This is why some of you are confused as to when the Last Supper happened, Christ did not die on Friday.

It was on (Nisan 14) Wednesday night that Jesus held the Last Supper (same as everyone at that time), then went to the garden where he was abducted.

The next day, Passover is when He was killed at 3:00 PM on (Nisan 15) Thursday (when the veil was torn).

They took Him down and buried Him before sunset (the start of a new day) because the next day was Friday (Nisan 16), the first day of Unleavened bread - which was a Sabbath.

So Mary couldn't go to the tomb then nor the next day for the weekly Sabbath (Saturday Nisan 17).

Sunday (Nisan 18) was Firstfruits (not a Sabbath) when Mary went and found the empty tomb.

I can see why folks are confused when Matthew 12:40 says 'so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.'

But all these scripture references say that He will rise 'on the third day': Matthew 16:2, Matthew 17:23, Matthew 20:19, Matthew 27:64, Mark 9:31, Mark 10:34, Luke 9:22, Luke 18:33, Luke 24:7, Luke 24:46, Acts 10:40.

These state 'after three days' will rise again: Matthew 27:63, Mark 8:31.

The problem is that if He died on Wednesday as some say, then He didn't die on the day of Passover to fulfill the perfect sacrifice. He definitely didn't die on Friday (so much for the Good Friday theory) for the same reason plus we'd be short another day.

So he did spend three nights in the tomb but not three full days (minus about 9 hours assuming He rose at 6:00 AM). However the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter.

So Jesus gave his life for our sins on a Thursday (Nisan 15) and rose from the dead on a Sunday morning (Nisan 18).

Now I want to point out that the Jewish people do not start their new day at midnight as we do here in America.

Why does the Jewish day start at sundown 6:00pm?

Because this is how the Torah describes days, starting in the book of Genesis: "And there was evening, and there was morning, one day." (Gen. 1:5). As another example, the Torah refers to Yom Kippur explicitly as "from evening to the next evening".

As you can see this gets very confusing when we try to match days on our calendar with the Jewish Calendar. So keep that in mind as you study days in the Bible.