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Our faith should not be based on the wisdom of men but on the power of God (1 Cor. 2:5)

he Church today has many celebrations for the remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. My Christian faith, notwithstanding, I see, believe and accept the New Testament as the Holy Book for Christians whose religion is Christianity while the Old Testament is the Holy Book for the Jews whose religion is Judaism. These are definitely two different religions. Unfortunately, many Christians have not seen this distinction. The Bible as we have and carry it today, contains two different covenants, two different religions and two different holy books: for Christianity and Judaism.

This view is supported by Jeremiah 31: 31-32: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah- not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke……….Hebrew 8:7 says: "For if there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, no place would have been sought for another." Simply, God said, the Old Testament was faulty, hence, it had to be replaced with the New Testament with Jesus as the guarantor of this better New Covenant (Please read Hebrew chapters 7:18-28 and chapter 8:1-13).

A simple and quick distinctions between the two religions (Christianity and Judaism) include that:

1. Judaism is the religion of the Jews into which people can only be born into but cannot be converted into. Even if your father is a Jew and your mother is a Christian or Gentile as others were called during the Old Testament era, which is very inconceivable, you cannot be a Jew and therefore your religion cannot be Judaism. Remember, Jehovah forbids any intermarriage between the Jews and other nations.

2. Christianity on the other hand is more liberal. It is a religion for all nations. Jesus himself said: Go into all the nations of the world and make converts, disciples or followers of me (Matthew 28:19). This is why we can find Jews, Arabs, Asians, Latinos, Africans and many more diverse nationalities who are Christians today.

3. The Jews till today don't believe in Jesus or accept him as Son of God, as God, as Lord and Savior. At best, they may see him as a prophet even lower than Moses, Joshua, David, Elijah, or others after them and he (Jesus) to the Jews is not worthy of serving or worship. I remember my days in Israel some years back, there were stories of men and women being disowned by their parents for converting to Christianity. But thank Jesus, things have changed now. We now have Messianic Jews and Jews for Christ Congregations of Jews who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior or Messiah. This is very much unlike the mainstream believe of the Jews who are still expecting their Messiah, even more 2,000 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus that proved he is the Messiah. No ill feelings, as there is freedom of religion.

4. On the other hand, nobody is a Christian who has not accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and not just a Carpenter boy as some see him.

5. The Jews don't have a line of the New Testament in their Holy Book, the Old Testament.

6. Most Christians don't see their Bible complete without the Old Testament glued to it.

7. The Jews don't believe that they share the same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with any other nation or religion like Christians.

8. But in the Church today, prayers are said to God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Christians see Abraham as their father of faith. They even sing: "Abraham blessings are mine……." claiming the blessings of Abraham. The Jews won't agree with these.

The little digression is necessary to know from where we are coming. Here is a question for the Christians today: Did Jesus die on Friday to warrant the designation of "Good Friday"? The simple answer is: No, Jesus did not die on Friday, there is no biblical "Good Friday". For those who know, they are afraid to say it for the fear of contracting their church doctrines or leaders who may also be ignorant. This is one of the fallacies of Easter celebrations.

Let's start our study with the declaration of Jesus: "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). The fulfilment of the prophetic declaration of Jesus in the eyes, minds and tradition of the church is that till today, Jesus died on Friday and was hurriedly buried before Sabbath and was resurrected in the wee hours of Sunday. This is very far from the truth of the Scripture as the three days and three nights of Jesus in the grave doesn't add up.

That teaching and doctrine is not according to the teaching of the word of God but according to the knowledge, tradition and wisdom of men. Apostle Paul warned that our faith should not be based on the wisdom of men but on the power of God (1Cor. 2:5). For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God…. (1 Cor. 3:19). Jesus himself said: We have disregarded the commands of God and keeping the traditions of men (Mark 7:8).

For those who say that Jesus was crucified and buried on Friday shortly before sunset to avoid the Weekly Sabbath starting time, we may ask them what kind of Math or Calculus that calculates Friday Night to Sunday morning before sunrise to the "three days and three nights" in that Jesus prophesy. At best they would get two nights and one day, which is grievously and gravely short of what Jesus proclaimed to the be his sign of being the Messiah. Jesus cannot lie or be wrong. Then those who started the notion of "Good Friday" as the celebration of the death of Jesus must be wrong.

As for me I stand with Jesus, the TRUTH. God is not man who lies or the son of man who changes his mind. Does he speak and not act or promise and not fulfill? (Numb. 23:19). God must be true even if all men are liars (Rom.3:4). So Jesus cannot lie. It is our church leaders and founders who are lying about "Good Friday and Easter Sunday". And most people are so intellectually lazy and gullible, they can't study the Bible on their own but merely live and worship on the old traditions passed on to them from ages past no matter how wrong such may be.

Many worshippers have been so brain-washed that they no longer know or believe that their pastors can be wrong, unknowledgeable or simply naïve or ignorant of the scriptures. Such people now swallow line-hook and sinker like a fish destined to perish whatever their pastors tell them even when the pastors are dead wrong. Unfortunately we are in the age of "tithe and offering pastors", who are only in the church to live on the tithes and offering of many gullible worshippers. All they want is money, money and money without the ability to study, understand and teach accurately the true Word of God. Since they can't give what they don't have, how would the congregation be better? No, not possible. Some have been so wired in ignoramus that even they can't see the difference between light and darkness again. Pretty too bad. Please pray for them.

Now, let's use what the Bible says about the death and resurrection of Jesus our Lord and Savior. The good news is that: There is nowhere the Bible says that Jesus died and was buried on Friday. As exactly also, there is nowhere in the Bible, where God asks you to bring Ten Percent (10%) of your income to the church as tithe. Doubters can search for these truths in the Bible from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation. Please don't mix a tenth with ten percent. A tenth of any number like 100 is ONE whereas ten percent of 100 is 10. The difference is very clear.

In the Gospel of Mark 15:42, the Bible says that Jesus was crucified on "the day before the Sabbath". The Jewish weekly Sabbath comes on from Sunset on Friday till Sunset on Saturday. This is why and where the confused minds picked their confused thought. To them, if Jesus was crucified on a day before Sabbath, and if the only Sabbath they know is the weekly Sabbath of Sunset on Friday till Sunset on Saturday, then logically to them, Jesus must have been crucified before Sunset on Friday now regarded as the day before Saturday Sabbath. A lucid, well thought out argument but very wrong factually and scripturally.

Good students of the Bible will see abundant facts and testimonies in the Scripture that the Jews were called of Jehovah to observe other Sabbaths beside the weekly Sabbath which fell on Saturday. For instance, the day of Passover week, no matter upon which day of the week it falls upon must always be observed as a Sabbath (Exodus 12:16; Leviticus 23:7; Numbers 28:16-18). This is different from the weekly Sabbath of Friday/Saturday. Therefore, the first question we must find answers to; is whether the Sabbath before which Jesus was crucified was the weekly Sabbath (Saturday) or another Sabbath, like the Passover Sabbath, which could fall on any day of the week depending on the Calendar of that year.

We are going to rely more on Gospel of John to resolve the confusion of some people as to which day Jesus actually died. Why John? The gospel of John was written much later (between AD. 70 when the Temple was destroyed and AD. 100 when John died), after the other gospels. There is therefore a clear distinction between the works of John and other Gospelers. Bible scholars have noticed marked differences from the impressions of other writers. John deviated from other writers of the gospel by his interests and areas of concentrations. While others devoted much attention to the birth, ministries, miracles, parables and public life of Jesus, John emphasizes on the Divinity of Jesus as the Son of God, as being God on earth and how we as believers should take the teachings of Jesus. This is the difference between the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and the Gospel of John.

As the last of the Gospelers, John was able to correct the errors from others. For instance it is generally believed that Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples at the Jewish regular hours - the eve of the day of Passover. No, this is not true as Jesus ate his Passover meal on the evening before the eve of Passover. He couldn't have eaten on the same evening when he died. The significant of this is that Jesus became the Passover "Unblemished Lamb" that was killed for the Passover (Exodus 12:5-14). Jesus therefore became the real Passover Lamb whose blood waded away death for believers today like the typology of the lamb in Egypt did for the Jews on the day of the wrath of God upon the Egyptians. Jesus is the true Lamb of God that took away the sins of the world, and who was slain at the appointed time of God on the Cross of Calvary to take away the death sin brought to whosoever believe in him.

If we take just exactly what the Bible says, that Jesus was slain on the Preparation Day or Eve of Passover Sabbath, it is marvelously fitting in every detail; but if we accept the traditional theory that Jesus was crucified on Friday, that theory falls flat at all points.

1. In John 12:1 The Bible says Jesus was visiting his friend Lazarus in Bethany six days before Passover. May be to say farewell to him. This, by our calculation was on Friday, just before sundown, which starts the weekly Sabbath.

2. Also in John 12:12, the Bible says that the next day of their arrival in Bethany, which is Saturday, Jesus had a Triumphal entry into Jerusalem from Bethany, which was a "Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem (Acts 1:12)

We have now identified two Sabbaths here. To understand the correct narrative of the death and resurrection of Jesus sequentially, we have to unambiguously identify which of the two Sabbaths encompassed the death and burial of Jesus and therefore the day of his resurrection. A good student of the Bible will easily therefore identify two Sabbaths on the week that Jesus died. Therefore, did Jesus died on the Eve of the yearly Sabbath of the Passover/Unleavened Bread, which could fall on any day of the month or on the Eve of the weekly Sabbath which always fall on Friday?

To be continued