
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks about the rescue of a downed U.S. Air Force pilot from hostile territory in Iran at a news conference Monday at the White House in Washington, D.C.(Brendan Smialowski – AFP / Getty Images)
By Randy DeSoto April 6, 2026 at 5:19pm
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth drew some parallels between the timing of the Easter weekend rescue mission of a downed U.S. Air Force officer behind enemy lines and the resurrection of Jesus Christ nearly two thousand years ago.
Speaking at a Monday briefing at the White House, Hegseth could not help noting that the timeline of the rescue operation suggested God may have had a hand in its positive outcome.
When the downed weapons systems officer activated his transponder after hiding himself on a remote mountainside in southwest Iran, his first message was “God is good,” Hegseth recounted.
The secretary of war pointed out the officer was “Shot down on a Friday — Good Friday — hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday.”
“A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing: God is good.”
.@SecWar: “Shot down on a Friday — Good Friday — hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter.” pic.twitter.com/1GWtaiYoyj
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 6, 2026
Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, buried in a cave, and rose again on Sunday morning, according to the Bible.
Such overt talk about the Christian faith by a top administration officer like Hegseth is quite a contrast to the Biden administration. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Recall how the previous president hosted bizarre, godless events at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and declared Easter Sunday in 2024 “Transgender Day of Visibility.”
God is good.
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) April 5, 2026
President Donald Trump told Axios that inquiries about the rescued officer made it clear he was religious, and that citing God as he headed for an uncertain future would be in keeping with his faith.
Interestingly, the New York Post reported last year about the Christian faith that NASA’s “astronomical models suggest that a lunar eclipse turned the moon red over Jerusalem on Friday, April 3, 33 AD — a date many scholars tie to Jesus’ death.”
That happened to be the date that Good Friday fell on this year, and Easter was April 5, as it would have been back then, assuming those calculations are correct.
Dallas Theological Seminary professor Mark Hitchcock highlighted on his podcast last week that this coincidence of Good Friday falling on April 3 has only happened 19 times since the year 1600 AD, and four times over the last 100 years.
The Bible answer site Got Questions reported that A.D. 33 is the likely year of Jesus’ crucifixion, based on a prophecy in the book of Daniel.
In Daniel 9, the prophet writes of being visited by the angel Gabriel while he and his fellow Jews were being held in Babylonian captivity. Gabriel told him that the time from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem is issued until the “anointed one” (i.e., Jesus) is cut off (crucified), would be 69 weeks of years, or 483 years.
King Artaxerxes of Persia issued the decree to “restore and rebuild Jerusalem” around 444 B.C.
“Converting the 360-day year used by the ancient Jews, 483 years becomes 476 years on our solar calendar. Adjusting for the switch from B.C. to A.D., 476 years after 444 B.C. places us at A.D. 33, which would coincide with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1–9). The prophecy in Daniel 9 specifies that, after the completion of the 483 years, ‘the Anointed One will be cut off’ (verse 26). This was fulfilled when Jesus was crucified,” according to Got Questions.
Christian author and speaker Dutch Sheets, on his Monday podcast, which he titled “History’s Divine Orchestrator,” noted that Sunday (starting Saturday night at sundown for the Jews) was also Nisan 17 on the Hebrew calendar.
Besides Jesus’ resurrection happening on that date, some other notable events occurring on Nisan 17, according to the Bible, were the parting of the Red Sea, and then 40 years later, the Israelites’ crossing of the Jordan River on dry ground into the Promised Land.
So all that to say, the Easter miracle rescue for the downed Air Force officer may have occurred not only on the exact date that Jesus walked out of his tomb 1993 years ago, but also on the date of some other major miracles in the Bible.
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