Inquiring Minds… The Sign of Jonah

Tim Moore: So Nathan, we’re referring obviously to Matthew 12:39-40, where Jesus points to an Old Testament prophet’s tragic experience as a reference to His own death. What does He say there in that passage?

Nathan Jones: Well, the context is the Pharisees are trying to get Jesus, trick Jesus. They’re asking from Him a sign to prove that He’s the Messiah, not like He hasn’t healed and fed 5,000, oh, they’ve had plenty of signs, but this is how Jesus answers to the Pharisees, Matthew 12:39. “And he answered them and say to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign and no sign will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.'”

Tim Moore: All right, so the great fish. The New American Standard says, “the sea monster.” And of course, many people going back to the King James, refer to Jonah having spent time in the belly of a whale, the largest creature we can think of being a sea creature even today. But let’s actually go back to the original text. So we know from Jonah 1:17 that the Lord appointed what is called a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish for three days and three nights. Again, Chapter 1:17, and I would just point out some contrast, before we dive into the comparisons. First of all, unlike Jesus Christ, Jonah was a reluctant prophet. In other words, he ran from God, which is how he ended up in the belly of a fish.

Nathan Jones: And you know, when it comes to fish or a whale, there’s always a debate about which it is. I think we’ve got to look back at that time period that the way we categorize animals today is very different. Like today, we say, “Well, why aren’t there dinosaurs mentioned in the old history?” Well, no one called them dinosaurs until the 1800s. Likewise, no one would differentiate between a fish and a whale.

Tim Moore: No.

Nathan Jones: I think the best statement says sea monster, it was a creature that was way out into the ocean and it was terrifying to people. Plus whales tend to have the right apparatus. Of course, they have a place where oxygen is…

Tim Moore: We’re going to get talking about whales.

Nathan Jones: And all.

Tim Moore: Yeah, they do have a way, and some of them can actually swallow whole people. I’ve got an example of that.

Nathan Jones: Oh, yeah?

Tim Moore: But before we get into the creature itself, just the idea that Jonah didn’t obey God, Christ did, so sometimes even these analogies that are used in the New Testament break down. Joseph is an analogy for Christ, a type, but Joseph obviously was a little haughty in sharing with his brothers, Jesus was meek and mild, so obviously sometimes these analogies break down because Jesus always submitted to the will of the Father. Jonah was, again, a reluctant prophet, as I like to call him.

Nathan Jones: I’m not sure the Pharisees were actually hung up on that, whether Jonah was reluctant or Jesus, they didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about.

Tim Moore: No, they didn’t understand. No, I’m just for the application for us today.

Nathan Jones: For us today, yeah, but for the Pharisees, what is He talking about, three days and three nights? But I think the key to that passage, Tim, is very important, is that He said, “three days and three nights,” and let’s be specific. Jonah was in three days and three nights, not one and a half days, and one night or two days. If we’re going to proceed forward, we have to take the text exactly what it says and it says three days and three nights.

Tim Moore: You know, that’s a great point. If you, again, look at Jonah 1:17, the words originally in Hebrew, and I’m sure I will not pronounce them correctly, but twice we have the word shalosh or three, so shalosh yom, meaning three days, and then shalosh layil, which means nights, three days, three nights.

Nathan Jones: Easy for you to say.

Tim Moore: Well, yeah, I’ve been to Israel a time or two. But it’s no question that what is presented is that Jonah spent a long period of time in the belly of some creature, as we’ve said, and even Jonah recognized that it was miraculous that he would not have been dead already after that long period of time. So speaking of the whale, I’ll again refer to Chapter 1:17 of Jonah.

The original word for great fish was gadol dag, and we’ll put that on the screen for you to see, but it again means simply “a great fish.” And the largest sea creature today that’s found in the Mediterranean Sea is the 80 ton sperm whale, and what’s interesting about the sperm whale is it cannot chew its food. It just gulps and swallow’s whole, and so it’s thought, well, perhaps it’s swallowed whole this man and he survived on the air that was down within its digestive track, or its belly.

Nathan Jones: Yeah, it’s not like Pinocchio where they’re on a ship and they’re sitting on the tongue or Veggie Tales, you know, where they’re sitting there on the ship and the tongue. There would’ve been a section of the whale where the oxygen is stored and he might’ve got jammed up in there. He obviously couldn’t have been sitting in the digestive juices for three days. He would’ve been burned and maybe that’s why some people say that when Jonah got out, he had a physically different appearance. People looked at him and said, “You know, maybe he was bleached pale or something like that.” There have been stories that I’ve read…

Tim Moore: Yes.

Nathan Jones: Where people have been swallowed by whales and they do actually get their skin bleached.

Tim Moore: There was an account in 1891, funny you mention that, of a man by the name of James Bartley. He supposedly was a sailor on the whaling ship, the Star of the East, and he supposedly fell overboard in the region of Falkland Islands down near Argentina and was found and reports vary, either 15 or 36 hours later, as they were able to harpoon and capture the whale, and as they sliced it open, James Bartley fell out, and he indeed was bleached.

Now, those newspaper accounts that appeared all around the world in the late 1800s have been debunked in some regards because there were varying accounts and they couldn’t find later to go back and actually interview James Bartley himself, but there was a lot of credibility at least in the immediacy of this event that something had happened. And Nathan, you know, as recently as 2021 here in the United States, a lobster diver off the coast of Cape Cod, his name is Michael Packard, was swallowed whole by a humpback whale.

Nathan Jones: Whoa.

Tim Moore: And Michael testified, there’s a picture of him that we’ll put on the screen of him sitting in the hospital bed and he said, “I knew I was doomed because all of a sudden I was gulped down and I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m getting out of here.'” And fortunately for him, the whale fairly quickly spit him out, but I think he had the same sense that Jonah did, “Oh my goodness, there’s no hope, I’m despairing.”

Nathan Jones: What a terrifying thing because you’re basically the living dead. I mean, Jonah 2 says, “I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and He answered me out of the belly of Sheol I cried out.” You know, Sheol was death.

Tim Moore: Yes.

Nathan Jones: Now it’s going back to what the Pharisees would have heard, Jesus said, “The sign of Jonah, three days, three nights.” They were learned, they understood Scriptures, so they would’ve been known that He was talking about being in the belly of the whale and being in, or the fish or the sea monster, but whatever it was, maybe some people say it was a fish specifically designed for this.

Tim Moore: Yeah.

Nathan Jones: I don’t know about that.

Tim Moore: I know.

Nathan Jones: But no matter what, the indication is the Sheol, death. So Jonah was the living dead and Jesus says, “I will be the living dead like Jonah for three days and three nights.”

Tim Moore: You know, it’s fascinating to me, whenever I take pilgrim groups to Jaffa, we talk about Jonah because he fled from the Lord by going down to Jaffa, going down onto a ship, going down into the hold of a ship. The crew cast him overboard down into the sea once a storm rose up and he was swallowed down the gullet of a great fish and he went down to the depths of the ocean, down, down, down as he’s running away from the Lord.

Only when he came to the end of himself and cried out, “Lord, save me and I’m willing to obey You, finally,” was he vomited up, he went up to Nineveh, and so the progression down, down, down versus up, up, up. And Jesus Christ, obviously, for our sake, went down to the grave. He went down into hades and so we know that He went down, not because of any, again, disobedience on His part, but because He was suffering our punishment and our fate, and indeed the wrath of God.

Nathan Jones: And we knew that when He became sin on the cross, He was separated from the Father. Likewise in death, for those who are in rebellion against God, they are separated from the Father. They go to a compartment called torments in hades. Most people think that when you die and you’re an unbeliever, you go right to Hell, but that’s not what the Bible teaches.

The Bible teaches that people go to Torments or a place of holding, waiting for that final Great White Throne Judgment, which we read about later in Revelation, and then are sent to the lake of fire or hell. So Jesus was separated from the Father, just like Jonah was separated from humanity and he experienced death, but he was the living dead because even though our bodies are dead, the spirit’s alive and well and Jesus was alive when He went into Sheol.

Tim Moore: So the beautiful thing is, Jonah was vomited up, and of course I have to tell you just a little disgusting fact that every 13-year-old or eight-year-old boy would love to hear is that these sperm whales have a habit of vomiting up a substance from their own intestine that is highly prized throughout the Middle East and they gather this substance that washes up to shore and they make perfumes out of it. It’s hard to imagine.

Nathan Jones: Is that where it comes from.

Tim Moore: Well, some of it, and so sure enough, they do have a habit of vomiting things up. Jonah was vomited up. Jesus, through His own power, was raised up and He ascended up to the right hand of God the Father, so there are some parallels, even though, again, the person of Jonah, he was not Christ-like in his obedience.

Nathan Jones: No, not at all.

Tim Moore: Not initially.

Nathan Jones: And it’s interesting, too, that when He said three days and three nights, going back to that, is that growing up, and this was something that I always struggled with and I think this is why we’re addressing this, this was my inquiring mind, I want to know, was Jesus really in the grave for three days and three nights because we looked to the Jewish Sabbath, which happens to be Saturday, and take it into account the Jewish people, it’s sundown to the next one, or what do you want to call it?

Tim Moore: Sundown to sundown.

Nathan Jones: Sundown to sundown, yeah. And so I was like, “Well, that seems like He was only one day in the grave and two nights.” It didn’t add up.

Tim Moore: Okay, so you’re talking about the traditional view…

Nathan Jones: The traditional view, yes.

Tim Moore: That Jesus was actually crucified on Friday. We ironically refer to it as Good Friday, the most horrific event in all of history, but it is good news to us. That’s what the Gospel is about. The Gospel is Jesus Christ was crucified, dead and buried. He was raised on the third day, as we say, but that lends itself to this Friday understanding of the Crucifixion, and that really is a Catholic understanding, and I think you hit on something very important, Nathan. Gentiles say, “Well, Jesus was crucified before the Sabbath. The Sabbath is on Saturday; therefore the Crucifixion has to be on Friday.”

Of course, that would seem to fit with 1 Corinthians 5:7, which talks about Jesus being our Passover Lamb, and so many would say, “Aha, the Lord was crucified on a day prior to the Passover, and since it’s referred to in Scripture as a Sabbath, that would’ve been Friday.” And so you think, even the reference I just used, He was raised on the third day, so He crucified on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that’s three days, the third day He’s resurrected, but there’s a problem with that math because that’s only, as you said, two nights and one day.

Nathan Jones: Yeah, it doesn’t make sense.

Tim Moore: It doesn’t make sense, which then brings us to another idea that some have suggested that He was crucified on Thursday. Why would that be?

Nathan Jones: Well, it’s interesting that it has to be, again, we make this point is that this has to be three days and three nights to fulfill prophecy exactly and those who spiritualized Scripture say, “close enough,” but when it comes to prophecy, the Lord fulfills prophecy in exact details, so really the Crucifixion couldn’t have happened Friday. What we learn is that this was a week of, they were celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and so that day would’ve been considered a High Holy Day leading up to a Sabbath, so actually that week that Jesus was crucified, there was two Sabbaths.

Tim Moore: Two sabbaths, so what we understand, and again it takes a little bit of diving into the Old Testament to recognize this.

Nathan Jones: It’s hard to figure, but…

Tim Moore: And some have Gentiles have discounted all those Jewish rites, and so we just expect and assume Sabbath is only and always on a Saturday, but they were High Sabbaths, and that is exactly what is referred to. In John 19:31, the Apostle John, writing his account of the Gospel, talks about the fact that there were indeed two Sabbaths. He says this in Chapter 19:31. “Then the Jews, because it was the day of Preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a High Day, asked Pilate that their legs might be broken that they might be taken away.”

In other words, John is suggesting this was a special Sabbath, not just the normal Sabbath, a High Sabbath, and we absolutely believe that. I’ll also point out for our viewers that the Berean Literal Bible, and you can thank the Bereans who Paul praised because they took every word literally and they studied the Scripture to learn for themselves, but the Berean Literal Bible actually describes the Resurrection as taking place after the Sabbaths, so that resurrection day Sunday was after two Sabbaths.

Nathan Jones: Two Sabbaths.

Tim Moore: At least two.

Nathan Jones: Interestingly. Well, the Gospel of John, if we go to John 19:31, he makes it very clear that the Sabbath after the Crucifixion wasn’t a regular Sabbath. It was actually a Feast Day Sabbath, said the Jews, therefore, “Because it was the day of Preparation, so that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath for that Sabbath was a High Day, asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away,” so right there it tells us, “Hey, this is a special week. There are two Sabbaths this week.”

Tim Moore: Yeah, as I just said, that that verse is so key. And we also have John 2:19, which seems to support possibly a Thursday, excuse me, a Thursday date for the Crucifixion because Jesus said that if you were to destroy this temple, we you know in hindsight He’s referring to His own body, that He would raise it up in three days. And the priest said, “Raise it in three days? It’s taken generations to build this new, expanded temple, many, many years and you’re going to raise it up in three days?” Some would say, “Well, that means Thursday crucified, to go to Friday, one full day, Saturday, Sunday,” but still there’s something missing in that math isn’t there?

Nathan Jones: Yes, and frankly, Thursday would’ve been the High Feast Day, so that would’ve been the Sabbath Day. So Jesus then celebrated the Passover with the apostles a day earlier, and that would’ve been Tuesday, so that he would then be sacrificed on Wednesday, so I think that the logical thing, and we have this great article, folks, on our website at ChristInProphecy.org.

In the search, it’s easy, just look up Jonah, and it goes through all the different arguments about which day it is, and I love this article because it breaks it down really easy and provides the evidence that Tim and I are, that Jesus Christ died on a Wednesday and was resurrected actually late Saturday night, which would’ve been Sunday, according to the Jewish reckoning.

Tim Moore: So let’s dig into that because we not only have an old article, which is tremendously insightful, we have a new magazine, the Lamplighter Magazine, which addresses this very thing. The article there is entitled “A Whale of a Tale,” just as I talked about today.

Nathan Jones: There you go.

Tim Moore: And another more academic article that talks about the date of Jesus’ Crucifixion. There’s one other thing that is a problematic about the Thursday date, and that is an inference from even the meal you mentioned Jesus had with His disciples. They had the Last Supper, and the main elements of that supper we know were wine and also bread, but there’s no mention of a lamb. In other words, they didn’t have the Passover lamb at this supper according to what we read, and so it would infer that this was not actually the Passover per se, even though Jesus said he was looking forward to eating that meal. He was getting ready for Passover. So this brings us to the last…

Nathan Jones: And before you say it, and this is a key point that you’re making, is that Jesus died at the very same moment that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed, so He couldn’t have been on Thursday because that’s not when the lambs would’ve been sacrificed.

Tim Moore: Right.

Nathan Jones: As the priests were sacrificing, were, excuse me, slitting their throats, Jesus Christ was dying on the cross.

Tim Moore: So let’s go to Scripture for even more evidence, if you will, that tells us that Jesus was sacrificed, or crucified, before a Sabbath, and that there was an intervening day between these two Sabbaths, as we talked about. So if we turn to Mark 16:1, it says that the women came, and this is exactly how it reads. “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Salome, brought, or bought spices so that they might come and anoint Him.”

So again, the key being after the Sabbath was over, they went and bought spices. They would not have been able to buy or sell on the Sabbath itself. All the shops would’ve been closed because of the Sabbath. But then if we look at Luke 23:56, and folks, this is why we say you have to study the Word so that you can gain understanding. We always advocate that. But in Luke 23:56, it talks about the fact that they came after the Sabbath to actually prepare the spices. This is exactly how it reads on one page before. It said, “Then they returned and prepared the spices and on the Sabbath they rested, according to the commandment.”

So they bought the spices after the Sabbath, then they prepared the spices, and then the Sabbath occurred and they rested. So that suggests that they bought the spices on Friday, the High Sabbath was on Thursday. They obviously went to the tomb the first day of the week Sunday, and so that obviously means that Christ was crucified on Wednesday.

Nathan Jones: Absolutely, and it shows that He was, if you go back to the time period, when did this happen? I mean, what year, because if you go in the Friday, everyone says Jesus died on 33 AD. Well, that’s because the Passover happened on that Friday. But if we look…

Tim Moore: On Saturday that year, that year, so it would’ve been…

Nathan Jones: Yeah, I’m sorry, the Crucifixion would’ve been on Friday. But if we go with the two Sabbaths, which it clearly the passage is talking about, that starts Jesus’ ministry at 27 AD, it ran for 3 1/2 years. Was there two High Sabbath during that week? Yes, there was.

Tim Moore: Yes, there was, in 30 AD. So folks, what we’re suggesting very clearly is that Jesus was sacrificed as the Passover Lamb. Jesus was crucified on Wednesday. He died before it was sunset, but of course, the Pharisees didn’t want the other two thieves hanging there on that High Sabbath, so they came to Pilate asking that their legs would be broken so that they would die more quickly and not desecrate the High Sabbath. Indeed, they were, their legs were broken, but Jesus was already dead.

So He went into the tomb that Wednesday evening, we could say, prior to sunset, so that He was in the tomb very quickly shrouded and buried. That’s why the women wanted to go back and anoint his body after the fact and so he is in the tomb Wednesday, the first night during the hours of darkness, the Thursday afternoon, Thursday night, Friday, daytime, Friday night, Saturday daytime, Saturday evening, and then sometime before the dawn, the light bursts from that tomb and He was resurrected, because when the women went at dawn, He was already gone.

Nathan Jones: Yes.

Tim Moore: The tomb was empty.

Nathan Jones: And Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James, when Jesus, Mary Magdalene was weeping, and Jesus, she wanted to embrace Him, He said, “Don’t touch Me, I haven’t gone back to my Father,” shows that He had just resurrected. He hadn’t gone back up to Heaven. He hadn’t led that train of captives from the paradise side of hades up to their glorious life in Heaven with the Father, so he was kind of in the middle there, but they bear our witness, and you know, it’s significant, too, Tim, that two women were the first witnesses for Jesus’ resurrection. Back in that time period…

Tim Moore: Yes.

Nathan Jones: A woman’s witness wasn’t considered legal. You need a lot more women to equal one man when it came to a witness, yet the Lord came to women first, and then of course, to John and Peter, and then eventually, as He returned during those days, that between His ascension, but it just, to me, it blows my mind that, you know, people say, “Oh, the Bible’s sexist or Christianity is sexist.” Jesus came to women first, even though they could have discounted their testimony because they were women.

Tim Moore: No, Jesus elevated the role of women, the prominence. He had them amongst His followers, and obviously to this day, dare I say, there’s as many or more women sometimes who follow after the Lord God than some of us men, and so we respect and revere the role of women within the Church, and obviously, our own mothers who helped raise us to be followers of the true and living God.

Nathan, I think that some Western people would say, “But what about this aspect of the third day?” So even the disciples on the road to Emmaus, when interacting Jesus in His resurrected body, they were talking to Him and they said in Luke 24, “It is the third day since these things happened.” And we say, “Well, third day, that means it couldn’t have been three intervening days.” But again, in the Jewish vernacular, the third day would’ve meant there have been three days since the events of the Crucifixion took place, and so again, if you key on any one verse, you can get a wrong interpretation, which is why it’s so important that we chase through all the accounts and we put all the pieces together.

The Lord did not mean for us to be confused, but the various Gospel writers were emphasizing different points at times, and yet they all give a picture of the same event, and by studying them all, and referring back to Jonah himself, we get a better understanding that Jesus was crucified, I believe, on Wednesday. He was resurrected on Sunday in perfect fulfillment of the prophecy.

Nathan Jones: Absolutely, so this would’ve been the order of events. Jesus and His disciples ate the Passover meal Tuesday evening, April 24th, one day early. Then after the Passover meal, Jesus and His disciples departed the upper room, went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Then Jesus was betrayed and rested early Tuesday evening. His trials lasted through Tuesday night and early into Wednesday morning.

Then Jesus was crucified at 9:00 AM on Wednesday morning, April 25th. At noon, darkness filled the land, and at 3:00 PM Jesus died. He was then buried on Wednesday after sunset. The two Mary’s waited after the High Sabbath on Thursday, the 26th, to purchase the spices. They brought the spices on Friday the 27th, and rested again for the next Sabbath, April 28th, and then returned to the tomb Sunday morning, April 29th. And there you go; we’ve got three days and three nights.

Tim Moore: Three days and three nights. You know, the reality is, Nathan, we are pretty emphatic about believing that Jesus was crucified on Wednesday, but we will not separate or disassociate ourselves from others who might disagree because it is most important that Jesus did die, that He was buried, that He was resurrected, and so we’re not going to, again, disassociate from someone who disagrees with us on the exact timing.

But I will say this. In Matthew, again, Chapter 12:38-41, Jesus calling that generation evil and adulterous for their request for a sign, even though He’d given them many signs, and He said this to the Pharisees. “The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, someone greater than Jonah is here.” And anybody today who gets kind of wrapped around the axle on the timing and leads them over into disbelief, is denigrating the fact that Jesus did die, that He was resurrected, and He is far, far greater than Jonah.

Nathan Jones: Absolutely.

Closing

Tim Moore: Absolutely. Well, you know, folks, some again would say the exact timing of Jesus’ death, and even the length of His time in the tomb does not matter, and they would assert that just as the date of His birth is less important than the fact that He became incarnate. What matters is the fact that He was crucified, dead and buried, then rose again.

Nathan Jones: And we would agree that the Gospel is the key to our faith. Jesus was born, He was crucified and He did die, but He was buried in a borrowed tomb, but He raised by his own power again, and He ascended to the right hand of God the Father. Our faith is in vain if those facts are not true.

Tim Moore: But we also know that the testimony of God’s Word is faithful to the smallest detail, and as was demonstrated in His birth, and throughout His life, Jesus fulfilled every prophecy, and He declared that the literal and historic experience of Jonah would be fulfilled in His own death and burial. We take Jesus Christ at His word.

Nathan Jones: And because we do, we also believe Him when He said, “I am coming again soon.” We believe all the promises made to us and to all who put their trust in Him.

Tim Moore: Jesus offered the prophecy of Jonah in response to the Pharisees’ demand for a sign. He called them an evil and adulterous generation because they had seen many signs and yet refused to believe. Later he would chastise His disciple Thomas for his reluctance to believe. Jesus would say the same thing to you today. Do not be unbelieving, but believing. Seeing the resurrected Christ, Thomas replied, “My Lord and my God.” We pray that Jesus’ next words apply to you, as they have to us. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Like Thomas, we hope that you have cried out to Jesus Christ, “My Lord and my God.” From all of us here at Lamb & Lion Ministries, Godspeed!

Announcer: The Lamb & Lion Ministry’s Annual Conference is just around the corner and registration is now open. The conference will be held in Denton, Texas, on June 6th and 7th, beginning Friday evening, and running all day Saturday. Our theme this year is “The Greatest Sign of All.” Our dynamic speakers will give you and your guests a firsthand perspective on the greatest prophetic sign God is manifesting before our eyes today, the preservation and protection of Israel. Featured speakers include Mottel Baleston, Baruch Korman, Dan and Meg Price, Avi Mizrachi, Tim Moore and Nathan Jones, with special video appearances by Jonathan Cahn, Mike Huckabee and Jan Markell. You will be blessed and encouraged by the powerful lineup of prophetic messages celebrating the faithfulness of our blessed hope. Registration is only $20, which covers the cost of registration itself and a Chick-fil-A lunch on site. Visit ChristInProphecy.org for additional details and register today. You won’t want to miss the blessing we have in store for you this June. We hope to see you there!

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