's a real place. You can hop on a plane and go over there. Mike did. Walked in, looked around. There wasn't nothing there. Amen? Came back out. He really wanted to be raptured just as he stepped out. Real place. So then the seventh day Sabbath was Saturday. And of course, there was no activity. It was a Sabbath. They didn't do anything. And that's according to the commandment. And that's what happened Saturday, Nisan 17. Now, on the back of your chart, I list some of the clear reasons why a Good Friday crucifixion could not have happened. Not going to go over every one of these, but I just want to emphasize that when the biblical Jewish day was an evening and a morning, you go to Genesis 1, verses 5, verse 8, verse 13, it says in the evening and the morning were the first day. The evening and the morning were the second day. That's how a Jew rendered the day. Now, when the Bible says three days and three nights, the Bible means three days and three nights. If he was crucified on Friday, He was buried in the tomb with only minutes left on Friday. He didn't spend a day and a night. He spent a few minutes of Friday. Then Saturday is the only full day. And then he rose just minutes into Sunday. And you hear people say, well, the way the Jews render a day. They make Jews sound really dumb. They don't render a day that way. You can talk to Jews, especially non-Christian Jews, because there are some Jews who are Christians who, for some reason, still want to defend that Friday crucifixion. You can talk to just a typical Jew, especially Orthodox, someone who still follows the Torah, and they will tell you, no, we don't render a day like that. It's an evening and a morning, and that's a day. When the Bible says that, that's what it means. And then Jesus, in Mark 8.31, even said that he would be killed And it says, after three days, rise again. After three days. Not part of a day, a whole day, and another part of a day. And so then you have different things, like I said, I'm not going to go through each one, but those reasons on the back are worthy of being mentioned. And I also want to mention, the next to the last bullet at the bottom, that Bible believers in the early church taught what you're hearing today. Okay? The Bible-believing church, from the time of the apostles until today, have taught what you're hearing today. This concludes part 1 of 2 of this message on the death, burial, and resurrection. You and your loved ones can listen to this message by using our sermon audio player or download this message in mp3 format or you can watch the message on video. Whichever format suits your needs, just visit our website at kjvbiblebelievers.com and you will find these messages on that site. You can also download the chart that is being used in this message by going to kjvbiblebelievers.com and clicking on the link that says Charts in the menu on the right side of the page. We hope that you will tell others to listen to our program heard each week on this station and share our website information, especially when speaking to your unsaved loved ones. Also, you may not know that we have a second website called 11thHourNews.com with videos regarding end-time Bible prophecy and current events. If you haven't already seen the site, you can just type all lowercase 11thHourNews.com with no spaces. You've been listening to Bible Believers Fellowship.