What Is Good Friday? Was it Really Friday? Why is it Good?

Do you know what Good Friday is? I didn’t know until I was twenty-seven years old. No kidding. And I certainly never understood the math of Jesus’s crucifixion on a Friday night followed by His resurrection three days later. I’m not the best mathematician (lol – I’m not a fan of math at all), but my calculations tell me that is two days. The author of the following article attempts to clarify this discrepancy.

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Why Good Friday?

By Randall Stone

I was brought up within the confines of the Catholic Church and, like most supposed Christians, I always observed the most important days of the Christian calendar, those of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. While the events of Easter Sunday have never been in dispute, there is an ever increasing debate raging within Christianity as to whether Good Friday is a valid day of celebration for a Christian. The evidence would suggest otherwise.

Good Friday is traditionally held as the day that a certain carpenter from the tiny northern Judean town of Nazareth was nailed to a tree by the Pax Romanus two thousand years ago on a series of lies and trumped up charges, to fulfil what the scriptures had said about Him. But this man, Yeshua prophesied to His followers that He would be in the "heart of the earth" for "three days and three nights, just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights."

Always supposing that Yeshua had been crucified and buried by 6pm on that Friday afternoon and that He rose sometime Sunday morning, then the total amount of time spent in the tomb would have been no more than 36 hours and not the 72 hours that Yeshua and the scriptures were adamant about. To explore this further, we must first understand that the Jews did not measure time the we way do in the modern world.

The Jewish day began at sunrise and ended at sundown. From sundown to sunrise, was the night period. One day encompassing a 24 hour period. It states in the Gospels that Jesus was crucified on the preparation day" before the Sabbath but this is often taken out of context. Although the Jewish Sabbath did, and indeed still does, fall on a Saturday, the Jews have more than one Sabbath. They also have what they call "High Sabbaths" and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread that Jesus was executed prior to is one such Sabbath. In John 19:31 we see, 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 a High day) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.

The 1917 edition of the Scofield Reference Bible has a centre column that states that word "Sabbath" in this context, is plural; from the Greek, "sabbata". This is also backed up by Young's Analytical Concordance. So, the day after the crucifixion was not on the eve of the weekly Sabbath but on the eve of a special, High Sabbath. As we shall see, the Sabbath of the Feast of the Passover, was immediately followed by another High Sabbath, that of Unleavened Bread.

Our April coincides with the first Jewish month of the year, that of Nisan or Abib. This is the first month of the Jewish year. On the 14th and 15th April respectively, they celebrate the Feasts of the Passover and Unleavened Bread. The latter feast is a week long celebration. Now, by knowing that Jesus escaped the tomb, sometime in the early hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning, for the two Mary's reached the tomb just before dawn on the day after the Sabbath and found it empty, we can back track, three whole days and nights to the day of His crucifixion.

To the Jews, a day comprised the daylight hours. Everything after that was night. If Jesus rose from the dead, anytime after twilight on Saturday, say from 6pm onwards, then if we backtrack from 6pm we hit 6pm Friday, one whole day and night. From 6pm Friday to 6pm Thursday, is another full day and night, making two. And from 6pm Thursday, to 6pm Wednesday, is another full day and night, making three in all, 72 hours, just as Yeshua and the prophets had predicted. So, Yeshua was crucified at 8am on a Wednesday morning. But the Gospels all agree that this was a preparation day for the High Sabbath. He also shared a Passover meal with His Disciples. But how could they eat a Passover meal before the actual feast day? It makes no sense. Again, we need to address how the First Century AD Jews measured time.

This means then, that the Lord's Last Supper, Passion in the Garden and subsequent arrest and trial, all took part on Tuesday, the day of the Passover. From 6am to 6pm on Tuesday, during the hours of daylight, the Jews would have seen this as preparation. From 6pm Tuesday to 6am Wednesday morning, would have been the actual Passover celebration. This fits in with a night time supper and the fact that God loosed His last and most terrible plague upon Egypt, the Death of the First Born in the hours of darkness. So, from 6am Wednesday morning to 6pm Wednesday evening, the day of his execution, this would have been classed as a preparation day for the High Sabbath of Unleavened Bread.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, purchased oils and herbs before the Sabbath with which to anoint the body of Yeshua. Yeshua had been placed in the tomb sometime after 6pm on the Wednesday. The following day, Thursday, was the Sabbath of Unleavened Bread and no Jew would risk breaking the law by either selling or buying on a holy day. So, they must have purchased these things on the Friday which fits in with scripture that says "they [the two Marys] reached the tomb of the Master just before daybreak after the Sabbath." This being the weekly Sabbath of Saturday. And, as we know, the tomb was already empty.

At the end of the day, it matters not, on which day Our Saviour died. Had it been of grave importance, God would have let us know the exact day. The fact that God tells us exactly on which day His tomb lay open and empty, tells us that He puts far more importance and relevance on the fact that He raised His One and Only Son from the dead, as we should, For God is LIFE. Yeshua did ask us to remember His sacrifice however, and to meet in His name when we break bread and drink wine in fellowship, peace and love. So, may the Peace of Christ Yeshua be with you all, now and forever.

God Bless
Randall Stone

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Randall_Stone

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Dear Readers,

Please tell me: what does Good Friday mean to you? What do you think of this article? What questions, if any, does it bring to mind.

Thank you for leaving your thoughts - the comments are always the most interesting part :)

Sincerely,

Suzi

P.S. Former FOC member, Garth Young, will be guest blogging on Sunday.

Old Haunts

Do you believe in ghosts? I have personally experienced and seen beings that were not flesh and blood human – though I’m not sure if they were ghosts, spirits, angels, or something else. I was not afraid of them, and I’m not afraid of going into places that are known (said?) to be haunted.

A few weeks ago, while on a writing retreat on Star Island off the coast of New Hampshire, I attended a gathering of more than fifty writers in a small graveyard at just after 9pm for ghost stories. While we listened a few of the gathered stood and told of their own otherworldly encounters.

A fellow writer was feeling sick, but she left her Android loaded with a Ghost Radar app for us to run. I volunteered to hold the Android – curious what technology could possibly pick up of another dimension. What it picked up were several random words and three names: Mary, Edward, and Elizabeth. The next morning, I headed back to the graveyard to look for the names – there were less than thirty graves total, and guess what? There were gravestones bearing the names of Mary, Edward, and Elizabeth.

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This past Thursday morning, I dressed in grey corduroy pants and a lightweight grey cotton t-shirt, socks – despite the July heat wave, and tennis shoes. Not my typical summer teaching apparel – which, lately has been maxi-skirts and dresses. It was the first time my students would see me dressed casually and I wondered how they’d react. I couldn’t wear a floor length skirt and high heels for the what I had planned immediately following my morning lecture. I needed to be able to move comfortably. But, considering the heat of the day, a skirt would’ve been nicer.

I left the campus with the last of my students and hurried out to my overheated car. Sweat pouffed my blow out and streaked my make-up. Oh, cursed summer, why do I even bother? My gut ached and my mind played out scenarios of being arrested for trespassing on private property. Would they impound my car too?

I hope nobody’s there. It’s Thursday, so hopefully they’re getting ready for church [at 1:15?]. Maybe there’s a funeral today.

As I got closer, I realized I wasn’t sure where the turnoff was. It had been at least 17 or 18 years since I’d been out there - maybe longer. I knew the main road and what side of the road and how to tell if I’d gone too far. I remembered the dip in the highway where cars exceed the posted 55/mph and where a church member had a fatal car crash on the way to my great-aunt’s funeral in 1992. I reached the road where my childhood home had been, too far. I turned around and found the right side road on the first try.

Despite the full power air conditioning that had been cooling me down, I felt sweat sliding down my sides. My heart beat sped up as I approached the site – and I was ready to turn around and leave when I saw the groundskeeper spraying around the gravestones. I parked in front of the “No Trespassing” sign.

I got out of the car and walked through the open gate. I didn’t recognize the groundskeeper, but he looked like he could be a Follower – short hair, clean cut. It wasn’t the same person who kept the grounds all my life – he was now buried in this cemetery.

I walked among the gravestones and saw many familiar names. My ex-boyfriend was there, and his baby son. His best friend was also there. Many girls and young women who were younger than me. Girls I’d known growing up, and guys. And then there were the babies and toddlers. I counted thirty nine little ones buried all together – those were the ones who had headstones, many had just plastic markers which were overgrown. There were at least another twenty buried among the adult graves – not counting those dating back before the 1930s when the church began using the cemetery. There are a number of gravestones from non-Followers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

It made me sad to see graves of babies from the year I was born – 1973 (it made me sad seeing all the babies' and childrens' graves). These might have been my friends had they survived. And something else struck me about that year – an irony, maybe some savvy readers will comment on it.

I spent about two hours walking among those graves. The cemetery is a sacred place in the Follower tradition. Here lies Walter White, our leader. When Christ returns, when the trumpet blows, the faithful Followers buried here will rise. I always believed that Jesus was coming back to Oregon City – either to the church building or to this cemetery to claim his faithful and judge those of us who didn’t cut it.

A few years ago my parents began talking about being cremated when they died. I was shocked to say the least. Why would you want to have your flesh incinerated when you had spent your entire lifetime in fear of an eternity of incineration? Never. Also, how could you be raised from the dead at the rapture if your body was ashes – and some people actually scatter the ashes of their loved ones. What happens then?

Of course, intellectually, I realize that a person’s burial site and the condition of their remains does not affect their final destination. But I still dislike the idea of cremation.