Q: What is a ``sign from Heaven''?

Question

In the course of the Incarnation, Jesus performed countless miracles, but he gave only one sign from Heaven.  In what sense is the entombment of Jesus for three days and three nights a sign from Heaven?  How does a sign from Heaven differ from a miracle?

Answer 1

Matthew 16:1-4 in the NIV reads

16 1.The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.2 He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ 3 and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.[a] 4 A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away.

Many months earlier Jesus had mentioned “the sign of Jonah.” What he then added can help us to perceive his point: Jesus’ enemies could forecast the weather but were unable to comprehend spiritual matters. For instance, what about “the sign of Jonah”? After spending about three days in the belly of a great fish, God’s prophet Jonah preached in Nineveh and thereby became a sign to that capital city of Assyria. Jesus generation had “the sign of Jonah” when Christ spent parts of three days in a tomb and was resurrected. His disciples proclaimed the evidence of that event, and so Jesus was a sign to that generation.​- Matthew 12:39-41(please read this in your own bible I believe it helps to clarify things).

Notice when you reflect on what Jonah went through being in the  huge fish that swallowed him then he came out as if resurrected.

Jonah 1:17 17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah 2:1,2
 1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. 2 He said:
"In my distress I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
    and you listened to my cry.

It would be similar with Jesus but even more miraculous. Jesus foretold that he would die and on the third day be raised or resurrected from the dead. Jesus makes the connection between himself and Jonah at

Matthew 12:39-41

39 He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.

You asked " In what sense is the entombment of Jesus for three days and three nights a sign from Heaven?

It was not just the three days and three nights in the tomb (just like Jonah was in the huge fish 3 days and 3 nights) but it was the resurrection from the dead that made it a sign from heaven (just like it was a sign from heaven when Jonah in a sense was resurrected from his grave in the huge fish after so much time).

Comments

Of course resurrection is necessary; exhumation was not in view.  Jesus said, "Destroy this temple and I shall raise it...."  Entombment which exceeds three days and three nights is not a fulfillment of the sign, nor is entombment of a duration less than three days and three nights.

[ And beware that you do not buy into the heresy of self-resurrection; Jesus here is speaking of the construction of the new, living temple, which is raised or erected upon the foundation of the Apostles and the Prophets, Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone.  Jesus was raised from the dead by God the Father; to argue that Jesus raised himself from the dead is to argue that Jesus did not die. ]

You must remember that the challengers demanding the sign are legal experts, and cunning to the extreme.  After all, at its essence, Talmudic Judaism is an elaborate and hypocritical scheme devised to allow a man to violate the Spirit of the Law while remaining within the Letter of the Law.  Men of such mindset would not fail to notice, call attention to, and capitalize upon the slightest discrepancy in fulfillment of the sign.  Had the sign not been fulfilled to perfection, the Jew would have used the fact to demolish the Christian Faith.

For two thousand years now, there has been no challenge from the Jew concerning fulfillment of the sign.  This profound silence on the part of the Jew constitutes one of the strongest possible arguments that the sign was fulfilled perfectly, and that Jesus was entombed for precisely three days and three nights.  All told, there is the testimony of Jesus himself, the testimony of multiple writers of the Scripture, the testimony of Rome, and the testimony of the silence of the Jew; all of these witness that Jesus was entombed for three days and three nights.

Only the Papist and the Protestant are so foolish and so stupid as to turn a blind eye toward this wealth of testimony, and to swallow the preposterous argument that a fragment of a day may be reckoned as a full day.  Such an argument would be laughed out of court; and the challenge of the Jew is nothing other than a legal challenge to the authority of Jesus.  This being the case, there is no doubt that those bringing the challenge have subjected the evidence to the most intense of scrutiny.

Those who hold to and observe the "In by Good Friday, Out by Easter Sunday" tradition do mock and blaspheme Christ Jesus, for Jesus himself declared that the period of the Entombment is the sole sign from Heaven of the validity of his claim that his works and teaching were authorized by God the Father.

Jesus died on Wednesday; Jesus was entombed on Wednesday, just prior to sunset; Jesus was raised from the dead on Saturday, just prior to sunset.

Note well that, whether one reckons by the Talmudic concept of a day as sunset-to-sunset, or by the Roman concept of a day as midnight-to-midnight, it cannot be disputed that Jesus was raised on the Sabbath.  Accordingly, the Christian has no Scriptural basis for observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, as the "Lord's Day".  And the notion that Sunday is the "Christian Sabbath" is nothing more than the rubbish of tradition.

RLH

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realy?i can use this in my object