Here are those who have wisdom."Destroy this temple and in three DAYS I will raise it up."Was Jesus dead three days before His resurrection? If not then what was it that destroyed His temple to be able to rebuild it in three days?
Where was He three days before?
This is a sign. The SIGN OF JONAH. For three days and three nights the son of man was in the heart of the earth but He was not physically dead for all three days, he was in hell, "cut off" from the Father for our sins. This began in GETHSEMANE Thursday night when He received our sins upon His head and was cut off as if resurrected in our place in the second death.
The penalty for sin is NOT physical death, it is to be CUT OFF from the Father. That is hell, where we would all have blood squeezed out of our pores from the torment of being separated from God. Jesus suffered OUR second death beginning in Gethsemane to pay the penalty for every sin.
This is very important, so please pray about it.
INCLUSIVE RECKONINGHow many of you have heard "The only way to harmonize Matthew 12:40 with other scripture is to understand it in the light of inclusive reckoning of time"? They say that the death of Jesus on Friday afternoon till His Sunday morning resurrection is covered by Inclusive reckoning to explain why Jesus said "three days and three nights" in Matthew 12:40. Here is the quote in question:
For as Jonas 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. Matthew 12:40
It is true that when Hebrews counted days it could indicate any part of the first day as the beginning- till any part of the last day as the end of the said time period. So if it is written "in three days" the beginning could commence with the last minutes of the first day, and the end could be on the sunrise of the third day so that it only means touching three days of the common calendar. This is well known by all scholars. But when Jesus said expressly "three days and three nights" did he mean this in that same way? Why would He be specific and list days AND nights if He didn't mean what He said?
I believe that Inclusive reckoning should be subjected to these descriptors, and if the Creator says "Three days and nights" He would know what He is talking about. The inclusivity would then be subjected to the division of day and night.
Here is what James White said about Matthew 12:40:
The text must be explained so as to harmonize with the multitude of texts that positively declare the resurrection of Jesus on the third day. If Jesus lay in the tomb three days and three nights, then he arose on the fourth day, and not on the third, according to the Scriptures. Scripture must explain Scripture-then a harmony may be seen throughout the whole.
Jesus never was in the heart of this globe, called earth; heart being the center, or at least in the earth, beneath its surface...Then earth in this case must mean the powers of earth, or the power and control of wicked men, and the Devil. For proof that earth does not always mean this literal globe, see the following Scriptures:
"O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord." -Jeremiah 22:29. Here the people are addressed, and not this globe.-See also Deuteronomy 32:1; Isaiah 1, 2; and many other texts. On that ever-memorable night, that the Lord's supper, and washing the saints' feet were instituted, our Lord and Master was betrayed into the hands of sinners. He, knowing that the time had come for the powers of earth and hell to triumph over him, a short season, passed over the brook Cedron, where he was taken and bound. As they came to take Jesus, he said to them- "When I was daily with you in the temple ye stretched forth no hands against me; but this is YOUR HOUR, and the POWER OF DARKNESS." -Luke 23:53
Thus, Jesus was in the heart of the earth, or controlled and held by the powers of earth and hell, from the time that he was betrayed into the hands of sinners, until he arose from the dead, in triumph and victory. Jesus was as much in the heart of the earth when before Pilate, and on the cross, as he was while in Joseph's tomb. With this view, all the Scripture testimony will harmonize. {PTJW December 1849, p. 39.2}
So, what Jesus meant by saying "three days and three nights" gets confused when people think it only means that Jesus was IN THE GRAVE for three days and three nights. He wasn't. He was only in the grave from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. But He was cut off from the Father suffering our second death from Thursday night in Gethsemane until Sunday Morning.
Seventh-Day Adventists know to begin the Sabbath at Sunset because of the Creation account of "and the evening and the morning was the first day." This same sacred calendar applies to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
When the sun had set on Thursday evening, during the last supper, Jesus said "now is the hour of the power of Darkness" and He crossed the Kidron and accepted the sins of the whole world upon His head and drank the cup of the wrath of the Father against sin in Gethsemane, accepting His "baptism of blood". Thus began the three days and three nights sign of Jonah. And as soon as the sun cracked over the horizon on Sunday morning it completed this timeframe of three days and three nights. He was resurrected on the third DAY, after three nights.
THIS is the correct inclusive reckoning of this text.
THIS IS THE SIGN OF JONAH! It is the ONLY sign that the wicked and adulterous generation will receive.
