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Some among the Churches of God wish to make room for intervening days by arguing that
between the Wednesday crucifixion and Saturday afternoon resurrection there were two Sabbaths:
the first a Passover Sabbath (high day) which fell on a Thursday; the second a weekly Sabbath
which fell on the regular Saturday. To support this theory the adherents point to the fact that the
Sabbath in Matthew 28:1 is in the PLURAL form and literally reads "at the end of the Sabbaths."
This text is viewed by many as "a vital text" that supposedly "proves that there were TWO Sab-
baths that week with a day in between." The first Sabbath (Thursday by their reckoning) allegedly
was "the annual high-day Sabbath of the Days of Unleavened Bread while the second was "the
weekly Sabbath, Saturday."

This conclusion is TOTALLY UNTENABLE because NOWHERE do the gospels suggest
that two Sabbaths intervened (one after another) between the day of the crucifixion and that of the
resurrection.

While it is true that the Sabbath in Matthew 28:1 is in the plural, these proponents of the
"3-day and 3-night" theory totally overlook the fact that John clearly reveals that there were TWO
SABBATHS ON ONE DAY -- the weekly Sabbath AND the first high day of the Feast of Unleav-
ened Bread! "Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on
the cross on the Sabbath (FOR THAT SABATH WAS A HIGH DAY)" (19:31). This, we have
seen, is correct because Exodus 16 shows us that the annual feast days of Unleavened Bread and
Tabernacles ALWAYS fall on the weekly Sabbath according to the lunar weekly cycle that God
gave the Israelites.

Because most theologians and historians think the present weekly cycle is the same as it
was during Christ's day, they place these three days (i.e., Preparation Day, Sabbath and the first
day of the week) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday -- hence Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

On the other hand, many in the Churches of God, to get away from the Good Friday-Easter
Sunday tradition, place the crucifixion on a Wednesday and the resurrection on a Saturday -- with
two days in between. As we have seen, this is totally untenable.

In an attempt to determine the year of Christ's death, the Bible historians and chronologists
looked for a year around 33 years after His supposed birth in 1 B.C. in which the Jewish dates for
the Preparation Day (Nisan 14), Sabbath (Nisan 15) and the first day of the week (Nisan 16) fell
on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the present Gregorian calendar. The only year that this occurs
on is 33 A.D. -- hence many commentaries, Bible dictionaries, etc., list 33 A.D. as the year in
which Christ died.

Now since this article has shown that in the time of Christ the Jews were keeping a lunar
week, how can we know for sure in what year our Savior died? William F. Dankenbring shows in
his article The Mysterious Events of the Year 30 A.D.! that Christ died forty years before the de-
struction of the Temple in 70 A.D. This puts the crucifixion squarely in the year 30 A.D. If we su-
perimpose the Nisan 14, 15 and 16 sequence on the Gregorian calendar dates for the year 30 A.D.,
we find that Nisan 14 falls on a Wednesday; Nisan 15 on a Thursday; and Nisan 16 on a Friday --
thus killing the Wednesday crucifixion and Saturday resurrection theory and PROVING BEYOND
A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that the present weekly cycle is not the same as it was in 30 A.D.!!

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