Did Jesus Rise on the Eighth Day?

In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question: To whom it may concern: I caught your radio broadcast a few days ago.I thought it sounded good until I heard one of you gentlemen say that Jesus was resurrected on the eighth day.I was shocked!Then I even heard you say it a second time.If you’re going to make statements over the air like that, don’t you think you should explain what you mean?Otherwise you could lose a lot of listeners including me.

Tom:

Dave this is “To Whom It May Concern,” but I think it’s to you.I mean I’m backing off from this, particularly from this irate inquiry here.

Dave:

Well whoever it is Tom raises a good point and how many times has it happened?Sometimes my wife tells me what I said and I say did I say that?And sometimes you’re trying to talk fast and your brain gets ahead of your words or your mouth gets ahead of your brain, one or the other.And I probably said it because this is a well known way of expressing the fact that Jesus rose on the first day of a new week which is the eighth day.Saturday is the seventh day so Sunday must be the eighth day, but I can understand it that it could cause confusion so probably when I said it in my mind I know what I mean, and I think everybody else does or you don’t have time to explain, but it is a good point.So we ought to explain it.In other words, I do believe that Jesus rose on the third day.The third day after he was in the grave three days and three nights and the third day He rose from the dead.It wasn’t eight days, but from another standpoint, even a biblical stand point; He was the firstborn of a new creation, the eighth day that’s referred to in the Bible as a new beginning.This is the new creation and so I’ve been used to expressing it that way also.My apologies to anyone out there that I made imagine that I thought Jesus was in the grave eight days.

Tom:

This brings up another point.There are things that we say and Dave you and I have been not in radio per se but we’ve been working together for a long time and we assume each other understands what we are talking about and we forget there’s a whole new group out there that’s kind of just joined us so we apologize for that.There’s the medium as well.It’s a little bit hard to always repeat, always qualify, always give all the documentation to what you’re saying and I’d have to say well just hang in there with us, eventually we’ll get to it, or if you write to us and voice your concern, we’ll try and respond either on the radio program or if we can get to it, we’ll do it personally.

Dave:

But we really appreciate this.

Tom:

Yes, absolutely!

Dave:

Because if we say something that’s confusing, doesn’t sound right, or God forbid is not biblical, please, please tell us.We would not consider that to be an attack, but a kindness.If we’ve miss spoken or if we really have some wrong idea from the scriptures and you can show it to us we would be grateful for that.We don’t want to continue on in error.But we certainly don’t want to make faux pas—well I don’t think it was a faux pas, it was a true statement.He was resurrected the eighth day, but you do have to explain it and I failed to explain it.

Tom:

Well I do faux pas all the time, but Gary, in editing this he gets some of them, but some of them do get out.The other point of this Dave is, our heart here is that people would search the scriptures, that they would be discerning growing discernment, not just buy what we say.We referred to this earlier, but not buy what we say just because we say it because the heart here is that if we are accurately—if we are not accurate get on us big time.But if we are accurately pointing to underscoring what the Word of God says then, as we have said before, the argument out there is not with us.It’s with the Word of God and we want to do this as accurately as we can so that we can be corrected by the Word of God as well as anybody else who has a problem with it.

Dave:

You know Tom one of the things that I appreciate most about this letter from whomever, whoever sent it—the person that sent it at one point sounds like they’re going to write us off completely as heretics.Well, they say Jesus was eight days in the grave and [they] said they almost did that, but at least they wrote to us for an explanation and I think it’s a good point for us to consider.I don’t want to be too quick jumping on somebody saying oh, the guy’s a heretic, I just heard him say this or that.I want to at least check it out and make sure that I really fully understand what the person said and that’s what I appreciate about this writer and so I would just urge anybody else out there don’t write us off too fast.But if we say something that you think isn’t correct please, write us, give us some help so that we can make an explanation at least, or be corrected.And I do appreciate that very much.

Tom:

Right.

Dave:

We do like to hear from our listeners as well.

Tom:

Yes, Dave one more comment along that line and this is the problem with the medium.We have seven minutes maybe in one segment to talk about an issue and some things we could talk about, if people could hang in there with us, we could talk about all day and certainly bring the wealth of documentation, the wealth of research that we’ve done but we can’t always do that.That’s why it isn’t just—the radio program is one medium.We have another one that’s called the newsletter.We’re on the internet at www.thebereancall.org in which we have archives of information, research that we’ve done and people can access that.Or you know if they get impulsive, just write to us and we can at least direct you to where we have more documentation, more information for you.

Dave:

Yes, very good.