Matthew Chapter 12: The Sign of Jonah

Bible Answer Man Podcast with Hank Hanegraaff

On today’s Bible Answer Man broadcast (10/18/21), Hank returns to the Gospel of Matthew, picking back up where he left off in chapter 12. In verse 38, we see the Pharisees and teachers of the law ask Jesus for a sign. Jesus rebukes them and says that no sign shall be given, except the sign of the prophet Jonah, “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” (Matthew 12:40 NIV). Hank has received numerous questions regarding this passage over his decades of hosting the broadcast, one of which is “Was Jesus really in the grave for three days and three nights?” The next question that inevitably follows is whether it is indeed plausible to believe that someone could survive for three days and nights in the belly of a big fish. In this account, Jesus not only provides corroboration for this miracle, but He used it as the basis for prophesying His own resurrection. As such, Jonah’s miraculous rescue from the waters of the sea is a type of Jesus’ miraculous resurrection—a resurrection that serves as an earnest for our own resurrections when Jesus appears a second time and transforms Paradise lost into Paradise restored.