My Church of God (COG) friends have been taught that the resurrection of Jesus Christ occurred on Saturday evening, not Sunday morning. This is important to COG folks because it makes the Sabbath, not Sunday, the true “Lord’s Day.”

The argument starts like this:

The Jonah Sign.

Jesus said that the only sign he would give of his Messiahship was that he would be in the heart of the earth, just as Jonah was in the whale’s belly, for “three days and three nights” (Mt. 12:40). Since one cannot fit three days and three nights between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, my COG brethren conclude that the traditional reckoning must be wrong.

But notice that Matthew 12:40 says Jesus would be in the heart of the earth just AS Jonah was “three days and three nights” in the belly of the great fish. How long exactly was Jonah in the fish’s belly? Nobody knows. There is no information in the book of Jonah to shed any light on whether the expression refers to a literal 72 hours or is merely a figure of speech.

Only God knows how long Jonah was actually in the belly of the fish. So, if God, in the scriptures, shows us that Jesus was only in the grave for a portion of three days and nights, then we may assume that the expression used in the book of Jonah was figurative and symbolic, not literal.

We have four separate gospel accounts that describe the events of the crucifixion and the resurrection as encompassing less than 72 hours. Per the gospel accounts, Jesus was in the earth for part of “the Preparation” (Friday), all of the Sabbath (Saturday), and part of the first day of the week (Sunday) (Mt. 27:62-28:1; Mk. 15:42-16:2; Lk. 23:54-24:1; Jn. 19:31-20:1). All four witnesses agree. Thus, we may safely conclude that “three days and three nights” was figurative language and that Jonah was not in the belly of the fish for three literal days and nights. To do our analysis the other way, beginning with the assumption that Jonah’s “three days and three nights” is a literal 72-hour period, is assuming something that is not in evidence. We shouldn’t impose our own latter-day assumptions on a biblical idiom. We should let the Bible interpret the Bible and adhere to the meaning that scripture gives it.

This is not apt to be very satisfying to my COG friends, who prefer the specificity of three days and three nights. However, that expression is only used once in the gospels to describe the time of the resurrection. “In three days,” “after three days,” and “the third day” appear in the gospels more than 20 times. If a literal 72-hour entombment was necessary to prove Jesus’ Messiahship, wouldn’t the other gospel writers have been similarly exact?

Consider the related expression “40 days and 40 nights.” I doubt very much that anyone in the COG has ever bothered to assert or, indeed, believe, that it rained EXACTLY 960 hours – to the second – during the Flood (Ge. 7:12) or that Moses was in the mountain PRECISELY 960 hours (Ex. 34:28) or that Elijah left the wilderness near Beersheba and arrived at Mt. Horeb, on the dot, 960 hours later (1 Kg. 19:18) or that Christ was careful to fast during his Temptation not a second more or less than 960 hours (Mt. 4:2). Why, then, should they insist that “three days and three nights” must mean a literal 72 hours, not a second more or less, else the Bible is not inspired and Jesus is a liar?

COG teachers argue that since this is the ONLY sign that Jesus gave to prove he was the Messiah, if three days and three nights be not exactly 72 hours, then the sign failed of its purpose, and everyone is excused in believing Jesus was a fraud.

Yet if the Resurrection occurred on Saturday at sunset, then no one witnessed it anyway who could later testify that Jesus fulfilled it by rising from the dead after precisely 72 hours. So, the Jonah Sign fails regardless when Christ arose. Indeed, if Jesus was resurrected on Saturday evening and not Sunday morning, then the Bible is altogether silent about the day of Jesus’ resurrection.

Is it really plausible that God would inspire Matthew to record Jesus giving a critical sign–the precise length of his entombment–and then fail to ensure that anyone was around to witness it?

Could the inspired gospel writers, knowing that Jesus must have risen on the third day after exactly 72 hours in order to prove his Messiahship, have failed to mention the day of the resurrection?

Such a theory is hard to credit, especially when we see with what great meticulousness the four gospel writers detailed the events of that crucial period. They mention the hours ticking by on Golgotha – from the third hour (Mk. 15:25) to the sixth hour (Mt. 27:45) to the ninth hour (Lk. 23:44-46); that it was the Preparation before the Sabbath (Mk. 15:42); that the Sabbath of that week was also a high day (Jn. 19:31), which was the feast of the Passover (Lk. 22:1; Jn. 19:14); that Joseph laid Jesus in the tomb before dark as the women watched (Lk 23:54-55); that the women went home and prepared spices and then rested on the Sabbath (Lk 23:56); that the Jews went to Pilate on the day after the Preparation to ask for a guard at the tomb (Mt. 27:62); that when the Sabbath was past, early in the morning on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene found Jesus alive, fresh from the grave (Jn 20:17); that all four gospel accounts specifically mention the first day of the week as the day of his appearing following his death; that Jesus subsequently appeared to his disciples and explained to them that he rose on the third day, just as he predicted (Lk. 24:46); that Jesus called the disciples “witnesses of these things” (Lk. 24:48) (which they manifestly could not have been if he rose on Saturday); and that as late as the evening of the first day of the week it was still “the third day” on which Jesus arose from the dead (Jn. 20:19). None of this squares with the Wed-Sat scenario. To make the Wed-Sat scenario fit, one has to torture, twist, or disregard a great deal of plain scripture.

Three-day periods are referenced numerous times in the old and new testaments with no indication that the writers intended to convey a literal 72-hour period (Lk. 13:32-33; Lev. 7:16-17; Es. 4:16; 5:1-8; Gen. 42:17-18; 1 Sa. 20:12; Ac. 27:18-19; Ex. 19:10-11). Notice especially in 1 Samuel 30:12 where David questions an Egyptian prisoner who has not eaten or drank anything for “three days and three nights.” Who would insist that this passage MUST refer to a period of exactly 72 hours, not a second more or less, or else the Bible is a fraud? No one. Why then must the same expression require a literal interpretation in Jonah 1:17 or Mt. 12:40?

The annual “sabbath” high day.

Another argument raised by the COG teachers to come up with a Saturday resurrection is that the “high day” in John 19:31 was the First Day of Unleavened Bread (FDOUB), an annual sabbath, which they say fell two days before the weekly Sabbath in the year Jesus was crucified. Hence, they claim that “the preparation” day mentioned in that verse is not Friday, but Wednesday.

Notice that John again references “the Jews’ preparation day” in verse 42, the last verse in this same chapter, pinpointing the day when Jesus was crucified and laid in the tomb. Immediately after that, in the next verse, John speaks of Mary coming to the tomb on Sunday morning (Jn 20:1). John does not mention any of the intervening days, neither the holy day on Thursday nor the preparation day on Friday nor even the Sabbath day on which Jesus, according to these COG teachers, supposedly rose from the dead. Isn’t it a rather strange way for the apostle to witness to the truth of Christ by failing to validate the “only sign” he gave of his Messiahship? 

As most of my COG friends know, the “preparation day” or just “the preparation” was a common term for Friday in Judaism. For the Wed-Sat timeline to work, the preparation mentioned by all four gospel writers would have to have been Wednesday, a day which is never called by that name in Judaism. In Mk. 15:42, Mark is very careful to define the preparation as “the day before the Sabbath.” Every day before an annual holy day was not called the preparation, only the day before the weekly Sabbath. The preparation is so called because food gathering and preparation were forbidden on the weekly Sabbath (Ex. 16:23, 26). The Jews had to prepare their Sabbath food ahead of time on Friday. This is not true of the FDOUB. The law expressly allowed the preparation of meals on that annual holy day as well as on the last day of the feast (Ex. 12:16). So, the preparation mentioned in the four gospel accounts must be Friday before the weekly Sabbath; it cannot be Wednesday.

Plural Sabbaths

COG teachers next turn to their Greek lexicons. In Matthew 28:1 we read: “In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.”

COG teachers argue that the term “sabbath” in this passage is the Greek word sabbaton, which is plural and refers to the double sabbaths in the preceding week, the FDOUB and the weekly Sabbath. Thus, they argue, the Wed-Sat timeline is proved by virtue of there having been two sabbaths, not just one.

First, just let’s just savor the implication that God has buried the truth about Jesus’ resurrection in a Greek lexicon. Second, even if sabbaton refers to two Sabbaths, does that preclude its referring to dual sabbaths on a single day of the week? According to the traditional resurrection timeline, the Sabbath of holy week was also the FDOUB. Hence, two sabbaths.

As it is, sabbaton is a word that can be translated as Sabbath or Sabbaths, the latter term meaning the time from Sabbath to Sabbath, which we call a week. Young’s Literal Translation shows the use of the term this way in this passage: “And on the eve of the sabbaths, at the dawn, toward the first of the sabbaths, came Mary the Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.” In other words: “At the end of the week, at dawn on the first day of the week, came Mary . . . .” There is nothing in the meaning of the term sabbaton that conflicts with or disproves the traditional Fri-Sun scenario.

Last, consider that under a Wed-Sat scenario, the women supposedly bought spices on Friday between the FDOUB and the weekly Sabbath, spent the whole day preparing them, and finally brought the spices to the tomb a full three days and fifteen hours after Jesus died. The women would have been aware of the short window in which they had to work before the body started to decompose. Common sense would dictate that if the women had an entire day between the FDOUB and the weekly Sabbath to finish the embalming, they would not have neglected Jesus’ body the entire day to piddle with spices. It is impossible that they left Jesus’ body lying untended for 72 hours, from Wednesday evening to Saturday evening, then wasted another 12 hours sleeping after the Sabbath was over before finally heading back to the tomb to finish the burial. At the latest, they would have gone back Saturday night, at which time they would have learned of Jesus’ resurrection — if, in fact, he had been laid to rest on Wednesday and not Friday.

No, my friends, your COG teachers have misled you. You don’t have to accept a convoluted and complicated explanation for a Saturday resurrection–an explanation that nine in ten of you have probably never understood anyway. You can accept and trust what your eyes read plainly in the gospels. The resurrection WAS on Sunday, after all!