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Most Christians believe the Lord Jesus
Christ was crucified on Good Friday and rose from the dead just in time for a
sunrise Easter church service. That would mean He was buried during what we’d call
Friday night, all day Saturday, and Saturday night, for a blasphemous total of
one day and two nights – which means they are all wrong.
My main objective in this chapter is to show you
how conclusively the Scriptures establish a Wednesday crucifixion, a sunset
burial, and a resurrection at sundown at the end of Saturday. But I’m also
going to show you how powerful tradition is and how inept, unbelieving,
deceitful, cowardly, and blindly loyal to their denominations Christians can
be. This is a perfect topic to use because, ignoring the fact that the Good
Friday tradition makes the word of God of none effect (which itself is a high
crime), a Wednesday crucifixion doesn’t really affect any denominational
doctrines and doesn’t affect anyone’s lifestyle. That means the Wednesday
crucifixion is a harmless doctrine. It is easy to understand how some
Christians could be reluctant and afraid to accept some of the big doctrines
covered in earlier chapters, but this Good Friday business is completely
benign. Why then are the denominations so afraid of it? Because
it goes against tradition. Tradition means/involves a lot of people. And
our natural insecurity, which is intensified when we aren’t experts on the
Bible, makes us timidly assume that out of all those people – including some
“big names” – there must have been at least some who were experts on the Bible,
understood the Good Friday issue, and were correct about it. (Why is it that we
expect other Christians to be the kind of dedicated, motivated,
responsible, knowledgeable experts on Bible doctrines that we have never
cared enough to become?) I hope this chapter will help destroy your faith in
tradition and in “all those people” who created it, and help you realize it’s
your responsibility to study and be taught by the Lord so you can be an help meet for Him and His church. And then, if you’ve
been reluctant to seriously address some of the earlier chapters because they
seemed too “different” and because you assumed your church probably correctly
understood those issues, I hope you’ll begin to believe what the Bible says: If
your church can’t even handle small doctrines like Good Friday, how can it
handle big doctrines? And if you can’t handle small doctrines like Good Friday
and stand up for the truth about it, what makes you think you’re a Swordbearing Christian warrior armed and prepared for war?
My intention is not to single out any
specific denomination or individuals for ridicule. I want you to understand
that people of all denominations, including you and me, have a tendency to
earnestly contend for “our side.” And we are consciously or unconsciously
willing to disregard what the Bible says and use anything and everything we can
find – no matter how dubious and contradictory – to support our side. You must not
trust anyone in any denomination, and that includes me. If you do you are a
fool. And that’s why you must become an expert on the Bible in order to
facilitate searching the Scriptures for truth. To that end, let’s examine the
timing of Christ’s burial and resurrection.
He
was indisputably nailed to the cross at about nine o’clock in the morning, died
on the cross at about three o’clock in the afternoon (Mk 15:25-37), and
was buried at about sunset.
And
the Lord was discovered to have already risen before sunrise on
Sunday, the first day of the week (Mt 28:1; Jn
20:1). That obviously means the resurrection did not happen at sunrise; it
happened sometime before sunrise.
The
Jews end a day and begin another right at sunset – not at midnight. For them
the two halves of a day are made up of night and day – in that order – because
darkness preceded light when God created the world (Ge
1:1-5). Sunset played an important part in the crucifixion because the day
following the crucifixion was a sabbath
(Jn 19:31). The Jews had to be careful
not to violate the sabbath
by still being involved with the crucifying, anointing, and burial of their
three crucified brethren after sunset. Therefore, because death by crucifixion
could be a slow process, the Jews needed to speed up the deaths of the three
men on the crosses by breaking their legs (Jn 19:31).
Then, without the support of their legs, the men would hang more on their arms
and suffocate faster. The soldiers broke the legs of the two thieves, but when
they went to break Christ’s legs they found He was already dead. In order to
verify His death one of them shoved a spear into His side, thus fulfilling two
things in Scripture (Jn 19:32-37).
The
Good Friday tradition started because people are lazy when it comes to Bible
study. They saw that the day after the crucifixion was a sabbath (Mk 15:42) and assumed that
meant Saturday the seventh day of the week because most sabbaths were Saturdays. So let’s test the Good Friday
assumption by being as generous as possible in seeing how many days and
nights we can come up with for Christ to be buried. If the disciples were able
to bury Christ before sunset, that would allow us to count the “day
part” of Friday. Then at sunset it became the “night part” of Saturday. At
sunrise it became the “day part” of Saturday. At sundown it became the “night
part” of Sunday. And that’s the most we can get because the women got to the
tomb shortly before sunrise when it was yet dark. Adding all
of that up we get a maximum number of two days and two nights. Since
that would make Jesus Christ a liar we utter an embarrassed chuckle and admit
that as good as our Good Friday theory seemed, it was proven Scripturally
false after fifteen seconds of examination.
A
“proof” that the crucifixion happened on Good Friday is Mk 15:42,43,
which shows the crucifixion happened on a day of preparation. Most
preparation days were Fridays because most sabbaths were Saturdays. Many scholars, therefore,
(either out of ignorance or to defend the Good Friday tradition) conveniently
ignore the feast-day sabbaths
that fell on weekdays, and treat the preparation and Friday as synonyms. In
that way they try to make Mk 15:42,43 say Christ was
crucified on Friday. But preparation doesn’t mean Friday and it doesn’t
mean Wednesday, it means the day before a sabbath. That kind of error is how the Good
Friday theory started.
The
confusion over what “sabbath” occurred the day after
the Passover crucifixion, however, is cleared up by Le 23:5-7, which says the Passover was followed by the holy day of
the Feast of Unleavened Bread. That means the day after the crucifixion wasn’t
necessarily a Saturday sabbath
– it could have been the Feast Day of Unleavened Bread, which could occur on
any day of the week. There is one problem with Le 23:5-7 and Nu 28:16-18, however – they often go unnoticed
because they undermine the Good Friday
tradition.
Now,
even though backing up one day from Good Friday (a Thursday crucifixion) would
add another day and night which would make three days and three nights (if we
used the same earlier generous assumptions), I’m going to save myself some
typing and just tell you Thursday won’t fit the Scriptures any better than
Friday, and I’ll show you that a Wednesday crucifixion and a Saturday sundown
resurrection exactly fit the Scriptures.
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The
first thing in the Bible that alerts us to the fact that the crucifixion was
not on a Friday is Jn 19:31. Did you catch it? This
verse is an excellent indicator of how very carefully we need to read the Bible
and pay attention to every word in it. If the events did happen on
Friday the verse would not contain the parenthetical information because
it would be irrelevant whether the following Saturday was a regular sabbath or a high sabbath because both still required a day of rest. A red
flag should have just popped up in your mind because you noted that the
Scripture says high day but I said high sabbath. And that will help you find one
of the flaws in the Good Friday theory: Its adherents often refer to that
Saturday as a “high sabbath” even though they
have no Scriptural support to do so – it was “an high day”.
Every
Saturday was a sabbath, a
day of rest. But there were also annual feasts and religious days that could
fall on any day of the week that were also sabbaths. If the feast fell on a regular day of
the week, that non-seventh-day sabbath
was called an high day to differentiate it from a regular day. And if the feast
fell on a Saturday, that seventh-day sabbath was called an high sabbath
to differentiate it from a regular Saturday.
Jn 19:31 tells us the sabbath day after the crucifixion was not a
seventh-day sabbath (because then the Bible would
have called it an high sabbath), but that it
was a week day (because it is called an high day). (I sometimes say “an” rather
than “a” high day because of the KJV’s wording.)
If
Christ was crucified on Wednesday (the Passover), buried at sunset, and
remained in the ground all of Thursday (the holy day of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread), Friday, and Saturday (a regular sabbath),
that means we’re dealing with three special
days here; the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Saturday sabbath. We shall see that that is correct, and we shall
see how careful and how exact God is with His word.
If
Christ was buried all of Thursday, all of Friday, and all of Saturday we would
obviously have three days and three nights, but, as much as we might like to
declare victory, quit our Bible study, and go watch TV, we still have something
bothering us: The exactness of Mt 12:40 loses its exactness if Christ was
buried slightly before sunset because that would add part of another day
(Wednesday). And if He rose from the dead sometime after sunset at the
end of Saturday and before sunrise Sunday, that would add at least part of
another night (Sunday). That fractional day and that fractional night added to
the three days and three nights in Thursday, Friday, and Saturday would be just
as unscriptural on the high side (more than a literal 3.0 days and 3.0
nights) as the Good Friday theory is on the low side (less than a
literal 3.0 days and 3.0 nights). And that makes us realize we don’t fully
understand this topic and need more Bible study. Let’s begin with Wednesday and
work our way through Sunday in order to get a better understanding of events
and to see if the Scriptures fit a Wednesday crucifixion.
WEDNESDAY: THE
CRUCIFIXION. Wednesday was the Passover, the 14th
day of the month (Le 23:5), which began in the evening at sundown (Dt 16:6). It was a busy day for the Lord
because the Jews wanted to kill Him before the big holy day, the Feast of
Unleavened Bread (Mk 14:1,2): He sat down “when even was come” to eat the
Passover meal (Mt 26:20; Mk 14:17,18).
Then He went to Gethsemane; was arrested and “tried” by the Jews; delivered to
Pontius Pilate in the morning (Mt 27:1,2) – which was still Wednesday; was crucified (as the real
Passover Lamb) at about nine in the morning; and died at three in the
afternoon. Because sundown was approaching so rapidly that the disciples
weren’t sure they could get Christ in the ground in time to avoid violating the
approaching sabbath (the 15th day,
the holy Feast Day of Unleavened Bread – Le 23:6,7),
they all decided to accept Joseph of Arimathaea’s
time-saving offer to use his tomb because it was close to the crucifixion site
(Mt 27:57-60; Jn 19:42).
In
addition to getting permission to take the body and bury it, and finding a
nearby tomb, the men hurriedly bought linen and spices and used them to quickly
anoint and wrap the body (Mk 15:46; Jn 19:39,40).
All of this was done Wednesday afternoon when the linen and spice stores were
still open; all the stores would close by sundown because of the sabbath and because of darkness.
The
women watched all of these events. They witnessed the crucifixion (Jn 19:25), the death (Mt 27:55,56; Mk 15:40,41; Lk 23:49),
and the burial (Mt 27:61; Mk 15:47; Lk 23:55).
They saw how hastily the men anointed the body with one eye on the corpse and
another on the sun – which was just about to touch the horizon. The men wanted
to anoint the body to fulfill the Jews’ burial custom because neither they nor
the women realized God had already anointed Christ for burial (Mt
26:7-13; Mk 14:3-9). If they had known the anointing in the house of Simon
the leper was sufficient in God’s eyes, they certainly would have realized the
hasty anointing done by the men was sufficient. But they didn’t, so the women
agreed to get together on Friday, the day after the sabbath (the Thursday Unleavened Bread high day), go
shopping for more ointment, and then properly (they thought) and
lovingly anoint the body.
THURSDAY:
THE FIRST DAY. This day was fairly quiet; it was a sabbath because it was an high day
because it was the Feast Day of Unleavened Bread. All the stores were closed.
But behind the scenes the Jewish preachers were busy with politics arranging
with Pilate to have Roman soldiers guard the tomb (Mt 27:62-66). Notice
they only wanted the tomb guarded three days, not four or five days.
That’s because if Christ were to be in the ground more than three days, His
three days and three nights prophecy would be false, thereby making Him neither
a prophet (Dt 18:22) nor the Christ. They
understood the importance of exactness when it comes to Scriptures and
prophecy.
FRIDAY:
THE SECOND DAY. The women got together after the Thursday sabbath as they’d planned and
bought spices and ointments so they could anoint the body properly (Mk 16:1).
This verse doesn’t fit with the Good Friday theory because it says the women
bought the stuff after the sabbath,
which would mean the stores would have had to open for business sometime Sunday
night after the Saturday-sabbath sundown. While that
is possible, it is unlikely because before electricity produced streetlights
and car headlights, very few people did business and traveled at night.
Having
bought their supplies, the women, not knowing a military guard had been posted
at the tomb the day before, went to anoint the body. When they arrived at the
tomb the soldiers stopped them. The women showed their spices and ointments and
said all they wanted to do was anoint the body. The soldiers said they were
sorry but orders were orders and nobody could go near the body until Sunday –
the fourth day. The women then realized that created a problem: After that much
time the body would begin stinking (Jn
11:39). Therefore they agreed to get up before dawn Sunday, get to the tomb
“dark and early”, and anoint the body as soon as there was enough light before
it began stinking too much. With that in mind read Lk
23:55,56. Remembering that v.55 happened on
Wednesday, v.56 can be read this way: “[The women rested during the Thursday
Unleavened Bread high day] And they returned [on
Friday to the tomb to anoint the body. But because of the guards they agreed to
meet again before dawn Sunday] and prepared spices and ointments [to speed up
their work on Sunday, and then went home] and rested [Saturday] the sabbath day according to the
commandment.”
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Notice
in Lk 23:56 God adds “according to the commandment.”
If the Good Friday theory were true that addition would be unnecessary because
there would be but one sabbath
under consideration. And that sabbath
would be a high sabbath because it would be two sabbaths in one, Saturday and the Feast of Unleavened
Bread, and it wouldn’t matter whether you rested “according to the commandment”
because it was Saturday or if you rested because it was Unleavened Bread – you
still had to rest. Therefore, this verse, by clearing up any confusion as to
which type of sabbath it is
referring to, proves another sabbath is involved with
these events. Earlier we saw how the “that sabbath
was an high day” in Jn 19:31 proves one
of the sabbaths was a weekday, and now in Lk 23:56 the “the sabbath day
according to the commandment” shows this other sabbath
was a Saturday in accordance with the commandment in Ex 20:8-11.
Before
we move on let me quote a noted Bible scholar who loudly proclaims the belief
in a Wednesday crucifixion is “heresy”: “If the crucifixion took place on
Wednesday, how can we explain why the women waited until Sunday to come to the
sepulcher? Why didn’t they come Thursday or Friday to anoint His body?” I find
that kind of ignorance of basic information in the Bible to be shocking
and appalling. This theologian does not know the day after the crucifixion was
the Feast Day of Unleavened Bread, a sabbath,
when the women couldn’t travel and couldn’t do work. And he doesn’t know the
soldiers guarding the tomb would prevent the women from touching the body.
(Actually, I think he does know those things because I don’t think he is as
ignorant of the Scriptures as his writings suggest. I think he’s being
deceitful. I think he knows the average Christian is appallingly
ignorant of the Scriptures and he’s just trying to come up with arguments – no
matter how specious – against a Wednesday crucifixion that would sound
plausible to the ignorant apostates in his denomination. His main objective is not
the truth; it is to defend his denomination. And by doing so he is making
people twofold more the children of hell than he is himself.)
SATURDAY: THE THIRD DAY. This was the
seventh-day sabbath. It was
the sabbath according to the
Fourth Commandment. It was not a high day, and it was not a high sabbath; it was a regular sabbath.
SUNDAY: THE FOURTH DAY. The women went to
the tomb before sunrise on Sunday “when it was yet dark” (Mt 28:1; Mk 16:1,2; Lk 24:1; Jn 20:1). (That doesn’t necessarily mean they got there
before there was any predawn light from the about-to-rise sun; it is probably a
reference to the fact that until the sun appeared it was still Sunday night
– the “dark part” of Sunday.) An angel caused a great earthquake and rolled
back the stone from the entrance to the tomb and casually sat on it (Mt 28:2).
The soldiers guarding the tomb fainted from fright (Mt 28:4). The angel
showed the women the empty tomb and said, “He is not here: for he is risen, as
he said” (Mt 28:6). In other words, Christ rose in accordance with
what He said about His resurrection. That means He did not rise after
only 1.6 days as the blasphemous Good Friday theory maintains. If Good Friday
were correct, either the angel would have said, “He is risen, but not as He
said”, or Mt 12:40 would have said, “in the ground 1.1
days and 2.0 nights.”
Now
that we have familiarized ourselves with the events and seen that the
Scriptures fit a Wednesday crucifixion, let’s see how exactly the amazing word
of God establishes the time of the burial and the resurrection, and how exact
the Lord was when He said He’d be “in the ground 3.00 days and 3.00 nights.”
Sit up and take notice, brother: When God says something in His Book, it’s exact!
We
already know the burial happened pretty close to sunset Wednesday. All we can
say at this point is it could have been a little before or it could have been a
little after sunset. If it was a little before sunset “when it was yet
light”, that would mean the burial was during the “day part” of Wednesday. If
it was a little after sunset “when it was just dark”, that would mean
the burial was during the “night part” of Thursday. We doubt an after
sunset/Thursday burial, however, because Thursday was a high day because it was
Unleavened Bread, and God was so careful about Christ keeping the law.
Although, because the Old Testament and its laws had been replaced by the New
Testament about three hours before Christ’s burial when the Testator died on
the cross, the after sundown burial remains a valid possibility – until the
Scriptures reveal to us God’s incredible exactness.
1)
Jn
2:19 “in three days”: This definition taken alone
can be very broad. However broad it may be, the very end of “in three days”
would still be sunset at the end of the third day – Saturday.
2)
Mt
27:63; Mk 8:31 “after three days”: While this could mean four or more
days, it can also mean sunset at the end of the third day – Saturday.
And if you think that doesn’t quite qualify as after three days because
sunset at the end of Saturday is still during the third day, then we’ll
simply use the fact that sunset is not only the end of Saturday the
third day, it is also simultaneously the beginning of Sunday the fourth day.
That definitely qualifies as after three days and still puts the
resurrection at exactly sunset Saturday/Sunday.
3)
Lk
24:7 “the third day”: This definition is a little
narrower than the first two. But again we find that sunset at the end of
Saturday meets this literal, Scriptural definition and also those of the other
literal, Scriptural definitions. (We also note these Scriptures most certainly
do not contradict each other as some claim. For example, a prominent
preacher, radio personality, and author for a major denomination has, in a
booklet defending Good Friday, written, “Now we ask the question: Can all of
these expressions be taken in a strictly literal sense and still harmonize with
each other? Absolutely not!” And he goes on to call these verses “terribly
confusing.”)
4)
Mk
16:9 “early the first day of the week”: This is
another of those “contradictions” that people who don’t believe the word of God
exists use to “prove” God did not preserve His word as He said He’d do. The
first day of the week is Sunday. That is the fourth day, and unbelievers
claim the fourth day is not the third day. Are the Scriptures
wrong? Do they contradict? Not at sunset they don’t! That’s right, only sunset
Saturday/Sunday – not a second before and not a second after – can properly be
called both the third day and the fourth day. Sunset Saturday/Sunday is
the only time that fulfills all of the Scriptures. I don’t know
about you, brother, but that makes me feel wonder toward my God; it makes me
feel humbly thankful that He opened my eyes about His word; and it makes me
feel like shouting and dancing in the streets like David (2 Sa 6:14-16).
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5)
Mt
12:40 “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”: This verse is
despised by the Good Friday crowd because if Good Friday were true this verse means
the women would have discovered the resurrection at dawn Tuesday. But,
obviously, three days and three nights fits very nicely – indeed, exactly
– with the sunset Saturday/Sunday resurrection revealed by the above
Scriptures. But the fact that the above verses pinpointed the time of the resurrection
didn’t help us with the time of the burial, which so far we’ve said was
at “approximately” sunset. The above exactness, however, means we can safely
use this latest verse to pinpoint the burial time. Knowing the resurrection was
at exactly sunset Saturday/Sunday, and now knowing how exact God is, we
can confidently say “three days and three nights” means exactly what it says.
So if we backtrack exactly seventy-two hours from exactly sunset
Saturday/Sunday when Christ rose from the dead, we find that He was buried at exactly
sunset Wednesday/Thursday.
The
Good Friday crowd often uses a statement Cleopas
made on the road to Emmaus on Sunday the first day of the week (Lk 24:1,13) to “prove” there really are three days
between a Friday crucifixion and a Sunday resurrection. Cleopas
said, “today is the third day since these things were done” (Lk 24:21). Yeah, I know: In a normal
conversation if you had gotten married on Friday and today was Sunday you’d
say, “I got married two days ago”, or “It’s been two days since I
got married.” How then can the Good Friday-ites
possibly get three days out of Cleopas’ Sunday
statement by starting with Friday? They do it with what they call
“inclusive reckoning.” Inclusive reckoning includes the day on which an
event happened when determining how many days have gone by since that
event. But that’s not all they do to get three days: Because the burial was so
obviously very close to sunset – the very end of their Good Friday – it makes
it harder to convince even uncaring pewsters that
Friday should count as one of the three days. So they completely disregard the
Scripture they hate the most which says Christ would be “in the ground”
for three days and three nights (Mt 12:40), and claim the three day
period must include both the time Christ was in the ground and the time
He was dead up on the cross! And even though the death happened so close to the
end of Friday, they claim all of Friday can be included in their
inclusive reckoning count. In that way they take the few hours during the “day
part” of Friday that Christ was dead above ground, add to it all of Saturday,
and then add the brief time before dawn during the “night part” of Sunday
to come up with “three” days. That’s why they hate the “three days and three
nights” Scripture – because its exactness contradicts their use of “inclusive
reckoning.”
Anyway, they also apply “inclusive
reckoning” to Cleopas’ statement on Sunday to show
that Sunday was the third day since Friday’s happenings even though everyone
else would say it was the second day. Here’s what they say using inclusive
reckoning: If you had gotten married on Friday and today was Sunday,
you’d say, “It’s been three days since I got married” because the day on which
the event happened is to be included in the time since that event. So if you
had gotten married on Friday and today was Saturday, they teach that
you’d say, “It’s been two days since I got married.” And if you got married on
Friday at noon and today was that same Friday at two in the afternoon,
you’d say, “It’s been one day since I got married.” (It’s amazing what lunacy
grown men will come up with in an attempt to get you to ignore the Bible and
accept their tradition.) But Good Friday-ites delight
in Cleopas’ statement not merely because it gives
them more practice using their beloved “inclusive reckoning”, but also because
they think it disproves the Wednesday crucifixion and burial – no matter how
you count. For example, if you had gotten married on Wednesday (the day of the
crucifixion) and today was Sunday (the day Cleopas
spoke) you’d say, “I got married four days ago”, or “It’s been four days since
I got married”, or (if you used inclusive reckoning) “It’s been five days since
I got married.” What all of that shows, they claim, is that Cleopas
knew the death and burial happened on Good Friday, not Wednesday.
One
of the nice things about Bible study is the more you learn the more things
start to fall into place: We don’t need to resort to mathematical gymnastics
like inclusive reckoning in order to find a way to make Cleopas’
statement make Scriptural sense. Cleopas was a Jew.
For him sunset was not just the end of one day, it was also the beginning of
another. Remember the expression “when it was yet dark” in Jn
20:1? The predawn light just before sunrise is not what you and I would call
“dark.” But to the Jews it was “dark” because it was night all the way
up until sunrise. And that method of looking at time was also true regarding
sunset; the instant the sun set it was dark, it was night, it was
the next day.
Therefore,
since Christ was buried at exactly sunset guess what happened one second later?
It became night. It became Thursday. That means when the disciples gathered up
the anointing materials, said some prayers over the body, stood and took a
final look at their Lord lying there, bent over and lovingly tucked in a loose
corner of His linen wrapping, stepped out of the tomb, had a discussion about
the possibility that they might be the next to be arrested, tried, and
crucified (Jn 20:19), spoke with the
women about returning to the tomb on Friday to do a better job of anointing the
body, and then walked home, all of those things happened on Thursday – the Feast Day of
Unleavened Bread. It is therefore possible that when Cleopas
counted the days since “these things were done” he was counting
since Thursday. That would make it an accurate statement for him to say
Sunday was the third day since Thursday. I mean, if God can accurately say
Christ rose on the third day and on the fourth day because of the double
meaning of sunset, which of you will cast a stone at Cleopas
for doing the same thing?
Some
people reject the Wednesday crucifixion and the literal exactness of “in the
ground three days and three nights” because that means Christ rose from the
dead at sunset Saturday/Sunday – about twelve hours before the angels
rolled back the stone and let Him out! But the resurrected Christ didn’t need
people to open doors for Him (Jn 20:19,26). And the angels didn’t open the tomb to let
Christ out; they opened it to let the women in.
The first thing Almighty God did on day one of
the creation week was to create days and nights so we could count days and
measure the passage of time. We are zealous about the literal exactness of the
seven days in the creation week, and we recognize that it is apostates who try
to get us to treat those days as figurative approximations. Let us recognize
that it is also apostasy that causes so many Christians to believe the Creator
was only being figurative when He said “in the ground”, when He said “in three
days”, and when He said “in three nights.” His word is truth.