March 30, 2023 Show with Aaron M. Brewster on “A Case for a Thursday Crucifixion”

The Meaning of Iron Sharpens Iron and the Day’s Theme

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 30th day of March, 2023.

I'm always delighted to have a frequently returning guest on the program, A .M. Brewster, who is president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, author, podcaster, and conference speaker, in addition to being a sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Today, he is going to be addressing something out of the ordinary from what you normally hear from Aaron. Aaron, he typically, on this program, deals with matters that would fall underneath the umbrella of biblical counseling.

But today, we're going to be exploring a different area. In fact, it's an area that I've never before addressed on my program, and the theme of our discussion today is a case for a Thursday crucifixion.

Obviously, since the phrase Good Friday is a phrase that the majority of the citizens of the planet Earth immediately recognize, even if they are not Christian, they know that Good Friday has something to do with commemorating the death of Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross as a payment for sin.

And then the following Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, known as Easter, is something that is celebrated by Christians globally. But there have been different views on the day of the crucifixion that have been supported by different Christians throughout the world and throughout history, and I'm almost certain, and if anybody listening is an expert or is very knowledgeable on a Reformed hero, Lorraine Bettner, I have in the back of my mind somewhere that Lorraine Bettner believed in a Wednesday crucifixion, not a Friday or a Thursday.

And so this is something that should not shock anyone, just because he is taking a different stance than tradition normally holds. Of course, this is not something—Good Friday, that is—is not something that is taught in the Scripture specifically, and there are even some who are Protestants and perhaps even especially either Reformed or Fundamentalists, there are some who don't believe in celebrating a day such as Good Friday because it smacks too much of Roman Catholicism to them, and they believe that honoring the Lord's death and resurrection should be done every day in the life of a Christian and publicly every Lord's Day in some fashion.

But I am not saying that I hold that position, and I'm not saying that I agree with my guest today because, to be perfectly honest, I've never thoroughly researched this issue, so I am sure I am going to find this fascinating, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, A .M. Burster.

Thanks a lot. I am excited. I am experiencing a little bit of trepidation. I put out on my social media, I was telling people about this opportunity, and I said, you know, submit your questions to ChrisAronson at gmail .com, and then I said, and I put in parentheses, submit your questions, or scathing criticisms.

So, you know, I'm interested in receiving a little bit of pushback here. I'm not going to spend necessarily, I guess, a ton of time, you know, debating the, you know, submitted questions, certain points, but no doubt some questions will come in that might be really valuable to jump on.

And if you just want to call me a tradition-breaking phony, I suppose you can send an email to that effect as well.

Well, we wouldn't want people to encourage slander, because even if you're incorrect on that, I think that that would be an extreme way to identify you.

Oh, I've been called worse, but you're right. No slander allowed.

And so have I. And I'm actually including my own church leaders. No, I'm only kidding. Tell our listeners about Evermind Ministries for the sake of those especially who have not yet heard you on this program.

Evermind Ministries and the Celebration of God

Yeah, so Evermind Ministries is a collection of ministries. Evermind's focus is to keep God's truth at the center of the human experience. And we all have lots of different experiences that make up our human experience.

And so Truth Love Family was created to keep God's truth at the center of the family. And we have an award-winning podcast called Truth Love Parent associated with that. That was actually one of the first of the ministries to be started and kind of like one of our first websites that we created.

So, I always point people to truthloveparent .com forward slash iron for extra content and for all of yours and my conversations. After that, though, we started the year-long Celebration of God that also has a podcast called the Celebration of God.

Everything that we're going to talk about today actually grows from my experience with the Celebration of God and how the Lord worked in my own heart and pressed me to study this and so on and so forth.

I'll talk a little bit more about that later. But the Celebration of God is about how we can worship God better this year than we did last year by utilizing both the Christian holiday calendar as well as all the other days, the every days we call them.

So, the Celebration of God is a newer ministry, but it's definitely ramping up and getting some more traction. Very excited about this conversation today. And then another of the Evermind Ministries is Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship, which focuses primarily on biblical crisis counseling as well as general discipleship from somebody who's in a position where they don't have anyone to really genuinely sharpen them the way they should, either because they're in between churches or they're attending a weak church, which, by the way, if you're in that case, if you don't have somebody in your church who you can be in a discipleship relationship with them, there is something wrong.

There is something wrong. And that really needs to be rectified. That might be finding a new church, but it might just be becoming the person who looks for it and asks for it and engages with it. So those are a couple of them.

Then there's A .M. Brewster Ministries, which specifically is just the traveling and speaking side of things. By the way, just a little note here, if you happen to live in northern Indiana, I will be at a conference, a parenting, one-day parenting conference at Berean Reformed Baptist Church.

I would pronounce, try to pronounce the town they're in, but I think I'm going to get it wrong. It's O-S-C-E-O-L-A. Do you know what it is, Chris?

You know something? I can't remember, but I think that is the former church where Justin Peters was a member and he moved to a different state. I'm thinking Montana. But who is the pastor there?

Well, the gentleman who's putting on the conference is an associate pastor named Pastor Kevin James, and I got connected to that church through Andrew Rappaport, and Andrew's going to be there speaking at this as well as some other guys who are part of Andrew's podcast family.

So yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be exciting. It's going to be a one-day event there, so we're looking forward to that. So if you're in the area come April 29th, you should definitely check that out.

So I think that would be an encouragement. Anyway, so that's kind of Evermind Ministries, what we've got going on, what we're doing.

Yes, and I think I may have the wrong church in mind. I'm thinking of Kootenai Community Church in Kootenai, Idaho.

Well, that's not the one.

And the pastor there is Jim Osmond, by the way, if anybody listening lives near that city and state. Well, Kevin James is the one running this. I just have to tip my hat to one of the most hilarious comic actors I've ever seen.

Everybody probably remembers the King of Queens, one of the most funny sitcoms that ever aired on television, obviously.

And when I got an email from Kevin James asking me to speak and preach at a parenting conference, I was like, this has got to be a different guy.

Yes, and when Kevin James is sitting in the pew listening to a guest speaker preach, if he thinks that that preacher has gone on too long, he will say, shuddy. Only a fan of the King of Queens would understand that.

Wow.

But, well, I hope that folks will attend that conference, and you can repeat that toward the end of the program. So anybody in that area or anybody who wants to travel to that area can attend. Now, what on earth led you to begin to investigate a Thursday claim for the crucifixion?

Were you someone that held to the traditional view of Friday as being the day? And did you even celebrate Good Friday, as many of us do? And who are the figures involved, if any? The figures from church history, either from long ago or perhaps even contemporary living Christian heroes of yours that may have or may advocate that Thursday view?

Tell us all about that.

Why the Thursday Crucifixion Question Emerged

So it goes back a long time ago. I'm not sure if you ever, sitting in a church pew as a young person, heard a pastor talking about the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, and talking about how he was three days and three nights in the grave.

And you kind of start doing the math in your head, okay? So he was buried before Friday night, and then there's Saturday during the day and Saturday night, and then is it Saturday night or is it Sunday morning?

How does that work? But you're counting and you're like, I'm missing something, right? I'm missing something. My family has always attended church, and I've been born again since the age of nine. And so there was always that little seed in there.

I do remember once or twice somebody I've moved 22 times. I've attended a lot of churches, been a member of a lot of churches. I don't remember exactly who they were, but I do remember a couple times having a pastor from the pulpit acknowledge that there's a very good possibility that Jesus was not crucified on a Friday, and they may have spoken to it to some degree.

And I remember sitting there as a child being like, okay, that makes a whole lot more sense. But that was pretty much lost the time. And fast forward, I'm working at Victory Academy for Boys. Truth Love Family is in full swing, and I'm working with these boys.

And the Lord is just really impressing on me the fact that actually, I take that back. I need to move back a little bit. My children were both born before we moved to Victory Academy for Boys. And my wife and I realized that we needed to do a better job with our kids when it came to, like, their anticipation of Christmas.

Right? My love for Christmas was always the lights and the gifts and the weather and the sweets and all that kind of stuff. And as an adult, I really started to realize, you know, I'm celebrating Christmas to Aaron's honor and glory.

Aaron's you know, I'm consuming these pleasures really for me. I tip my hat and I praise God for, you know, the incarnation, but really the vast majority of the time is for me. And as I reflected on this, my wife and I both came to the conclusion that really of all of the celebrations that we Christians have together as a world body, Easter should be, like, the number one, top of the list, biggest, awesomest celebration, you know, corporate celebration that we have.

And so that was a that took some rethinking, retooling for me because I never really cared that much. I mean, again, as a child, it was more about, you know, candy, but, you know, you're going to church.

It's kind of like, you know, any Christmas that landed on a Sunday was like, oh, you know, but Easter's always on a Sunday, so you're like, oh. Admittedly, I'm saying all of this just to admit the fact that I wasn't really approaching these days, any of these holidays really with God's view in mind.

And when the Lord shook me and helped me realize that I need to set a better example for my children, he deserves better for me. That was the grain ideas of what would eventually become the ministry of the year-long celebration of God.

Now, skip to Victory Academy. I'm working with all these at-risk teens, and they're in my house for up to a year, and Easter and other holidays happen to fall during that time. And I'm realizing this is just a really wonderful time to point these boys to God, again, to help steer them away from doing what I did and just liking the holidays for what we get out of it, but really to give God the preeminence.

And so I started to work on a tool that was for Truth Love Family, for the Truth Love Parent podcast, that basically was a tool for parents to use to disciple their children by using the everydays as well as the holidays.

And as I started to build out that tool, I would focus on individual holidays, and I would talk about traditionally how Christians would approach it, the pitfalls that we fall into as well as the ways that we can truly worship God and give him the preeminence on these days.

And when I got to Easter, I really wanted to dig into it because I and by the way, I'll refer to it as Resurrection Sunday, I'll refer to it as Easter, I'll go back and forth. I actually prefer Resurrection Sunday, but Easter is my habit growing up, so that tends to come out more often than not.

But anyway, so I really wanted to dig into it so that I could grow and better appreciate what this whole tradition, this whole celebration was about. And so I started to dig into it. And as I did that, these questions from my past would come back up, especially as I would encounter certain things in the scriptures.

And I'm like, well, there it is again, three days and three nights, after three days, and all this other kind of stuff. And I'd be like, well, it just doesn't Friday just doesn't seem to make sense.

And so I dug into it deeper and deeper and deeper. And that's kind of how I got on this trajectory. And man, I wish I had the time. I might just even talk about the process of how I came to understand these things, and the study that I did, and the different things that I would find.

All of that to say, just real quick, so the celebration of God became a bigger thing, became its own ministry. Originally, it was created as a tool for families to use in discipleship, but I saw the impact it was having on my life and on my friends' lives, and so it became its own thing.

So you can always check out celebrationofgod .com to learn more about that. So through this process, that's kind of where I came, and I really realized that there were two main things that were significant for me, two things that I gained by recognizing the fact that it's very, very possible I'll leave the door cracked open, then I'm 100 wrong on this, but it's very, very, very possible that God, Jesus, was crucified on a Thursday.

And as I've debated this, I've had a chance to be on Andrew Rappaport's Apologetics Live and debate this a little bit, and I've debated this with other people. I always ask him this question, what do you gain by observing the crucifixion on Friday?

What do you gain? And the general answers that I've gotten, sometimes I don't really have an answer, they don't give me an answer, but sometimes the answers that I've received are basically, well, you know, we don't have to change our calendars, and these are all said tongue-in-cheek because they realize it's not really a good answer.

You know, well, we celebrate it with all the other Christians across the world who celebrate on Good Friday and things like that. Those are really the only answers that I receive when I ask so, if one of your listeners has an answer to this, what do you gain by saying, no, we will observe this on a Friday, and here's the reason why we gain X, Y, and Z?

For me, I gained something by starting to observe Good Thursday, we'll call it that, the crucifixion on a Thursday, and I want to kind of share those things with you guys and talk about them as we unfold this.

How much time do you think I should take? Because I want to kind of start just looking at the traditional view, a couple quotes from some people we respect.

You have about 15 minutes.

Oh, perfect, good. I wanted to start with just two quotes from men that we likely know and respect about what I'm going to call the traditional view. It's kind of hard to call it that because I don't know if it was always held, especially earlier on.

But one of those men is Scott Anuel. Scott Anuel is a friend of mine. I grew up going to church with him, and he works for G3 Ministries now.

Oh, yeah.

But somebody that you you know Scott? Okay, good. And somebody else you might have heard of, John MacArthur. And I'm going to start with John MacArthur's, and I want you guys to know, I respect and love both of these men.

I listen to what they put out. I read what they put out. I promote them. I encourage people to listen to what they have to say, okay? I love both of these men. But we're going to disagree on some points, and I'm reading this just to kind of set the stage.

I just went online, and I just searched, you know, grace to you or John MacArthur, Thursday crucifixion. I did the same thing. Scott Anuel's stuff came up. This is what John MacArthur said. Quote, some people have difficulty reconciling what Jesus said in Matthew 12, 40 about the length of his stay in the grave.

And he quotes him. He says, as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. He goes on to say, does that mean Jesus had to be in the earth three full days and nights?

And he answers his own question, no. Many commentators take the view and back the sorry, many commentators take that view and back the crucifixion to Thursday. So the three days and three nights are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with his rising on Sunday.

And then he says the obvious problem with that view is that we are left with a fourth day resurrection. And he finishes off by saying, yet all the passages in Scripture dealing with this issue indicate he was to rise on the third day.

That eliminates the need for interpreting Matthew 12, 40 as referring to three 24-hour periods. The phrase three days and three nights was simply an idiom of the Jewish people referring to a three-day period.

And, you know, you hear John MacArthur say that, right? And you're like, okay, you know, you don't even have to do your own study. If John MacArthur said that, you're like, well, I'm done, you know? And yet I am going to continue with this interview.

I'm not giving up. And then Scott Anuel said this. He actually refers to the Wednesday crucifixion that you mentioned earlier. And that's right. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are the more common views.

Most people fall into Friday. The next largest group falls into Thursday. And the third largest group falls into Wednesday. And he says the Wednesday crucifixion requires that Jesus have risen into sorry, have ridden into Jerusalem on the Saturday, which would have been another Sabbath violation, as would the cutting down of palm branches.

It was Christ rising on the fourth day it has Christ rising on the fourth day if the quote-unquote third day is also the first day of the week. And then he says there is simply no evidence that Nisan 15, that is the just so you guys know, that is the Jewish month and date for the sorry, the day after the Passover.

He says there was simply no evidence that Nisan 15, the day after Passover, was a day on which no one worked. This is essentially a theory held only by those who hold to the Thursday crucifixion. There is no real case for a Passover Sabbath which occurred the day before the regular weekly Sabbath.

The expression day of preparation is usually used to mean Friday. Mark makes this especially clear, not when evening had come because it was the preparation day, that is the day before the Sabbath. And then he says the great consensus of interpreters and scholars is that Jesus died on Friday.

And then he has a closing remark. He says, yes, to keep the strict chronology and typology of the examination of the Passover lamb, we probably have to accept that it was really Palm Monday, he says. Perhaps the complicated harmonizing of Galilean and Judean timekeeping might allow us to keep that one since we have no scripture telling us exactly what day of the week was the triumphal entry.

But it seems the evidence does point fairly clearly to a Friday crucifixion. Now, I read those two extended quotes for a very important reason. One, to sum up the main view, obviously, but also because these both address their criticisms of the Thursday view.

And so what I'm going to do is, as we have time, I'm going to go through some of these points. I'm actually going to come back and I'm going to, because I know I read through those quickly, but I'm going to come back and I'm going to kind of address some of the things that they said and debate with them a little bit, even though they're not here to do it live.

So, let's just jump into this with the time we have before the first break. One of the big issues that people have is the fact that we're not Jews. I mean, most of us aren't Jews. In addition, we Gentiles don't truly understand all of the Jewish traditions the way we should.

And I'm just going to say that this adds some hurdles to our understanding of the course of events because the details God includes to help us navigate the Passion Week are really, they're foreign to us.

So, we have to acknowledge our own blind spots about some of this. And we also have to say that we have to recognize that we have our own cherished traditions. I'm confident to assert that the vast majority of you have observed Good Friday as the day of the Lord's death since you were very little.

I've done the same. But though we may have our traditions and habits, okay, we need to be willing to push those aside in light of the biblical material. Our traditions should no more supersede God's Word than our own opinions, right?

Now, so I've already said this a little bit, but I'm going to say the main argument for the Friday crucifixion, Scott Anuel alluded to this, comes from Mark 15, 42. And now, when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, and then it goes on to describe what happened.

Then the passage talks about Jesus being taken from the cross and so on and so forth. And this means that Jesus was crucified the day before the Sabbath. Okay? And everyone knows that the Jewish Sabbath is on Saturday.

That's why the majority of Christians observe the crucifixion on Friday. I don't want to oversimplify this, but some of the very first people who said that Jesus was crucified on a Friday said so for this reason.

Clearly right there, Sabbath is on Saturday. Jesus was crucified on the day of preparation before the Sabbath. He had to have been crucified on Friday. It's the majority opinion. Now, Mark 15, 42 says that Jesus was crucified on the day of preparation, like we just read.

With that evidence alone, it would be easy to assume that Jesus was crucified during the day on Friday. But there are a number of issues with that, and those issues are going to be really the focus of what I'm going to share with you guys today.

And here's one of the things well, I'll get to that in a minute. Here's one thing that we need to understand. The Jews didn't just have 52 Sabbaths. They actually had oftentimes more than one Sabbath a week, depending on the year.

There were the 50 to 54 weekly Sabbaths, but there were also two Sabbaths in the Feast of Unleavened Bread. There's the Sabbath of Pentecost, one Feast of Trumpets, one Day of Atonement, two Sabbaths during the Feast of Tabernacles.

That's over 60 Sabbaths in one year. Now, if we assume that the Mark 15, 42 Sabbath is Saturday, then a Friday crucifixion makes sense. But what if there were another Sabbath that week that landed before Saturday?

Now, I say what if, like, you know, well, Aaron, that sounds like a lot of, you know, hypothetical conjecture. Well, it's not, because there actually was another Sabbath that landed before the Passover.

I'm sorry, before that Saturday Sabbath. The seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread is preceded by the Feast of the Passover. So, the Passover happens and then starts the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which was celebrated in remembrance of the Israelites being delivered from Egypt.

This Passover, okay, just so everyone knows, the Passover falls on the 14th of Nisan, or Nisan. I don't know that I always pronounce that correctly. And the Feast of Unleavened Bread officially started on the 15th.

Okay. Now, with that said, I want to go back to something that Scott Anuel said. This is his quote. There is simply no evidence that Nisan 15, the day after the Passover, was a day on which no one worked.

This is essentially a theory held only by those who hold to the Thursday Crucifixion. There's no real case for a Passover Sabbath which occurred the day before the regular weekly Sabbath. Now, in that statement, he admits that, you know, Nisan 15, the day after the Passover, okay, and he says that there's no evidence.

Again, I love Scott, and I honestly believe this was just a mistake on his part because in Leviticus 23, 5 through 8, we read this. In the first month, on the 14th day of the month at twilight is the Lord's Passover.

Then on the 15th day of the same month, there is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. Listen to verse 7. On the first day, this would be the 15th, you shall have a holy convocation.

You shall not do any laborious work. Exodus 12, 14 through 16. Now, this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance.

Seven days you are to eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your homes. Then, skipping to verse 16, on the first day you shall have a holy assembly. And another holy assembly on the seventh day.

No work at all shall be done on them except what must be eaten by every person, that alone you may be prepared by you. And then numbers 28, 17 through 18. On the 15th day of this month shall be a feast.

Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days. On the first day shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no laborious work. And it's in Mark 14, 1 where we read, now the Passover and unleavened bread were two days away, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to seize him by stealth and kill him.

So, even though Scott says that there's no evidence, I'm not sure how he came to that conclusion, that no one worked on the 15th day of Nisan, and that this is just a theory held by those who hold to the Thursday Crucifixion, I'm pretty sure Leviticus 23, Exodus 12, and Numbers 28, all talking about the feast of unleavened bread, make it perfectly clear that no, the 15th actually was unequivocally a day, a Sabbath, that no one was supposed to work.

It was actually referred to as a high Sabbath, which means that, again, Jesus couldn't have been crucified on that Friday simply for this one reason, because that day was a Sabbath day, and we're specifically told that he was crucified on the preparation day before the Sabbath, and the first day of unleavened bread would have had its own preparation day before it.

So, that would have been on a Thursday, he was taken off the cross before the beginning of the Sabbath that evening, that would have been the first day of unleavened bread, followed by the regular Saturday Sabbath, and then followed by the resurrection on Sunday.

And I'll leave it there so that you can say something, Chris, and we can go to break.

Well, I'm just finding this all fascinating, and we have to go right to the break now, and we will resume right where you left off there. Our email address, if anybody would like to ask a question of Aaron in regard to a case for a Thursday crucifixion, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you disagree with your pastors over this issue, or you're a pastor, you disagree with your own fellow elders, or your denomination, or whatever the case is that would compel you to remain anonymous, I understand.

But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. We'll be right back with A .M. Brewster after these messages, so don't go away.

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