The American Churchman: Holy Week in America

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And welcome to the American Churchman podcast, where we encourage Christian men to take responsibility.

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What do Christian men make? They make lots of things. They make culture. They make babies. They make money.

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But all of the things that we make to glorify God, that's the point of this, and we want to encourage you.

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So I'm your host, John Harris, and we, as always, have my co -host here, Matthew Pearson.

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Hey, Matthew, how are you doing? I'm doing good, John. I'm doing good. Life is busy and crazy, but I'm just more than happy to be here.

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We're both flustered, and people could probably tell. I look like scruffy John with my hat here.

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I was actually just in line at the post office last minute trying to get the date stamped on my tax returns to make sure that I don't get a penalty.

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I shouldn't be this last minute on it, but it just worked out that way. So yeah, what about you?

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You got stuff going on this week, right? I do. I was a good boy, and I got my taxes done in a timely fashion.

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But no, yeah, very, very busy week. We're not quite at the end of the semester we're getting there, though. I got two big papers.

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I'm not doing too many classes right now, but I got two big papers due beginning of May, and then I have an exam for my

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Greek exegesis class soon, so I'm trying to balance that. I remember, John, I was just on here talking about how we didn't have a job, and now

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I'm working three jobs and doing some, just balancing all that fun stuff. Easter's coming up, so I'm going to be with my family, my fiancée, her brother.

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I'm going to be spending it with them as well, and her parents are going to be coming down to Florida. So it's going to be a crazy, busy week, busy weekend, but I'm really excited for it.

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All the busyness is just, despite the stress and all that, it's a reminder of God's provision in many areas.

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There's some stress, but I'm thankful for the stress. We can put it that way. I guess if you're going to be a pastor, you're going to be self -employed, technically.

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If you don't have someone to do the treasurer, that actually goes through and does all your finances and accountants, you end up paying quarterly taxes.

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I'm just saying this because my dad's a pastor, and he's done this, and now I'm doing the same thing. I'm paying quarterly taxes.

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I'm self -employed. It's so complicated. You feel an extra dose of 1776 on days like this.

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I'm just kind of like, man, this is ridiculous. I preached last

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Sunday, and it was Palm Sunday, and so I wove that into the message. I've been impressed with the idea lately that life is so temporary.

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We only get such a short time. It's a breath, and God wants us to orientate ourselves to the higher things.

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Holy Week is a week for that, and now that taxes are out of the way, hopefully I can do that a little more prudently.

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Isn't it like that with holidays, though? Christmas is the same thing. That's the time when we go to church and we talk about reflecting on these divine truths, and then it's like trying to run here, run there, get ready, make food, but we do need that time.

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Hopefully, you can get that time. I know I'm looking forward to having some time myself to reflect.

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Do you have any traditions in your family before we get into this? I'm just kind of curious. I was thinking about that before the show.

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My wife and I were talking about it. What do you do for Easter? It's a little different than Christmas or even the

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Fourth of July. You have the eggs and stuff, but that's not the religious side of it.

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What do Christians do other than the normal liturgical things? Maybe we can get into that a little.

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What do they do? What do you do in your family? My mother, every year, will make a birthday cake.

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No, I'm thinking Christmas now. Birthday cake for Jesus. This is why my brain is fried. We have some fun

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Easter traditions. My mom, when I was a kid and she told us about the Easter bunny, she would write, it's not here, so we'd go to different places in the house with notes.

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Me and my sister would go to find our little Easter basket, and all my family would just come over to our house and celebrate.

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Someone would make a ham, someone would bring this. I have an uncle that is Cuban, and so him and his wife always bring

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Cuban food, so a little Tampa thing there. We have our fun little quirks, and we've kept that up every year where we just have mainly family get -togethers, going to church in the morning, rest of the day is with family.

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Nothing particularly unique that I can think of, though, other than just family gathering and stuff like that, but usually go to the

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Good Friday services. What's interesting is that this year, my church back in Tampa is actually not doing a

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Good Friday service. They're doing a Maundy Thursday service, which I thought was interesting. I know what

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Maundy Thursday is, but I was like, oh, giving up the Good Friday service, because I was there this past Sunday, and I was looking forward to the

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Good Friday service because I was going to come home to Tampa on Friday, but I'm like, oh, well, no

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Good Friday service this year, but a lot of the normal Christian cultural things we do.

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Yeah, dress up, right? That's one of the things we've kept, and people who don't normally go to church end up going to church.

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It's interesting they're doing Maundy Thursday instead of Good Friday, though, because the churches that do

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Maundy Thursday generally are more high church liturgical, and they're definitely going to do

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Good Friday as well, but my mom grew up in that. She had a

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Lutheran background, so she did Maundy Thursday. I think each day of Holy Week, there was something, and of course,

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I'm pretty sure they did Lent. I could be wrong about that. I don't think that's unique to Roman Catholics, though.

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In the evangelical tradition that I'm part of, Lent is kind of looked down on as like there's a suspicion around it.

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You must be Catholic if you're doing it or something. Actually, I think it's not a bad idea if it's put in the proper frame, but anyway,

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Dr. Bob has a really important message here. My church, he says, is roasting 150 pounds of brisket and throwing an egg on Saturday.

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That's a lot of brisket. Yeah, where's your church,

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Dr. Bob? I might want to come. Yeah, there should be leftovers for us, right? Oh my gosh, that sounds like a great tradition.

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Well, anyway, maybe we can get into that a little more. We have an article on the subject of Easter or Resurrection Sunday.

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Some evangelicals don't even say Easter anymore, so that might even be something to talk about. Did we want to discuss the attribute of God?

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Not John. One of the attributes of me is I'm late to the podcast. I was about to say, let's do our attributes of God like we usually do.

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Yeah, certainly. This one is not particularly lengthy. I thought it was fairly straightforward, but we'll see how much time that we do spend on it.

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Sometimes I think the ones where I'm like, oh, I put the least amount of writing into this one.

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I'm like, oh, this will be really short, but it ends up being long, so I guess we'll see. But our attribute today is the holiness of God.

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And for many OG young restless reform types that may be in the crowd, that holiness of God may trigger an

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R .C. Sproul book in your mind, which I hate to say I've not actually read R .C. Sproul's Holiness of God.

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It's been recommended to me many times. I own the book, but I have not read it. But yeah, we're going to be talking about holiness as an attribute of God.

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And starting off, there's a few verses we go to for this. I think the most popular ones would be

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Isaiah 6, 1 through 7, and then Revelation 4, 8 through 11.

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We'll only be reading from the Isaiah 6 one. We may come back to the Revelation one, but those are like the fairly like when you think of the holiness of God, you kind of conceptualize in your mind heavenly worship and all the angels and the saints bowing before God, proclaiming his holiness.

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And that sort of is what this verse from Isaiah 6 is speaking of. So I'm just going to read verses 1 through 7 of Isaiah chapter 6.

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With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another and said,

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Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.

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And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said

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I, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

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For mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from off the altar.

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And he laid it upon my mouth and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

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A beautiful, beautiful imagery of what the holiness of God is and how God is exalted over all things and how part of when we say like when we define holiness, what the most common definition given is like, you know, set apart, someone that is set apart.

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And surely when we think of God, God is set apart, not just from sin and fallenness and things like that, but just in general.

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Like there is, God is his own like being. There's nothing which is like him in any particular way.

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Of course, we as rational creatures bearing God's image, we are like God in certain capacities for he has made us in his image.

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But in and of himself, intrinsically, there is nothing like God. And in that sense, we can say that God is set apart and holy.

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But of course, you know, if you want to hear, as always, my little more,

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I guess you could say, scholastic definitions of things or like how a lot of these guys go. I'll, of course, cite my sources.

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I always do. And it's the same one that I always give. I'm going to be going through Richard Moeller's Greek and Latin Theological Dictionary.

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And then a few weeks ago, when discussing mercy, I sort of drew in this book by English Presbyterian William Bates, which is called

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The Harmony of the Divine Attributes and the Contrivance and Accomplishment of Man's Redemption. We'll be pulling from that as well.

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I'm going to read a brief quote from there. It's not too brief, but it's really good. So I'm going to read it, of course, because I can.

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So that's what we'll do. But when speaking of the holiness of God, like in a more like specific sense, aside from just holiness being set apart, the holiness of God, essentially, like according to Moeller, as summarizing the doctrine of the

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Reformed and Lutheran Protestant scholastics, the holiness of God refers to the absolute goodness of God's being and willing.

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So it refers to the absolute goodness of God's being and willing. This holiness can be spoken of both in regard to God intrinsically, referring to the essential goodness and righteousness of God's.

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In other words, like what makes God God, all that is in God is God. God is essentially good. He is essentially righteous.

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And so by speaking of God as holy, you're predicating of God the fact that he is essentially good and righteous.

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But it could also be spoken of extrinsically and referring to the goodness, to the goodness and righteousness of his own divine will towards creatures, specifically and particularly in calling all rational creatures, that is, men made in his image or the angels, to be holy as he is holy.

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This holiness can also be described not just positively, but negatively in that it is what distinguishes

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God from all that is sinful and tainted within the created order. And so, like I said in the very beginning, when we think of holiness as being set apart, that negative definition really plays into that, because part of what it does is it sets apart

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God from all that is simple and tainted within the created order. But we can also speak of in the sense, as I said earlier, of God being set apart in general.

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Quite a few years ago, not like that long ago, like I'm thinking of like the late 2000 teens, there is a book from Michael Heiser that came out called

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The Unseen Realm. And when I was, back when this came out, I was eating it up. I thought it was the coolest thing, but I kind of thought it was the coolest thing for wrong reasons, just because I got off on scandalizing normie evangelicals by saying like, did you know when the

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Bible speaks of there being multiple gods, they're real gods, they're not just false idols or whatever.

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And essentially like the thesis of Heiser's book is that when the Old Testament speaks of the various gods, that's referring to members of God's divine counsel, like the angels that either remained in place or that fell away, such that when we read about the false gods, these are real entities, which are actually demons.

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And every evangelical or Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or whatever other flavor of Christianity you want to talk about, they all affirm this.

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But part of the reason the book was scandalous is because Heiser's thesis is like he wants to call them gods, like he wants them to be lowercase g gods.

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And the difference between capital G God and these lowercase g gods is that we still can retain some form of monotheism because this

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God is distinguished from all the others. But part of the confusion from this book is that there's almost a sense in which it is true that the

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Hebrew Elohim is translated to be, it can talk about God or it can talk about gods.

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But when we speak about language and things like that, language is not always theology.

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When we speak about theology, sure, we're using words from scripture, but we're building concepts that are contextualized by where they're spoken of in scripture, such that when

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Paul says, man is justified by faith and not by works of the law, versus when

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James says, man is justified by works and not by faith alone. We understand that justification here is being used in a different sense.

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One being the sense of imputing to someone like a righteousness, whereas the other is talking about being a vindication.

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So we understand that words have their different usages. And the reason I went on that rant about Michael Heiser's book when talking about holiness is because it's not just that God is like another

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God. He's just a more powerful one. God is entirely apart from all of creation, entirely transcendent, entirely above, entirely eternal, entirely distinct from all things such that he alone is truly holy.

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And because man is created in the image of God, because the angels are also rational creatures who, you know, this is controversial.

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Some people say they're made in the image of God. Others say they're not, you know, I'll let you, I'll let the listeners decide on what they feel about that.

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But all rational creatures that bear God's image are in some sense called to be holy, to imitate

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God. We are to be like God in some way or the other. And that's part of what the process of sanctification is, is remember our very first definition of holiness, the holiness of God refers to the absolute goodness of God's being and willing.

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We too are called to be truly good, to be truly holy, to be righteous.

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And this happens in the process of sanctification where the spirit of God infuses into us supernatural gifts whereby we may be truly righteous.

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Of course, this is grounded in the imputed righteousness of Christ. But that's all what sanctification is about is not just the

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Christian life is not just imputed righteousness, but it is on this firm foundation where we have true righteousness, where we bear good fruit, where we obey the law of God.

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And so that is where holiness sort of comes in practical matters.

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But there's this one quote from William Bates book. I referred to him earlier that I want to read. I'm not going to say the title again, because it's really long.

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I'll just say the first part, the harmony of divine attributes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this part of his book is very, it's really good to meditate on.

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And it's a beautiful book to read. I recommend all of you guys go read this. You can find it on the Internet Archive. But this is a quote he's speaking of holiness of God.

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He says of all the perfections of the deity, none is more worthy of his nature and so peculiar admirable as his infinite purity or his holiness.

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It is the most shining attribute that derives a luster to all the rest.

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He is, quote, glorious and holiness. Exodus 15 verse 11 wisdom degenerates into craft power into tyranny.

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Mercy loses its nature without holiness. He swears by it as it is his supreme excellency.

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And then quoting one of the Psalms, he says, once I have sworn by my holiness that will not lie unto

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David. It is the most venerable attribute and the praise were of the harmony of heaven agrees.

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The angels and saints above are represented expressing their ecstasy and ravagement of the beauty of holiness.

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Holy, holy, holy is a Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Isaiah six verse three.

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This only he loves and values in the creature, being the impression of his most divine and amiable perfection.

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Inferior creatures have a resemblance of other divine attributes. The winds and thunder set forth God's power.

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The firmness of the rocks and the incorruptibility of the heavens are an obscure representation of his unchangeableness.

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But holiness, that is the most orient pearl in the crown of heaven, shines only in the reasonable creature.

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And upon this account, man only is said to be formed after his image. And so we can say much more about holiness.

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But as I always say, that would be the holiness of God in a nutshell. Yeah. Sproul says when the angels decide to focus on an attribute, they don't say love, love, love.

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Right. They say, holy, holy, holy. This is if you're going to do the whole lowly thing and try to reduce

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Jesus or God down to the primary attribute. Actually, holiness is a better probably a better attribute to focus on than even love.

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In some ways, it's. And one of the things, too, you caught my attention when you said when you talked about that book, who wrote that book?

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Was it Heisenberg? William Bates. Oh, Bates. Oh, you're talking about. No, no, no. You're talking about the unseen realm.

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That's Michael Heiser. Yeah. Heiser. OK. Yeah. I haven't read that. That's interesting, though.

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I have a friend of mine who keeps sending me stuff like about this very topic that, oh,

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God's got a council in the heavens. And it's a lot of speculation about Nephilim and their stuff, you know, just all the fanciful creatures.

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And I know Hanukkah's most kind of contributes to some of this. There's a re -enchantment kind of vibe,

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I guess, out there. I see it even in the pagan realm near me. There's all these witch shops and young people really want to get into the spiritual stuff.

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But when you look at God's holiness, I mean, that's re -enchantment. And I've tried to encourage people look for those mountaintop experiences.

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Elijah, Moses, Jesus, all these guys, they would go be with God in a desolate place and have an experience with God in those places.

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I don't mean to be overly mystical, but there is something that's somewhat enchanting. And I don't dare

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I say mystical about the Christian life. And you can have that with God. You don't need to look for it in other places,

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I guess, is my point. Yeah, certainly. No, a lot of it is speculative and sort of based off like ancient or Eastern conceptions of, you know, divine councils and things like that.

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And kind of arguing that the Israelites were being polemical and, you know, there's a grain of truth in those.

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And so God uses those. But, you know, I used to be a big fan of it. But, you know,

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I think it's a possibility that God does have some sort of divine counsel in the same way they exercises his will through man.

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He can do so through a particular set of angelic beings. But I think a lot of it can fall down to speculation.

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And, of course, as Christians, we all do know that there are spiritual beings out there and you don't have to insist on calling them gods.

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But if you really want to and you can qualify and clarify and retain a firm monotheism, then, you know, be my guest,

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I guess. Just don't try to scandalize people. That's what I would say with that. And that's a temptation for people that especially younger guys like me that study theology is we want to find a way to say something true, but in the most scandalous way possible.

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I don't I don't know why we love it so much, but we just do sometimes. You know, it's like the reformed guy who reads like Calvin on baptism, where he attributes some sort of soteriological effect to this means of grace.

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And we're like, oh, baptism saves first Peter three twenty. And it's just like, OK, yeah, in a sense. Yeah, we qualify.

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But yeah, that's just like a temptation for a lot of us is. But, you know, we don't have to cause scandal to say true things.

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I was thinking about Colossians 218. It says, let no one disqualify you insisting on asceticism and worship of angels.

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And I'm not saying that anyone gets fascinated with this is worshiping them. But you do need to be careful because that is something scripture warns about.

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You want to make sure that God is the primary focus. So anyway, pseudo -Dionysius is hardest hit.

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Let's talk about Easter a little bit. We got a article here on the TruthScript website. And let me see if I can show everyone what we're looking at.

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All right. Here it is. So I should also remind people, TruthScript does sponsor the podcast.

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And if you want to give it is 501C3, just scroll down all the way to the bottom and push publish or sorry, donate.

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Or if you want to write with us, push publish. OK, so the article, there's there's a few actually good articles, lessons from Canaan on conquering enemies, biblical foundations of confessional practice, and then three crosses, two

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Sabbaths, one empty tomb, the timeline of Holy Week. I want to click on that and it'll bring you to actually my brother wrote this one, too.

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But no, no, he didn't. Sorry. He posted it, but it's by Tom and Nathan Rush.

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So we had Tom Rush on the podcast not too long ago, and he is one of the board members of TruthScript. And and so anyway, this goes through the different days in Holy Week.

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And we were just talking about this. So maybe I'll just read a little portion here. You got Palm Sunday, which is Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

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Right. And we all know what that is. Right. And then you have Monday, Thursday. Now, he did skip over.

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I think it's it's Holy Tuesday and Wednesday. Like there's a actually let me hold on.

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I pulled it up somewhere else. Let me just read for you what those are. Since he skipped it. All right.

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These days reflect Holy Monday to Wednesday. These days reflect on the events leading up to the crucifixion.

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Different traditions focus on various gospel readings, such as Jesus cleansing the temple on Monday or Judas's betrayal.

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Wednesday is also called Spy Wednesday. OK. I have not heard of Spy Wednesday, but there you go.

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So that's that that is before,

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I guess, in some traditions, getting to Monday, Thursday and Monday, Thursday. Jesus holds the

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Last Supper. He's arrested. His trial runs through the night. And many churches hold a Monday, Thursday service where the

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Lord's Supper or a mass of some sort is observed. And do you know what Monday means, Matthew, out of curiosity?

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I don't recall. No, I've heard it before, but I don't remember. So it's from Mandatum, which is a

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Latin for commandment. And it's about Jesus's greatest commandment, which is to love. And so the new commandment that he gives to us, that's what

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Monday, Thursday is about. And we have Good Friday. I didn't know either until I looked it up, so don't feel bad.

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Or at least I forgot it. And then Good Friday, obviously, is the most solemn day.

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Jesus is before Pilate. He's crucified between twelve and three and his body's buried before six.

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And many churches hold Good Friday services in which the seven last words of Christ, his sayings from the cross, are given special emphasis.

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Often these services are very somber, with the apparent assumption by some that the cross was the greatest failure of all time, or at least should be considered a very sad occasion.

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I don't want to pick on the guy. I might have already said it in the pocket. There was someone recently that was saying Jesus, like he was a failed political leader because he died and stuff.

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Someone in our circles who should know better. Anyway, he did not fail.

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Good Friday is not a failure. And then Easter Sunday, and that is a celebration of the resurrection.

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So some people call it Resurrection Sunday. Does your church call it Easter or do you guys call it Resurrection? We call it

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Easter Sunday, my home church in Tampa. Yeah, I think most churches do, but it's actually a little taboo at my church to call it that.

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It's seen as kind of like a pagan thing, and I don't know that I agree with that.

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I'm fine calling it Resurrection Sunday. Totally fine with that. I think it goes back to the venerable deed.

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There's this quote, and as far as I know, this is the only quote that links Easter or links this celebration with Ishtar.

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But Ishtar was supposedly this fertility goddess, and we don't really know, though, a whole lot about Ishtar at all.

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All we know is there was a tradition that developed, and the time of the year, spring, was already called

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Ishtar, or however they pronounced it during the time of venerable deed. And so there's a quote where he's like, oh, yeah, that's the time of year we celebrate

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Christ's resurrection. And so it's more like a seasonal kind of, I guess, it just developed into this.

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That's my understanding, at least. But it isn't like the co -opting of a pagan celebration, which is how a lot of pagan guys and some fundamentalist traditions,

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I guess, go along with this, and they frame it that way, like we just stole the pagan celebration. No, not at all.

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There's really no connection there. It just happens to be the time of the year that was called

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Easter, Ishtar, whatever. And that also parallels, over time, this development.

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I don't feel bad about calling it that, but some people do. If your conscience bothers you, then that's fine.

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Call it resurrection Sunday. And the church itself has been celebrating Easter since almost very early in the beginning.

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So Irenaeus of Lyons actually helped to prevent a schism within the church in the late 2nd century.

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It was called the Pascal Controversy, and essentially what happened was a lot of Easter Minor, they would celebrate

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Easter on the time of the Jewish Passover. So I think it's quarter decimation.

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Asia Minor, yeah. Oh, you said Easter Minor. Yeah, OK. Oh, yeah, my bad. Yeah, Asia Minor. They had celebrated it on the 14

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Nissan or the Jewish Passover, whereas Rome and then a lot of the Eastern churches would not do that.

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They would try to make sure it fell on a certain Sunday. And so the Bishop of Rome, Pope Victor, actually excommunicated the churches that celebrated on Passover.

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But Irenaeus was able to get him to lift the excommunication. So it's a fairly early practice to celebrate

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Easter. I can't tell you for sure off the top of my head if they called it Easter.

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I know they refer to it as like Pascha, but maybe that translates to Easter. I don't recall off the top of my head.

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I don't think it translates, but the Venerable Bede did connect the two. And he I mean, that's pretty early.

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I mean, he lived from seven or according to Wikipedia here from 672 or three to 735.

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So I like a lot of things in the Christian tradition. This did develop.

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But we've obviously the theological significance is we have always had Christ's celebration of Christ's resurrection.

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That's that's every Sunday because that's why we meet on Sunday. And then we also have this new meaning given to the

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Passover. Pascal, as you say. And so that that's something that Christians have celebrated in memoriam.

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So those things have always been there. It's just a matter of what we've called them. And I guess when we've celebrated them and I think

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I thought it was a council of night. Everyone says the Council of Nicaea was everything. So I thought I really do think this.

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They did discuss the date at the Council of Nicaea. I don't remember what the conclusion was, but this was

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I was referring to an earlier controversy in the late second century that had happened where Pope Victor sort of was like overreaching over a slight disagreement.

29:46

And Irenaeus was able to be the peacemaker and get him to lift the excommunication. Yeah. So the rushes talk about the three crosses.

29:56

There's no need to be dogmatic when attempting to discover the day on which Christ actually died. That he died is the important part of it.

30:03

And there are controversies. There's guys I've met I've run across who are so adamant in their configuration of, you know, exactly when it happened.

30:13

But anyway, it happened. And so this is interesting.

30:19

He says two Sabbaths, a very important point in the timeline of Holy Week is the fact that there are two Sabbaths. Understanding this will provide a tremendous help.

30:27

Tom Rush says I'll propose another more plausible and I believe more biblical timeline for a week. But first we need to get to some preliminary and foundational issues.

30:35

So the Jewish calendar is generally believed that Jesus died in the year 8030, give or take a year or two.

30:41

The Jewish calendar operates off a lunar month, which with special emphasis on the seasons of the year in which the various feasts of the

30:49

Old Testament were set. And in the modern world, especially the West, we operate on the Gregorian calendar, which was established in 1582.

30:57

So converting dates and days, that's, I guess, a problem. But he said that God sets the feasts and holy days of convocation in Israel to be observed in their seasons.

31:06

And since the calendar was lunar, the Jews had 12 months rotating 29 or 30 days.

31:12

That means 354 days in a year. Consequently, adjustments had to be made and a leap year was observed seven out of every 19 years where an elite month was added.

31:24

And by observation, we mean that a new month started when the two credible witnesses could testify that they had seen the first silver of the moon in the night sky.

31:32

The shofar would be sounded and all would know that a new month had started.

31:39

A leap month would be added when the priest would go outside and realize that it wasn't spring yet and therefore not time to observe

31:46

Passover. And then, so these are, I guess, just methods he's talking about in trying to reconcile these dates.

31:53

So that's the observation method. The arithmetical method, he says, is the Sanhedrin developed a mathematical formula to determine the calendar.

32:01

Their secret was discovered and published in 8358 and became the customary way of determining leap years.

32:07

The problem in going backward from 8358 with conversions to Gregorian calendar dates is problematic and can only be done with best guesses.

32:15

So we have these. This is something historians deal with all the time going back into the past, especially with different peoples.

32:22

You don't think about it because we're so used to Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But this was not always the case in every civilization.

32:31

And so trying to transpose, especially when you have centuries of time between you and previous dates, transpose like what day of the week was it in our conception can be a difficult thing.

32:44

He talks about the Jewish day. Another important preliminary issue is that how Jewish Jews reckon days.

32:51

Right. They start at 6 p .m. around the evening, basically, is the beginning of the day. Whereas for us, that's morning.

32:59

And so I actually this is funny. And this is a side comment. But the Seventh -day Adventists are the guys who are really adamant about Saturday worship.

33:07

I don't know that I've met any of them who are like if that's what they believe.

33:13

Like, do they actually start it the night before? That's a pretty uniquely Jewish thing.

33:18

But anyway, so he goes through I'm not going to read all of this, but he goes through the math as as we say, and then gives us the timeline of events.

33:29

So I'm not I'm going to skip over some of the math and just give you like the solution here. So Friday preceding

33:35

Holy Week, Nisan 8 begins Thursday evening. John tells us that Jesus was in Bethany, just two miles from Jerusalem, six days before the

33:43

Passover. So Passover is on the 14th. So he arrived on the 8th.

33:49

And this culminates in all these events that lead up to the crucifixion and resurrection.

33:57

Saturday precedes, so this begins Friday evening. We don't really have any information. He was probably resting at that point.

34:06

And obviously, that's the custom on the Sabbath. And then the first Sunday of Holy Week, Nisan 10.

34:12

This was an important day in preparation for the Passover is the day that Christ made his entry into Jerusalem.

34:19

We celebrate that on Palm Sunday. So I'm going to skip over some of the theological stuff here.

34:25

I would recommend if you're really interested in this, this is a really good piece. Check out truescript .com and actually go read this piece.

34:31

So you'll understand better the events that led up to the resurrection. You got

34:37

Monday. Jesus rests through the night in Bethany and reenters the city of Jerusalem on Monday morning. On his way back into the city,

34:45

Matthew reports that he found a fig tree with no fruit. And he curses the tree. It withers. And he uses this as an opportunity to teach them about faith.

34:54

And I just, I can't imagine. Jesus is like, he's focused on his goal. He's teaching people, knowing what's about to take place.

35:01

It's just incredible, remarkable to me. So Tuesday comes. All right.

35:07

So Jesus is already going at it with the scribes and Pharisees on Monday. Then Tuesday comes and he has a long day of teaching.

35:14

He confronts the religious leaders and let's see, he returns to Jerusalem and they enter the city.

35:22

Peter notes that a fig tree is further withered and Jesus reminds them of the power of faith again. So Jesus is teaching his disciples, prepping them for what's about to happen.

35:29

And then you got Wednesday and that begins, obviously, from our perspective, Tuesday evening.

35:36

Jesus returns to Bethany and is invited to dine at Simon the leper's house. And this is a chart that Tom made, just correlating the synoptic gospels with John here and reconciling them.

35:53

So there are different events. John has a different focus.

35:58

So he is focusing on different things. And so I don't know what you think of this, Matthew. I don't know if you had a seminary class on this, but some people, and I tend to agree with this, but I know there's discrepancies.

36:10

Some people think differently that John's not necessarily sequential, that the synoptics are more sequential.

36:16

That's a very common view. And have you had surveys on this at all? No, I haven't taken any gospel classes just yet.

36:26

But I do look forward to sort of exploring those issues there. Back when

36:32

I was in middle and high school, I kind of looked into a lot of this, but that's just passed so far back. So I'm just like, if I see something like that and it really bothers me, it pricks me,

36:41

I'll look into it. But I have not looked into these alleged discrepancies much.

36:48

Yeah, because the issue is there's some similar things described. And so it's like, well, was he at Mary and Martha's house or was at Simon's house?

36:56

Because in both cases, there's oil poured on his feet. In one case, Mary wipes his feet with her hair.

37:03

And then, you know, like, is that enough to establish a connection? And Tom points out, not really.

37:10

There's actually some differences here. Like, you know, you got Judas protesting the use of the oil and then

37:17

Judas isn't mentioned in the synoptics. And the timeline's different. One's two days before Passover, the other one's six.

37:24

But you have a lot of that in John. Like, for example, I think it's in John chapter two. Jesus has a whip and he's in the temple.

37:32

And you're like, wait a minute, that's not supposed to happen for a while. And some people will say, well, it happened twice. And other people will say, no,

37:39

John's just not being sequential. So that's those are the kinds of things that in any kind of reconciliation you have to deal with.

37:46

But he gives us enough information that on this point, it looks like, yeah, these are two different events. Anyway, Thursday comes,

37:53

Monday, Thursday, it's Passover. Jesus will not return to Bethany.

37:58

He will not sleep again on Earth after the supper. The events of the night are chronicled by John. You have the

38:03

Last Supper, then the Garden of Gethsemane, betrayal, arrest, trial. And I mean,

38:10

Jesus is just sleepless, exhausted. He has multiple trials.

38:16

And then the Via Dolorosa, where the way of suffering, he takes his cross and and goes to be crucified.

38:26

And then, you know, we will be celebrating this, but we will be. I mean, my church is a very somber tone on Good Friday, but we will be.

38:34

It's a funeral service, essentially. And then it is finished. And then an

38:39

Easter, you know, Easter morning, the resurrection. And I'm going to skip over a bunch of this, but Tom gives a really good timeline here and his son.

38:47

And I would just encourage you, check it out. It's a it's a good piece. And that's the kind of stuff we're putting out there, a true script, stuff to help the church.

38:57

And without the liberal junk you'll get from the Gospel Coalition or other websites like that. So I've been talking for a while.

39:03

We've been going about 40 minutes. Let's take questions. And while I'm looking for those, anything you want to add,

39:08

Matthew? I have nothing else, nothing further to add, John. That was good.

39:13

All right. Well, Dr. Bob has something to add. He says Paris get skate. I don't know what it's a diphthong,

39:21

I think. Paraskew is the technical term for Friday in the Greek language. Christ died on Friday.

39:31

If I knew it, I forgot it. And the Jehovah's Witness Memorial Supper, apparently was this past Saturday on 14th

39:38

Nisan in the Jewish reckoning. It is their only real holiday. I went to an observance. Wow. I did not know that because they don't celebrate anything.

39:47

So they do celebrate that apparently. Interesting. So, yeah,

39:53

I think that this is the most important holiday on the Christian calendar. This is more.

39:59

This is more. I'd like Christmas because of all the traditions and stuff. But this is technically, I think, more important than Christmas.

40:06

Like it's the day that we and one of the things I also forgot we do at my church, too, is the sunrise service.

40:13

I don't know if you guys do that. No, we don't. But that sounds really nice. Yeah, there's an older lady.

40:19

She died at one oh five. That's how old she was when she died. And she died in 1995. So that was before you were born.

40:28

It was. Yeah, I was born in 2001. I was only nine eleven. Yeah, well, she was born.

40:36

Yeah. So I think she was one of five when or maybe she was one of one. Now I'm trying. Now I'm like she was over 100. I know that she's born in the late 1800s.

40:43

I remember her and she was I mean, she grew up in like, you know, there weren't any automobiles.

40:49

It was horse and buggy. It's just amazing connection to the past. But anyway, we go to her grave, have a sunrise service.

40:56

And that's kind of like part of what we do. Usually go back to the church. There's like a breakfast or something.

41:02

And people bring strudel and things like that. And then and then we celebrate and people dress up.

41:08

Usually there's special music. And then in the afternoon we're with family. And, you know, we don't do that at Christmas.

41:15

We have gifts. We have like, oh, I think a lot more things that surround that whole holiday.

41:20

But I think that it's really good to take this seriously as Christians. Like it is it is our big holiday.

41:28

It really is to celebrate the resurrection. That's the whole point. Yeah, certainly. So anyway,

41:34

I encourage people out there. If you never took it that seriously, then take it seriously. You know, develop some traditions with your own family.

41:42

Maybe tap into some liturgical stuff. I know my my book of common prayer here has has a lot of readings this week.

41:50

We'll put it that way. I have the 1662 facsimile and there are a lot of readings for every day this week.

41:57

So tap into some of that stuff. And and if you're a father, if you're I mean, this is our point, right?

42:03

At the American churchman, if you're a churchman, then lead your family in that this week. Make sure you're not just in church on Easter Sunday.

42:11

Make sure you're in church on Good Friday or in your case, Matthew Monday, Thursday. No, I think that's really important.

42:18

Well, if there's anyone that has questions, now is the time to get them in or comments, because we're going to be ending the podcast here soon, maybe a little earlier than we usually do.

42:27

And that's that's partially because Matthew and I have a lot going on. But I don't want to skip out on anyone who has legitimate questions or wants us to address anything.

42:36

So. So, yeah, I mean, I think maybe everyone else I don't actually see a lot of comments. I think everyone else is trying to rush to get their taxes done.

42:45

You should have seen a lot of the post office. It was insane. I can imagine. Sounds brutal.

42:52

I waited there like an hour, I think, just to send my two little envelopes off.

42:59

But anyway, that Bernard says the life of Christ in stereo by Johnson M.

43:04

Chaney is a book that harmonized the four gospels into one story. I have heard this book praised so much.

43:12

Have you ever seen this book, Matthew? I don't have it, but I've not. No, I haven't seen that. The only book that I can think of that harmonizes the gospels is

43:21

Augustine's work where he just tries to harmonize and like smooth out what appears to be discrepancies.

43:27

But I haven't heard of that one. No. The life of Christ in stereo. Life of Christ in stereo. Yeah, it's an old book.

43:32

It's hard to get, I think. So I'm looking. It looks like it's been out of print since like 1984. I have heard of this book, though, and I've never read it.

43:43

But it's funny that Bernard brings that up. So, yeah, if you want to. It is on Internet. It is on archive .org

43:50

for those who are interested. I find that hard to use, but yeah. Oh, it says limited preview.

43:56

You could probably like just get an account to borrow the book. But yeah, yeah, it's there or download.

44:02

Maybe some of them let you download the text and you can with A .I. now you can just have it play back to you.

44:08

But yeah, the charts in gospel harmonies definitely help. I don't know if this has those, but just looking at the references side by side, atheists love to attack the

44:19

Bible based on these things. They say there's these discrepancies, but they these gospels are able to be harmonized.

44:26

It's not a there's there really aren't any discrepancies, real discrepancies that can't be somehow explained.

44:32

So it's important. But oh, one last thing, too. I just remember this for.

44:38

OK, this is just free advice out there for anyone who's wanting to celebrate

44:43

Easter, celebrate Resurrection Sunday. There's two films that I know.

44:49

I don't know if they still air them. I think CBS or maybe ABC, ABC was airing the old

44:55

Charlton Heston, the Ten Commandments, which isn't quite biblically accurate. But if you go into it knowing that it's not quite biblically accurate,

45:02

I think you can appreciate it. But there's another movie that I think is really, really good for this time of year.

45:09

And in fact, I was just thinking yesterday, if I have any time this week, I really want to try to watch it.

45:14

And that's been her. It's an old movie. There's a new one. Don't don't bother with the remake. But the old Charles is also

45:20

Charlton Heston from like 19. I don't know. Nineteen sixty something.

45:25

But it is it is a tremendous movie. It is my favorite movie. And it is a really good film to focus your mind on the crucifixion and just the events of this week.

45:41

So that's a free one. And one of the cool things, too, is you never see Jesus's face ever.

45:48

Every shot of Christ is from behind or from it just shows like, you know, in the distance or maybe is his legs or something.

45:56

Never shows his face. The actor who plays Jesus. I kind of like that. I think it's a really cool effect.

46:04

And and I don't know how I feel about showing Christ anyways. I don't know how you feel about Matthew.

46:10

I saw someone complaining about that on Facebook, though, saying it's idolatry. I don't know about that, but it's. It is.

46:17

Yeah, I am. I like Presbyterian who, you know, doesn't take exception to that part of the standard.

46:22

So I also am not a big fan of it, but, you know, better, I guess better to not show. That's another topic, though.

46:30

There is this kids cartoon King of Kings. I don't know if it's any good, but it's out there right now, too, in the theater. I noticed when

46:35

I was driving today, there's like, I guess, a story of Jesus. So that's interesting.

46:42

But anyway. All right. One more comment and then we'll end. Salome says we have a laminated strip of eight squares and move a wooden figure representing

46:52

Jesus each day. Review what happened each day in scripture and the kids have made things for each day.

46:58

The fig tree cup and bread. I love this idea. This is like the liturgical or what do they call them?

47:05

Those those countdowns to Christmas or a kid gets like a toy or something doing it with Resurrection Sunday.

47:13

That'd be great. I love that. All right. Well, if you want, like I said, to donate to TrueScript or if you would like to publish with us, we would love that.

47:22

Go to TrueScript dot com. You can also go to the American churchman dot com and get the link to the audio version of the podcast.