The religious leaders of Christ's day were fearful of Jesus. They worried that He would cause a revolt among the Jews that would be crushed by the Romans, destroying the Jewish nation in the process. In an attempt to discredit Jesus, the Pharisees demanded that He show them a sign to prove that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. Christ said that only one sign would be given. If it could be demonstrated that Christ did not fulfill the conditions of this sign, it would prove that He was a fraud, an impostor, a charlatan.

Christ said that the proof He was the Messiah was that He would be in the grave for three days and three nights. The scripture is in the twelfth chapter of Matthew:

MAT 12:38 Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. 39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 40 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.

Jonah was a prophet sent by God to Nineveh, capitol city of the Assyrian empire. Jonah was to warn Nineveh of its impending doom, but he was reluctant to deliver the message.Jonah was headed in a direction away from Ninevah when God arranged for a large fish to swallow him. Jonah spent exactly three days and three nights, or a period of seventy-two hours, in the stomach of this immense fish. Jesus said that He would be in the grave for an identical period of time and that this was the only sign or proof that He was indeed the Messiah, the Christ.

Now, if Jesus was crucified on a Friday and put in the grave shortly before sundown, then he was only in the tomb for one day and two nights, at best. The idea that Christ was crucified on a Friday creates an irreconcilable difficulty with the scriptures. In that case, He did not fulfill the condition of the only proof that He was who He said He was. He had to be dead and burried for a total of seventy-two hours to prove He was the son of God.

How then, did Christ fulfill His prediction that He would spend three days and three nights in the grave? The answer is that He was not executed on a Friday. This can be proven by some rather interesting scriptures in Mark and Luke:

MAR 16:1 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.

LUK 23:55 And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid.
56 And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment. 24:1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

Notice this apparent contradiction in the scriptures: Mark says that the women bought spices after the Sabbath, but Luke says they bought the spices before the Sabbath, and then rested on the Sabbath day. How can this problem be resolved? The answer to this question helps to explain how Jesus fulfilled His prophecy about His period of death in the tomb.

Because so many Christians are unfamiliar with the Old Testament scriptures, they are unaware that a week may have more than one Sabbath. There are two types of Sabbath: Weekly Sabbaths and annual Sabbaths. The weekly Sabbath occurs every seventh day of the week, the day we call Saturday (in many western European languages, Saturday is still referred to as "Sabados"). There are also seven annual Sabbaths, or "High" days that can fall on any day of the week. In the week of Christ's death, there were two Sabbaths. In that year (30 A.D.) , the Thursday of the crucifixion week was an annual sabbath. Friday was a day after the annual sabbath and a day before the weekly sabbath. This was the day the women bought the spices. That is how both Mark and Luke can be correct. The only explanation that fit all the facts is that the crucifixion was on a Wednesday!

Notice that the crucifixion was the day before a "High Day" or annual sabbath:

JOH 19:31 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.

The Jews didn't want three men hanging on crosses, howling in agony on a holy day, so they asked Pilate to have their legs broken to hasten their death. This holy day was the first day of unleavened bread, which God had commanded in Leviticus 23. When the soldiers came to Jesus to break his legs, they found that He was already dead, having been pierced by the spear of a Roman Soldier. The day of the crucifixion was a Wednesday, not Friday. Christ was put in the ground near sunset on Wednesday and was resurrected exactly three days and three nights later, around the end of the Sabbath, Saturday evening. Thus, He did fulfill His prophecy and sign that He was who He claimed to be.

You may download an Excel file HERE that lays out all the events of the crucifixion week in an easy to understand format. If you don't have an Excel compatible program, HERE is a PDF version of the chart.

In reality, Christ was not crucified on "Good Friday". The only recorded event for that day is that the women bought spices to embalm His body. He fulfilled the sign He gave, proving that He is our Savior, the Messiah, the Son of God! Through His sacrifice, we have redemption from our sins and the possibility of eternal life!

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