"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
Exodus 20:3 KJV

Believers in general would be "astonished" to know that much of what has been widely accepted as "Christian Truth" has its origins in paganism and comes from a Greek Westernized mindset. 
Its roots? 
The Council at Nicaea in 325 AD.

EDMUND DESOTO

Easter's pagan ritual reduces that time to not only one day and a half and two nights according to the Gregorian calendar of what we call today Good Friday to the pagan holiday of sunrise Easter Sunday morning. 

This is NOT accurate, not according to the Hebrew calendar and it is completely wrong.

Many reason the following, "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" doesn't require a literal span of 72 hours. 

They speculate that any part of a day can be interpreted as a whole day. This is NOT what Scripture declares.

But the sign Yeshua referred to in Jonah 1:17 specifically states that "Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." No more and no less.

We have no biblical basis for thinking that Yeshua meant anything differently. If He was in the tomb only partially from what was written, then the sign He gave that He was the prophesied Messiah wasn't fulfilled. 

Three days and three nights mean what it says, three literal days and three literal nights. If we can't believe Yeshua meant what He said, then everything else He said becomes suspect.
How, then, can this celebration be emphatically stated as TRUTH today IF the Resurrection was re-engineered to occur on a Sunday after having only been buried on a Friday?
So which is it? 

Is there something wrong with Yeshua's words, or is it with tradition made of men?

The fundamental problem most theologians have with the time frame Yeshua presents is that they are approaching scripture from a Westernized "Christian" mentality instead of from a Hebrew mindset. We need to remember that there were no "Christians" at the Resurrection.

NO NAMES OF THE WEEK IN THE TENAKH
To begin with, there are no names for the days of the week in the Tenakh, the Original Hebrew Books. In Hebrew, they are simply referred to as the first day, the second day, etc.

All of the names in the Bible employed for days of the week are approached from the standpoint of Sunday being the first day of the week on the Gregorian/Julian calendar which was not invented until hundreds of years after the Resurrection of Yeshua. 

Even though, modern Jewish rabbis have embraced this calendar for convenience, that tradition does not negate the fact that the Hebrew first day of the week is the first day after the seventh day of rest, the Sabbath - regardless of where that Sabbath fell in any man-made calendar week.

The "Last Supper" referred to in Christianity was actually a Hebrew Pesach or what we know to be Passover, the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread or Communion.

These feasts are referred to in scripture as "High Sabbaths" but even in Jewish tradition they are mis-characterized, not so named in the original Hebrew. 

The feasts are listed in the book of Leviticus 23:1-8 as mikris, convocations and not Sabbaths. 

That they were considered "high holy days" and to be treated with the same respect as the Sabbath is true, but nowhere in scripture are they found to be equated with Shabbat. 

Passover, listed in that same scripture in Leviticus 23 is a mikra, not a Shabbat, a marking of clear difference.
The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.

Now, the verse in John 19:31 is mistranslated according to Western thinking without regard to the difference between a 'mikra' and a 'Shabbat'. 

Leviticus 23:9-14 makes it clear that the Feast of First Fruit where the barley sheaves are waved, is to be offered on the day after a Shabbat, not a mikra, or convocation. 

By equating the two, it makes this scripture sound as though they have to be held as back to back events while the original language indicates that is not the case at all. 

Scripture tells us in John 12:1 that six days before the Passover, Yeshua came to Bethany.
Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Yeshua was coming to Jerusalem, only 2 miles from Bethany, took branches of palm trees & went out to greet Him. This is recorded in John 12:12-13.

On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 

took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.

This is the day they received Him as the Lamb, thus fulfilling Exodus 12:3 which expressly states that the lamb to be sacrificed on Pesach, Passover, is to be gathered on the 10th of Nisan by each family and prepared for the sacrifice. 
Please read: 
Yeshua Did Not Go To the Cross On Friday... 
But On Wednesday?

The Day of Preparation has nothing to do with the tradition of cleaning the leaven from houses, but with the preparation of the slaughtered lamb because it takes a while to grill it. At twilight of the 14th, which is late afternoon in Western culture. 

Now please use discernment, since Hebrew days begin at sunset, this has been done from creation in Genesis, "there was evening and morning, the first day", it has now become the 15th day or the beginning of the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread, also a holy convocation.

The lamb is to be completely eaten, along with unleavened bread, that night.

"When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple:" 

This was the man who had the tomb in which the body of Yeshua was laid:

"So there they laid Yeshua, because of the Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby."

Because it was the Preparation Day, the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day according to John 19:31.

On the 15th day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to YHWH; 7 days you must eat unleavened bread. On the 1st day you shall have a holy convocation, mikra; you shall do no customary, servile, work on it."

And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.

Here we see that Pesach or Passover is referred to as "Preparation Day". This is the preparation day for the feast to follow.

Pesach or Passover is not the Feast, it is a memorial, but is considered to be a part of the Feast of Unleavened Bread because the sacrificial lamb is actually eaten in the first day of the Feast, which begins on the 15th at the Hebrew twilight.

Please read Mark 14:12 and Luke 22:1.

Just as First Fruit is considered to be part of the subsequent Feast of Shavuot which is Pentecost because it involves the beginning of the 50 day counting of the Omer. 

WHAT IS THE OMER?
This is the Omer. You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Shabbat or Sabbath, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving or seven Shabbats, they shall be complete.

Until the day after the seventh sabbath you shall count, fifty days.

The Festival of Pentecost

And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete:

even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord.

Leviticus 23:15-16 KJV

Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. 

And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord thy God, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee:

Deuteronomy 16:9-10 KJV

This period is known as the Counting of the Omer. 
An omer is a unit of measure. 

On the second day of Passover, in the days of the Temple, an omer of barley was cut down and brought to the Temple as an offering. This grain offering was referred to as the Omer.

Every night, from the second night of Passover to the night before Shavu'ot, we recite a blessing and state the count of the omer in both weeks and days. 

So on the 16th day, you would say "Today is sixteen days, which is two weeks and two days of the Omer."

It is a known fact that The Orthodox Union has a chart that provides the transliterated Hebrew and English text of the counting day-by-day.

The counting is intended to remind us of the link between Passover, which commemorates the Exodus, and Shavu'ot, which commemorates the giving of the Law or Torah. It reminds us that the redemption from slavery was not complete until we received the Torah. 

Also please see Exodus 16: 16, 18, 22 36. This leads up to that feast, so Pesach is considered part of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Now to continue, Yeshua was in the tomb at the end of the day of Passover, the 14th of Nissan. 

That Yeshua ate the Passover Seder meal at the beginning of that same Day of Passover, the evening prior is not uncommon. 

It is recorded and pointed in Joshua 5:10 that "the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho."

When scripture says He died at the ninth hour, that would be the evening of the 14th and His Body was placed in the sepulcher that same day, before sunset on the 14th. 

Luke 23:55-57 tells us that the women, after seeing Yeshua's body being laid in the tomb just before sundown, "returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment."

The term according to the commandment demands that there is to be a day in which to prepare the spices and ointments before resting on the Sabbath because "doing no servile work" on high holy days or on the Sabbath is what is commanded.

"And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury."
John 19:39-40 tells us. . .

The spices used in a Jewish burial were never used sparingly. The larger the amount the higher token of respect was given. The treatise known as Semahot or Ebel Rabbati states that no less than eighty pounds of spices were used at the funeral of Rabbi Gamaliel, a Rabboni in Israel.

My good friend, Ronny from Israel who is the one that has been teaching me for years about Torah, the law and Jewish customs, tells me there isn't a caring woman, then or now, after watching men prepare the precious Body of Yeshua in haste that would have thought that this preparation had been done properly. 

So, those women would have felt the necessity to return and "do it right" as soon as they could (thus a second preparation of spices for the Body of Christ).
A hundred pounds of spices is not something thrown together in a few minutes nor is it something just kept laying around the house. 

The purchasing and preparation of those spices would not have been allowed on the day of a mikra, holy convocation, nor on a Shabbat, Sabbath, because it would have been considered 'servile' work.

Given that the preparation of a large quantity of those spices required some formidable time to acquire and accomplish necessitated a day in between the end of the first day of Unleavened Bread and the beginning of the weekly Sabbath that the commandment of doing no servile work on those days might be observed. 

Luke 24:1 says it was early in the morning of the first day of the week, that would be the day after a Sabbath, that they returned to "the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them" and found Him to be risen on the day of First Fruit, the day after a Sabbath, a Shabbat according to Leviticus 23:11.

and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.

In John 20:15, Mary or Myriam found Him in the garden. Thinking Him to be a gardener, she asked what He had done with her Master. 
Why did she think Him to be a gardener?

Our Westernized concept of gardens would be of rose bushes and pretty flowers. 

Never would we consider it to be a plantation garden cultivated by the wealthy man, Joseph of Arimathea, where, as a Priest, Yeshua was quietly gathering barley sheaves to be waved before the throne of the Father, thus fulfilling all requirements of the Feast Of First Fruit. 

His hands being full of barley sheaves, Mary thought Him to be a gatherer of the garden produce, preparing for the next feast. Oh what a revelation. 

Now to make it easier for all Shout Of Victory Ministry friends, here is The Chronology of Yeshua's Crucifixion & Resurrection
Jesus (Yeshua,) became our Passover sacrifice, having been slain on the eve of the 14th of Nisan according to scriptural requirements, has had His Body prepared and laid in the tomb before sunset.

First Day - the 15th of Nisan, the evening and morning of the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, a high, holy convocation, a mikra, treated like a Sabbath but not a Shabbat. 
This is the first night and first day. 

Second Day - the 16th of Nisan, the evening and morning of the second day of the seven day Feast of Unleavened Bread (not a high day to be treated like a Sabbath) so that the spices and ointments thought to be needed for a second anointing of Yeshua's Body can be prepared 'according to the commandment' that no servile work be done on either a mikra or a Shabbat. 
This is the second night and second day. 

Third Day - the 17th of Nisan, the evening and morning of the weekly Sabbath, where it fell in relation to the other Westernized named days of the week is not relevant, it could have been on a Wednesday, we don't know and it doesn't matter, in which entering into His Rest is commanded for all.

This is now the third night and the third day. 

Fourth Day - the 18th of Nisan, Yeshua arose from the grave early in the morning of the first day of the week, at sundown after the Sabbath ended, the day of the waving of the barley sheaves to become the First Fruit, which is also the day after a Sabbath.

As we celebrate His Resurrection in Spirit and in Truth, we, in reality are celebrating Pesach which is nothing more than a Passover celebration. 

To celebrate some pagan ritual simply because it has become the worldly popular thing to do is to celebrate A LIE, the antithesis of the Truth.

What we serve, what we give ourselves to, what we subject our children to IS what we worship.

We do not celebrate EASTER, nor anything that has to do with EASTER.

We do not worship pagan gods nor pagan customs.

We celebrate the Feast of first Fruits, the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

In My Own Words,
EDMUND DESOTO

Please Read More About
The Passover Celebration