The Sign of Jonah - the Days

Jesus became highly frustrated at the Temple.  The people wanted signs that He was the Messiah sent from God.  So, He gave them the Sign of Jonah.

Three days and three nights, then Jesus would rise victorious.  Christians find this exhilarating, but everyone else rolls their eyes.  Why?  Because, any way it is counted, Jesus was not entombed for three days and three nights.

In the traditional counting of days, they buried Jesus Friday before sunset (the start of the Jewish day) so that the dead would not remain hanging on the Sabbath.  He arose pre-dawn Sunday morning.  That makes two days and two nights, the very end of Friday through Saturday night.

To obtain three days and three nights, an alternate solution places Jesus’ death on a Wednesday.  This is possible since the Passover Sabbath is based on the rising of the full moon and is separate from the weekly Sabbath.  For a Wednesday death, Jesus had to have died in the year 0030 or much later in 0037.  However, this interpretation does not account for the detail stated in John 19:31, which referred to this as a “special Sabbath,” meaning the Passover Sabbath occurred on the Saturday Sabbath.  The “special Sabbath,” occurred in the year 0033.  On that night, the full moon rose in full eclipse, a blood moon (Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:21).

Does that mean the prediction was false?  No.  It means looking at the surface details fails to illuminate the sign Jesus gave.

Prophets regularly spoke in parables.  Jesus was a prophet.  These stories taught righteousness and wisdom to young and old, to the studious and the uneducated.  They relay information more meaningful then simple facts.  Parables convict the soul to fear God and keep His ways.  However, people only learn these things if they ponder the deeper meaning within the stories (Psalm 78:2; Proverbs 1:1-7).

The people Jesus addressed looked for fault not insight, so concluding the sign must only mean “in the tomb” is myopic.  Jonah did not die.  Jesus did not mention death.  Instead, He used the idiom, “in the heart of the earth.”

Jesus explained this phrase in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-23; Mark 4:1-20; Luke 8:1-15).  The earth represented the hearts of men in which God sowed the living word.  Therefore, three days and three nights encompasses more than physical death.  He meant the entire event where God exposed the true hearts of men.

The apostle Paul called that event the ultimate sacrifice of atonement.  Jesus became the sacrifice as well as the only high priest capable of presenting that sacrifice.  He entered the hearts of men and covered their transgressions.  (Romans 3:21-26; Hebrews 2:14-18; Hebrews 9:11-14).

Thursday, Jesus entered Jerusalem and asked His followers to remember as they shared the Passover meal.  Thursday night, He was betrayed by a kiss and solders took Jesus to the High Priest’s house.  There, as law prescribed, the first drops of sacrificial blood fell at dawn.  Then, blood splashed at the hands of governmental leaders.  His blood anointed the public all the way to Golgotha.  As Jesus hung in agony, He asked God to forgive those who committed murder and those who followed their leaders.  Before dawn of the fourth day, Jesus arose as our high priest capable of presenting His blood sacrifice in Heaven’s Holy of Holy.

“The Passion” took three days and three nights to expose the hearts of men.  Only then could anyone see Jonah as a sign that God sent Jesus.

Why Did Jesus HAVE TO Die?

For years, I asked people, “Why did Jesus HAVE TO die?  Why did God insist that was the only way?”  Jesus even begged for a different way.

I received a variety of answers but they all boiled down to one thing: Sin required death.  A holy God cannot let sin go unpunished, we all have sinned, and therefore deserve hell.  The ancient way was animal sacrifice.  Then, God provided a perfect sacrifice to atone for sin, His Son.  For only a sinless sacrifice can take on the curse, thus Jesus had to be sinless and die on a tree.

However, that answer still does not explain why God let sin exist or why it requires death.  The death of Jesus did not end death or sin.  To this day, both happen and will continue to happen.  In fact, it is difficult to prove His death did anything.  We cannot even prove He lived, let alone was resurrected.  All we have physically is the hope that what the Apostles said was true.

Perfectionistic theologies insist that we CANNOT hold God responsible for sin or death.  However, that makes the Creator a fool for starting creation in the first place because one event messed everything up.  If God is not responsible for sin happening, then He is not in control of this universe or our lives.  Sin mastered the Creator.

If God is all-knowing and His plan did NOT include the opportunity for sin, then why place a potential threat to perfection within reach of humans.  Why let Satan have the opportunity of access.  If God did not expect sin to happen, then He is not all knowing, because He did not comprehend the danger of the tree, Satan, or the strength of desire in humans.

Perfectionistic theologies make God weak, because an all-powerful God could have ended sin before or after it happened.  The theology makes God evil because He condemns every sinner to the torment of Hell for an event He should have controlled.

I do not believe that is true.  I do not find God spoken of like that in the Bible.  Actually, I don’t find Perfection Theologies taught in the Bible.  Therefore, there must be a different answer to why Jesus had to die.

God is in control, even when things seem out of control.  God let sin happen.  He let it continue to happen.  Satan did not, and cannot, slink in while God sleeps.  God knows everything that can happen in this universe.  He set up the garden to let humans choose to obey or not.  God did not force anyone to sin, but He is responsible for letting sin happen, every sin.

Death was the legal punishment for sin, either the death of the person who sinned or a sacrificed animal.  But people stopped “cleansing the camp” of those who spread sin.  Occasionally the Israelites purged the country, but the effects were always short lived.  If God wanted the Israelites to stay pure, why did He not step in more often and more dramatically?

From the beginning, God was always quite willing to forgive and occasionally, forget any sin.  That included murder: murder of brother, murder of friends, murder of babies, and murder of Jesus.  Throughout the Bible, God begged for repentance instead of “pass the blame,” lies, or arrogant blindness.  With repentance, comes total forgiveness.  He wants us to know good from evil, as He does.  He believes we can choose good over evil, as He does.  God desires people to be responsible for their sins, just as He is responsible for letting us sin.

Jesus did not die for sin under Mosaic Law.  If so, only the Jews would have been saved.  Plus there is no Mosaic Law that required an innocent person’s death in response to the personal sin of another.  The Jews have always been adamant about that detail.

However, in Genesis 15, God made covenant with Abraham.  God promised Abraham a child and a huge future nation.  All Abraham had was his faith and the promise that all those kids would be faithful.  In a bizarre twist, Abraham did not participate.  God took the responsibility of transgression for both parties.

That is the point where death is required, the price that needed paid.  People sinned; God had to die.  Since God is alive, no one could take His place, therefore Jesus must be God, not a separate person.  God the Father died on the cross.  He did this for every human, past and future, not just for the Jews.

In this death, the Creator of everything showed us how He felt about sin.  Suffering is not God punishing us.  Each sin tortures God like a stripe across His back, like another nail driven in.  Yet, He loves even the worst human.  That is why Jesus had to die a horrible death.

From the beginning, God always took responsibility for letting us sin.  He forgives those who place Him on the cross: past, present, and future.  Forgiveness is available when we acknowledge our need.  The death of Jesus proclaims that death is not the end.  His love gives us reason to repent.

[Lessons learned from Creation’s Parables: Genesis and Standard Science, Sung as One, by Jo Helen Cox.]

[Lessons from God Makes Us Holy, by Jo Helen Cox.  This book is available on Amazon.]

How I View Creation

I prefer a science based creation.  Science describes the world around us, what we can see, taste, hear, and touch.  It also describes what composes our “world,” the subatomic to the cosmic.  When knowledge gets to the edge of understanding, science admits it does not know.  Everyone can make a guess.  Eventually, it rejects theories that the natural evidence does not support.  It holds onto or revives theories that new evidence confirms.  This produces a “standard” of knowledge that modifies as we learn about nature.  Science is based in the reality that anyone, from any background, can study.

That does not mean I reject the Bible.  It contains information that lab tests cannot evaluate.  But we still must discern what we are told.  If Genesis 1 is true, then God created everything, and everything should point to God.  However, that is not what the church teaches.  Most denominations preach a perfect beginning that was corrupted by sin.  Yet, if nothing perfect remains, then there is no physical way to determine if that belief is true, partly true, or completely myth.  Not even believers can prove perfection existed, and they want non-believers to simply accept it as true..  Without any evidence, we must have blind faith in the first chapter of the Bible, the one that tells us God created everything.  That is not a great way to start.

For most of my life, Genesis One, and many other passages, irritated me until I researched what I had been taught.  I needed to find out if what I believed was a myth.  What I found was equal parts frustrating and amazing.

Christian Creationism is not one doctrine, but many.  Several exist today.  Doctrines contradict each other on how to interpret the Bible and nature.  Some even contradict themselves.  Creationism changes as theological beliefs change.  All those things are problems, as it shows Creationism is not simple or straightforward.  If Christians cannot agree on what the Bible says about God’s creation, how can an unbeliever trust anything spiritual in the Bible as true?

Like science, Creationism changes with our knowledge of nature.  That is understandable.  Even Augustine of Hippo said it would (in c. 400 AD).  However, religion resists and rejects change.  It will hold onto tradition even when the tradition is not useful, even when it is a lie.  They hold on so tight that tradition becomes dogmatic.  Promoters of Creationism say they have the truth, but they distort the evidence to fit their concept of nature.  They twist what scientists say to make them sound foolish.  Anyone who opposes their conclusions is promptly condemned.  Why would a believer or an unbeliever choose to follow such people?

For most of the last 600 years, European science (naturalism) was a Christian institution run by priests and clergymen.  Those people actually looked at the world and discovered that their beliefs about nature were wrong.  Yet, Christianity slowly lost its leadership in science because too many leaders rejected the evidence because it did not match their interpretation of Genesis.  There are Muslim groups who do the exact same thing.  How is “our” belief better when both reject parts of what is found in nature?

Because of the various beliefs, I wrote down all the creation details I could find and hunted for biblical reference.  I also wanted to see how much of the text matched science.  Sadly, I found very few details from Creationism as biblical.  However, many of the biblical details “almost matched” science.  There was something I was missing.

After about five years of daily searching, I had an epiphany.  Genesis One never used the word “perfect.”  Removing perfectionism let Genesis 1 match science perfectly.  Not just almost, but every detail in the chapter matched.  Removing perfectionism let Genesis 2-11 match science almost perfectly.  Only a few details do not align.

That in itself is miraculous.  Science actually verified Bronze Age creation stories as truth.  But removing perfectionism did something more amazing.  It changed my perception of humanity.  The God of creation stopped being angry.  He loves us with joy.  We are part of His good creation.  Our Creator turned into the Abba Jesus adored.

[Lessons learned from Creation’s Parables: Genesis and Standard Science, Sung as One, by Jo Helen Cox.]