In Matthew 12:38, the Scribes and Pharisees came to Jesus, indicating they were willing to believe He was the Messiah if He would give them a sufficient sign.
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- In Matthew 12:40, Jesus said, the only sign He would give to them was that of the prophet Jonah: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
- Contrary to what you might have heard, Jonah was dead three days and three nights, and then he was resurrected from the dead and spewed out on the land to become the first missionary to the Gentiles of Nineveh.
- Jonah was a “type” – an illustration of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
Many have tried to justify their belief in the Friday burial and Sunday resurrection by counting a part of a day as a full day, but in the Jewish culture, “three days” meant three 12-hour days and three 12-hour nights.
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- Jonah was in the belly of the whale 72 hours, and Jesus was in the belly of the earth 72 hours, and regardless of how it is counted, you can’t get 72 hours from Friday evening to Sunday morning.
In establishing the essential doctrines of the Christian Faith, Paul said Jesus Christ “rose from the grave on the third day,” and we should not compromise truth for religious tradition.
In Psalm 119:160, the Bible says God’s Word is true from beginning to end. Therefore, it cannot contradict itself on anything at any point! So, I want to give you an event-by-event description of the last six days of our Lord’s life on this earth. We won’t be able to detail every event, but there is an outline of the scriptures in the booklet: “A Harmony of the Gospels,” which is from the Blue Letter Bible.
Join us tomorrow as we continue our journey “From Gethsemane to Golgotha to Glory!”