Jonah was one of the great prophets of Israel and he had been called out by God to preach to an Assyrian city named Nineveh and to proclaim its pending doom. Jonah fled on a ship to Tarshish, however, and when a great storm began to rock the boat he was thrown overboard and swallowed by a large fish. After three days in the fish, however, he was brought up alive and duly went into the city.
Jesus spoke of this three-day internment in the stomach of the fish as "the sign of Jonah" and said that it was the only sign he was prepared to give to the unbelieving Jews. During 1976 Ahmed Deedat of the Islamic Propagation Centre in Durban published a booklet entitled What was the Sign of Jonah?, a title which leads the reader to expect a studied exposition of the subject. Instead one finds that Deedat does not answer his own question at all but ventures into an attack on the statement made by Jesus and endeavours to refute it. His arguments are based entirely on two suppositions, namely that if Jonah had been alive throughout his sojourn in the fish, then Jesus must have been alive in the tomb after being taken down from the cross; and if Jesus was crucified on a Friday and rose on the following Sunday morning, then he could not have been three days and three nights in the tomb. We shall consider these two objections in order and will thereafter proceed to analyse the whole subject to see what the Sign of Jonah really was.
In his booklet Deedat takes some of the words in the
text quoted above out of their context and makes the
statement read "As Jonah was ... so shall the Son of
man be" and concludes:
Although Jesus had only said that the likeness between
him and Jonah would be in the period of time they were
each to undergo an internment - Jonah in a fish, Jesus
in the heart of the earth - Deedat omits this
qualifying reference and claims that Jesus must have
been like Jonah in other ways as well, extending the
likeness to include the living state of Jonah inside
the fish. When Jesus' statement is read as a whole,
however, it is quite clear that the likeness is
confined to the time factor. As Jonah was three days
and three nights in the stomach of the fish, so Jesus
would be a similar period in the heart of the earth.
One cannot stretch this further, as Deedat does, to
say that as Jonah was ALIVE in the fish, so Jesus
would be alive in the tomb. Jesus did not say this and
such an interpretation does not arise from his saying
but is read into it. Furthermore, in speaking of his
coming crucifixion, Jesus on another occasion used a
similar saying which proves the point quite adequately:
By omitting the qualifying reference to the time
period in Jonah's case, Deedat makes the saying of
Jesus read "As Jonah was ... so shall the Son of man
be" and it is from this unrestricted likeness that he
seeks to extend the comparison to the state of the
prophet in the fish. But if we follow the same method
with the other verse quoted, we come to the exact
opposite conclusion. In this case the statement would
read: "As the serpent ... so shall the Son of man be"
and the state of the serpent was always a dead one.
This shows quite plainly that in each case Jesus was
not intending to extend the likeness between himself
and the prophet or object he mentions to the question
of life or death but solely to the very comparisons he
expressly sets forth. So we see that Deedat's first
objection falls entirely to the ground. A contradictory
conclusion automatically results from his line of
reasoning and no objection or argument which negates
itself can ever be considered with any degree of
seriousness.
Deedat's ignorance of the Jewish method of computing
periods of days and nights and their contemporary
colloquialisms leads him to make a serious mistake
about Jesus' statement and he proceeds to make much
the same mistake about his prophecy that he would be
three nights in the tomb as well. The expression three
days and three nights is the sort of expression that
we never, speaking English in the twentieth century,
use today. We must obviously therefore seek its meaning
according to its use as a Hebrew colloquialism in the
first century and are very likely to err if we judge
or interpret it according to the language structure or
figures of speech in a very different language in a
much later age.
We never, speaking English in the twentieth century,
speak in terms of days and nights. If any one decides
to go away for, let us say, about two weeks, he will
say he is going for a fortnight, or for two weeks, or
for fourteen days. I have never yet met anyone speaking
the English language say he will be away fourteen days
and fourteen nights. This was a figure of speech in
the Hebrew of old. Therefore right from the start one
must exercise caution for, if we do not use such
figures of speech, we cannot presume that they had,
in those times, the meanings that we would naturally
assign to them today. We must seek out the meaning of
the prophecy Jesus made in the context of the times in
which it was given.
Furthermore we must also note that the figure of
speech, as used in Hebrew, always had the same number
of days and nights. Moses fasted forty days and forty
nights (Exodus 24.18). Jonah was in the whale three
days and three nights (Jonah 1.17). Job's friends sat
with him seven days and seven nights (Job 2.13). We
can see that no Jew would have spoken of "seven days
and six nights" or "three days and two nights", even
if this was the period he was describing. The
colloquialism always spoke of an equal number of days
and nights and, if a Jew wished to speak of a period
of three days which covered only two nights, he would
have to speak of three days and three nights. A fine
example of this is found in the Book of Esther where
the queen said that no one was to eat or drink for
three days, night or day (Esther 4.16), but on the
third day, when only two nights had passed, she went
into the king's chamber and the fast was ended.
So we see quite plainly that "three days and three
nights", in Jewish terminology, did not necessarily
imply a full period of three actual days and three
actual nights but was simply a colloquialism used to
cover any part of the first and third days.
The important thing to note is that an equal number
of days and nights were always spoken of, even if the
actual nights were one less than the days referred to.
As we do not use such figures of speech today we cannot
pass hasty judgments on their meaning, nor can we force
them to yield the natural interpretations that we would
place on them.
There is conclusive proof in the Bible that when
Jesus told the Jews he would be three days and three
nights in the earth, they took this to mean that the
fulfilment of the prophecy could be expected after
only two nights. On the day after his crucifixion,
that is, after only one night, they went to Pilate and
said:
If someone told anyone of us on a Friday afternoon
in these days that he would return to us after three
days we would probably not expect him back before the
following Tuesday at the earliest. The Jews, however,
anxious to prevent any fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy
(whether actual or contrived), were only concerned to
have the tomb secured until the third day, that is,
the Sunday, because they knew that the expressions
"after three days" and "three days and three nights"
were not to be taken literally but according to the
figures of speech that they used in their times.
The important question is, not how we read such
colloquialisms which have no place in our figures of
speech today, but how the Jews read them according to
the terminology of their times. It is very significant
to note that when the disciples boldly claimed that
Jesus had risen from the dead on the third day, that
is, on the Sunday after only two nights had passed
(e.g. Acts 10.40), no one ever attempted to counter
this testimony as Deedat does by claiming that three
nights would have to pass before the prophecy could be
deemed to be fulfilled. The Jews of those times knew
their language well and it is only because Deedat is
ignorant of their manners of speech that he
presumptuously attacks the prophecy Jesus made, simply
because he was not in the tomb for an actual three-day
and three-night period of seventy-two hours. (This
means that Jonah's sojourn in the fish also only
covered a partial period of three days and was not
necessarily three actual days and nights either).
Having therefore adequately disposed of Deedat's
weak arguments against the sign Jesus offered to the
Jews we can now proceed to find out exactly what the
Sign of Jonah really was.
The other great event was the total repentance of
the whole city, from its king to all its slaves, when
they heard the ominous warning. Jonah, surprisingly,
was angry when he saw the people turn from their sins
for he knew that God was merciful and would probably
spare the city. As a patriotic Hebrew he had hoped for
its overthrow for it was the main city of Assyria and
a constant threat to the people of Israel. In the heat
of the day he went up a mound hoping to see its demise,
and God caused a gourd (a large plant) to grow up and
give him shelter. The next day, however, God appointed
a worm to consume its stem and thus cause it to wither.
Jonah was very upset about this but God said to him:
No thunderclouds formed over the city as had
happened at the time of Noah when the great flood
burst on the earth. Nineveh was a mighty city and was
in no way under any military threat. All that the city
heard was the solitary voice of a Jewish prophet who
came proclaiming: "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be
overthrown" (Jonah 3.4).
We often see cartoons of bearded old men carrying
placards "the world ends tonight" and such men are
always a source of amusement when they appear on the
streets with such messages. Indeed the Ninevites might
have considered that Jonah was just one of these
religious freaks and while being amused at his
apparent earnestness, they might have become somewhat
indignant at the content of his warning.
When the Apostle Paul went to the city of Athens he
was met with such a reception. In response to his
preaching some said "What would this babbler say"?
(Acts 17.18). The people of Nineveh listening to the
Hebrew prophet Jonah might well have mused as the
Athenians did about the Apostle Paul, "He seems to be
a preacher of foreign divinities" (Acts 17.18). We
discover, however, that:
Why then did the whole city repent and do so in the
hope that God would not cause them to perish?
(Jonah 3.9). Jewish historians were fascinated by this
story and concluded that the only possible explanation
was that the Ninevites knew that Jonah had been
swallowed up by a fish as God's judgment on his
disobedience, and also knew that while he would
normally die in such circumstances, God in mercy kept
him alive and delivered him from the stomach of the
fish on the third day. This alone could explain the
seriousness with which they listened to Jonah and
their hope of mercy if they repented.
The Jewish historians concluded that the Ninevites
reasoned that if God treats his beloved prophets so
severely when they disobey him, what could they expect
when the city was in the gall of bitterness against
him and in the bond of iniquity and sin?
The reasoning of the Jews was correct. Jesus
confirmed that Nineveh's repentance came about as a
result of their full knowledge of Jonah's ordeal of
the preceding days. He made this quite plain when he
said:
It was not Jesus' intention merely to confirm Jewish
speculations, however. He wished to show that what had
happened at the time of Jonah and its sequel was
applicable to the people of Israel in his own
generation and that a similar sign was about to be
given which would likewise lead to the redemption of
those who received it and the destruction of all those
who did not.
In those days people were not readily persuaded by
great signs. When Moses turned his rod into a serpent,
Pharaoh's magicians did likewise. They also emulated
his feat of turning water into blood and bringing
swarms of frogs from the Nile. It was only when Moses
brought out thousands of gnats from the dust that the
magicians conceded: "This is the finger of God"
(Exodus 8.19), for they were finally unable to do
likewise. So also the Jews were only prepared to
consider Jesus' claims when he could outdo the signs
of the prophets of old. They saw him feed five
thousand men and heal lepers and men born blind; raise
up paralytics, cast out demons; and ultimately raise
a man from the dead even though the man had already
been dead for four days. They conceded these miracles.
All this did not satisfy them, however, for other
prophets had performed similar miracles. What sign did
Jesus have for them which outweighed them all? Surely
if he was the Messiah he could do greater things than
these? Why, Moses gave their forefathers bread from
heaven to eat. As it was predicted of the Messiah that
he would do similar signs (Deuteronomy 18.18,34.10-11),
they therefore came to Jesus eventually and "asked him
to show them a sign from heaven" (Matthew 16.1). Jesus
absorbed their earnest quests for signs and said to
them:
This was one of the most momentous statements Jesus
ever made and if ever there was a remark of his that
made an indelible impression on the minds of the Jews,
it was this one.
When Jesus was brought to trial years later, the two
witnesses brought to testify against him both mentioned
this remarkable claim. One said, "This fellow said,
'I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build
it in three days"' (Matthew 26. 61). Another said,
"We heard him say, 'I will destroy this temple that is
made with hands, and in three days I will build another
not made with hands"' (Mark 14.58). Both of these men
twisted his statement primarily through a total
misunderstanding and inability to perceive the meaning
of it. But that it was a claim of great import they
realised!
Indeed even when Jesus was nailed to the cross some
of the Jewish priests mocked him, saying, "You who
would destroy the temple and build it in three days,
save yourself!" (Matthew 27.40). Even some time after
Jesus had ascended to heaven the Jews were still
talking about his challenge and imagined that it was
Christian belief that Jesus would yet come to destroy
their holy place (Acts 6.14).
The tremendous attention paid by the Jews to this
statement, "Destroy this temple and in three days I
will raise it up" shows how important it was. Even as
these Jews mocked him, however, they were unaware that
they themselves were doing just that they were
destroying it by putting Jesus on the cross; and on
the third day thereafter they would know that he had
risen again. When Jesus said "Destroy this temple" he
was not referring to the great building in the city
but to his own body. In his Gospel John comments on
the reply of the Jews about the number of years it
took to build the Temple, "But he spoke of the temple
of his body" (John 2.21).
Jesus said that it was he, the Son of man, who was
to be in the heart of the earth for three days and
when he addressed the Jews he spoke obviously not of
the Temple in Jerusalem which he had just purified but
of himself. But why did he refer to himself as the
temple? It requires only a little perspective on his
ministry and identity to obtain the answer. The Jews
wanted him to prove that he was the Messiah and to do
this they expected him to show by signs that he was
greater than all the other prophets. In his answer
Jesus set out to show them that he was no ordinary
prophet. The Temple in Jerusalem contained only the
presence of a manifestation of the glory of God, but
of Jesus we are told:
We have seen already that the Jews sought a sign
from heaven, a greater feat than that performed by any
other prophet in history to prove his claims; and as
one looks at the miracles of the former prophets one
sees all the more the significance of the Sign of
Jonah. As mentioned earlier, prior to the e trial and
arrest of Jesus his greatest sign was to raise Lazarus
from the dead after he had been dead for four days.
But this did not persuade the Jews (John 12. 911).
Such things had been done during the time of the
prophet Elisha.
But what greater feat can a man perform than to
raise a dead man to life again? Only one possibly
greater sign can be done. If that man after dying is
able to raise himself from the dead and live again,
this will surely be a greater sign and this sign was
performed by no prophet before Jesus.
Living prophets had raised the dead but the sign
Jesus was promising them was that the Messiah would
raise himself from the dead. This is the Sign of
Jonah. The Jews had stood at the foot of the cross
mocking Jesus, "You who would destroy the Temple of
God in three days", but they did not know that, after
expiring a few hours later, Jesus would t raise
himself from the dead on the third day in overwhelming
proof that he was indeed the Messiah and the ultimate
temple of God, the one in whom the living God of all
creation fully dwelt. As Jonah had come back from the
stomach of a fish in the very depths of the sea to yet
live on the earth, so Jesus was to die, be buried,
only to raise himself to life on the third day. On one
occasion Jesus made this quite plain to the Jews,
saying:
He showed that he was greater than Moses, for Moses
had written of him (John 5.46). He was greater than
David, for David, he said, "inspired by the Spirit,
calls the Messiah Lord" (Matthew 22.43). He openly
stated that he was greater than the prophets Solomon
and Jonah (Luke 11.31,32) and that he was even greater
than the very Temple of God (Matthew 12.6), for the
Temple contained only a manifestation of God's presence
but in him the whole fulness of God dwelt bodily.
No man had ever had greater wisdom than Solomon but
Jesus is the very wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1.24).
Jonah became a source of reprieve for the people of
Nineveh but Jesus is the source of eternal salvation
to all who obey him (Hebrews 5.9).
Although there had been many prophets, there was to
be only one Messiah. And whereas the prophets had
performed many signs, the Messiah reserved to himself
the greatest sign of all. As Jonah's ordeal in the
stomach of the fish in many ways foreshadowed this
sign, namely the resurrection of Jesus from the dead,
Jesus therefore set forth this sign alone as a proof
that he was indeed the Messiah.
This leads us to consider in closing another
statement made by Deedat in another booklet he once
wrote, to the effect that there is no clearer
statement of Jesus throughout the Gospels about his
pending crucifixion than the Sign of Jonah (Deedat,
Was Christ Crucified?, p.33). He made this remark
during an attempt, similar to the one we have already
considered in his booklet 'What was the Sign of
Jonah?', to prove that Jesus came down alive from the
cross, recuperated in his tomb, and somehow or other
recovered his health.
Now if Jesus was taken down from the cross alive and
survived only because he was so close to death that
the Roman soldiers presumed he was dead, and managed
through clandestine meetings with his disciples and
various disguises to gradually recover (as Deedat
claims), we may indeed ask, what sort of sign is this?
If we are to take Deedat's contentions seriously, we
must conclude that Jesus escaped death entirely by
chance and recovered according to a natural process.
This would not have been a miracle at all, let alone a
sign greater than all the signs done by the prophets
before him. Deedat's analysis of the Sign of Jonah
thus leaves us without a sign at all!
On the other hand, if we take the narratives of the
crucifixion in the Bible at face value and accept that
Jesus died on the cross, only to raise himself from
the dead on the third day, then we have indeed a sure
sign and manifest proof that all his claims were true.
Other living prophets had raised dead men to life but
Jesus alone raised himself from the dead, and that to
eternal life, for he ascended to heaven and has been
there for nearly twenty centuries. It is in this alone
that we find the true meaning of the Sign of Jonah and
are able to perceive why Jesus singled it out as the
only sign he was prepared to give to the Jews.
We see, therefore, that Deedat's final argument in
favour of the theory that Jesus survived the cross is
actually the very strongest evidence one can find
against it. Although his booklets are thus easy to
refute, the matter cannot be left here for the sign
Jesus gave has implications for all men in all ages.
As Jonah's sojourn in the stomach of a fish in the
depths of the sea for three days authenticated his
word to Nineveh, so the death, burial and resurrection
of Jesus Christ put the stamp of authenticity on his
mission of salvation to all men in all ages. If you
miss the import of this sign, Jesus gives you no other.
No further proof that he is the Saviour of all men
need be given to those who refuse to believe in him as
their Lord and Saviour.
Nevertheless we have a wonderful assurance for those
who perceive the meaning of this sign and who are
prepared to believe in Jesus and follow him all their
days as Saviour and Lord: just as no soul in repenting
Nineveh perished, so neither will yours if you will
commit your whole life to Jesus who died for you and
rose from the dead on the third day that you too might
live with him forever in the kingdom of heaven to be
revealed when he returns to earth.
Early on in this booklet, as in others he has
written, Deedat promotes arguments which are based on
nothing but his own ignorance of the Bible and to some
extent of the English language. He speaks of a
conversation he once had with a "reverend" and boldly
says of Luke 3.23:
He Appears to believe that the words quoted are
missing from the oldest texts because they appear in
brackets in some English translations. But any scholar
will know that the use of brackets is a common form
in the English language by which passing comments and
personal notations are characterised. There are no
such brackets in the Greek text but as the words in
Luke 3.23 are clearly a comment, some translations
place them in brackets. In the Revised Standard Version
this form appears often where brackets are used for
passages where no such brackets are used. in the
original Greek simply because, like the Arabic of the
Qur'an, such forms are not used in Greek to identify
comments or personal remarks. (The same goes for
inverted commas to identify a quotation. Inverted
commas were used in neither classical Greek nor in
classical Arabic). Examples are Acts 1.18-19,
Romans 3.5, Galatians 1.20 and 2 Peter 2.8. Deedat's
argument is based entirely on false premises and
erroneous suppositions.
His attempts to prove that Luke 24.36-43 shows that
Jesus must have come down alive from the cross are
equally unfounded. He bases his whole argument on a
complete misconception of Biblical teaching about the
resurrection. It is widely accepted that every man has
a body and a spirit. At death the body dies and the
spirit leaves the body. The Bible teaches plainly that
the body and spirit will again be united at the
resurrection but that the bodies of true believers will
be changed and that they will be raised in spiritual
bodies (1 Corinthians 15.51-53). This means that the
spirit will be clothed with a body that will reveal the
true character of the spirit and will be eternal.
Deedat, however, completely misunderstands this and
erroneously takes "spiritualized" to mean that the body
itself will not be raised from the dead and transformed
but that the spirit alone will be "raised".
When Jesus appeared to his disciples after coming
out of the tomb they were "startled and frightened and
supposed that they saw a spirit" (Luke 24.37). Deedat
argues that this means that they had believed that
Jesus was dead and so thought it must be his ghost, but
the Bible makes it plain why they were so amazed. The
doors had been locked where the disciples were for fear
of the Jews and yet Jesus suddenly stood among them
(John 20.19). Having been raised from the dead in a
spiritualised body he could appear and disappear at
will and was no longer bound by physical limitations
(cf. also Luke 24.31, John 20.26).
Nevertheless, because Jesus called on the disciples
to handle him and because he ate a piece of a fish
before them (Luke 24.39-43), Deedat suggests that this
shows that Jesus had not risen from the dead. He
bases this argument on the assumption that a
spiritualised body cannot be material in any way but
must only be a spirit. He argues that Jesus was trying
to show his disciples that he had therefore not risen
from the dead and says:
The Bible plainly teaches that it is the body itself
- a material substance - that will be raised at the
resurrection (see Jesus' own teaching in John 5.28-29),
but that it will be transformed. Today two men can be
ploughing the same field. If they are identical twins
it will be almost impossible to tell them apart. Yet
the one may be righteous and the other wicked (Matthew
24.40). The difference is not outwardly apparent but
it will be in the resurrection. A spiritualised body
means that the condition of the body will be determined
by the state of the spirit. If the man is righteous,
his body will shine like the sun (Matthew 13.43); if
he is wicked he will not be able to hide his rottenness
as he can do now, but it will be exposed in all its
misery in the state of his body. This is what we mean
when we say people will have "spiritualised bodies" in
the resurrection. Note clearly that the resurrection
thus leads to a spiritualised body and not just to a
risen spirit. The Bible puts it like this:
In 2 Corinthians 5.1-4 the Bible again makes it
clear that it is not the wish of true believers to
become exposed spirits without bodies. Rather they
long for their mortal bodies to be replaced by
spiritual bodies which are immortal.
Once again we find that Deedat's efforts to discredit
Christianity come purely from suppositions based on his
own inadequate knowledge of the Bible, and he appears
to be one of those who are guilty of "reviling in
matters of which they are ignorant" (2 Peter 2.12).
Jesus' own statement that he had appeared in fulfilment
of the prophecies that the Messiah would rise from the
dead on the third day shows quite plainly that there is
no foundation whatsoever for Deedat's attempts to prove
that Jesus had come down alive from the cross.
Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day and
in his own body ascended to heaven not long thereafter.
He has gone to prepare a place for those who love him
and who will follow him all their days as Lord and
Saviour of their lives. When he returns he will raise
them too from the dead and will clothe them with
immortal bodies, granting them access to his eternal
kingdom which he waits to reveal at the last time.
True Christians can confidently say:
For example, he endeavours to prove that Mary
Magdalene must have been looking for a live Jesus when
she came to anoint his body. Although anointing a body
was part of the normal burial custom of the Jews, he
cannot accept this as it refutes his argument, so he
suggests that the body of Jesus would have already
been rotting within if he had died on the cross, saying
"if we massage a rotting body, it will fall to pieces"
(Deedat, Who Moved the Stone?, p.3), even though Mary
came to the tomb only some thirty-nine hours after
Jesus had died. It is absolute scientific nonsense to
say that a body will fall to pieces within forty-eight
hours of a man's decease! If there was any merit in
his argument, Deedat would hardly have found it
necessary to resort to such a ridiculous statement.
He likewise has to overlook obvious probabilities
when he says that, when Mary Magdalene sought to take
away the body of Jesus (John 20.15), she could only
have been thinking of helping him to walk away and
could not have intended to carry away a corpse. He
claims that she was a "frail Jewess" who could not
carry "a corpse of at least a hundred and sixty pounds,
wrapped with another 'hundred pounds weight of aloes
and myrrh' (John 19.39) making a neat bundle of 260
pounds" (Deedat, Who Moved the Stone?, p.8).
There is a far more probable explanation for Mary's
statement that she would carry away the body of Jesus.
There is nothing to say that she intended to carry it
away all by herself. When she first found the body
removed from the tomb she rushed to Jesus' disciples
Peter and John and told them:
In any event there is concrete evidence in the Bible
that Mary Magdalene believed that Jesus had risen from
the dead and this brings us to the whole theme of
Deedat's booklet, namely "who moved the stone?". His
conclusion is that it was removed by Joseph of
Arimathea and Nicodemus, two of Jesus' disciples who
belonged to the party of the Pharisees. He says in his
booklet:
The Qur'an plainly states that all faithful Muslims
must not only believe in Allah but also in the mala'ikah,
the angels (Surah 2.285), and one of the six major
tenets of a Muslim's iman is belief in angels. Not only
so, but the Qur'an agrees that the angels who came to
Abraham and Lot, told them that they had come to destroy
the city where Lot dwelt (Surah 29.31-34), named as Sodom
in the Bible.
The Qur'an therefore imposes on Muslims not only
belief in angels but also in their awesome power over
the affairs of men and the substance of the earth. No
Muslim can therefore sincerely object to the statement
in the Bible that it was an angel who moved the stone.
Why then does Deedat overlook this plain statement in
the Bible and falsely suggest that the identity of the
person who moved the stone is a "problem"? Why is there
no mention in his booklet of the verse which plainly
states that it was an angel who moved the stone? The
reason is that his theory that Jesus was taken down
alive from the cross and that Mary was looking for a
live Jesus is flatly contradicted by what this same
angel immediately said to Mary:
So we find that Deedat not only has to promote
absurdities to support his arguments but also has to
suppress plain statements in the Bible which refute
them completely. We urge all Muslims to read the Bible
itself and to discover its wonderful truths instead of
reading Deedat's booklets which so obviously pervert
its teaching and promote alternatives that are full of
absurdities as this booklet has constantly shown.
John Gilchrist's writings
It is an accepted fact in Christian commentaries on
the book of Jonah in the Bible that Jonah was kept
miraculously alive during the time that he was in the
stomach of the fish in the sea. At no time throughout
his ordeal did he die in the fish by and so came
ashore as much alive as he was when he was first
thrown into the sea. If Jonah was alive for three days and three
nights, then Jesus also ought to have been
alive in the tomb as he himself had foretold!
(Deedat, What was the Sign of Jonah?, p.6).
"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Son of man be lifted up".
Here the likeness is clearly in being "lifted up". As
Moses LIFTED UP the serpent, so would the Son of man
be LIFTED UP, the one for the healing of the Jews, the
other for the healing of the nations. In this case the
brass serpent Moses made never was alive and if
Deedat's logic is applied to this verse we must presume
that it means that Jesus must have been dead before he
was lifted up, dead on the cross, and dead when taken
down from it. Not only is this illogical, the
contradiction between the states of Jonah and the brass
serpent (the one was always alive through his ordeal,
the other was always dead when used as a symbol on a
pole) shows that Jesus was only drawing a likeness
between himself and Jonah and the brass serpent
respectively in the matters he expressly mentions -
the THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS and the LIFTING UP on
a pole. It does not matter whether Jonah was alive or
not - this has nothing to do with the comparison Jesus
was making.John 3.14
It is universally agreed among Christians, with a
few exceptions, that Jesus was crucified on a Friday
and that he rose from the dead on the Sunday
immediately following. Deedat accordingly argues that
there was only one day on which Jesus was in the tomb,
namely Saturday, and that this period covered only two
nights, namely Friday night and Saturday night. He
thus endeavours to disprove the Sign of Jonah in
respect of the time factor that Jesus mentions as well
and so concludes:
Secondly, we also discover that he failed to fulfil
the time factor as well. The greatest mathematician
in Christendom will fail to obtain the desired result
- three days and three nights.
Unfortunately Deedat here overlooks the fact that
there was a big difference between Hebrew speech in
the first century and English speech in the twentieth
century. We have found him inclined to this error
again and again when he sets out to analyse Biblical
subjects. He fails to make allowance for the fact that
in those times, nearly two thousand years ago, the
Jews counted any part of a day as a whole day when
computing any consecutive periods of time. As Jesus
was laid in the tomb on the Friday afternoon, was there
throughout the Saturday, and only rose sometime before
dawn on the Sunday (the Sunday having officially
started at sunset on the Saturday according to the
Jewish calendar), there can be no doubt that he was
in the tomb for a period of three days.
(Deedat, What was the Sign of Jonah?, p.10).
Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he
was still alive, 'After three days I will rise
again'. Therefore order the sepulchre to be made
secure until the third day.
We would understand the expression "after three days"
to mean anytime on the fourth day but, according to
the colloquialism, the Jews knew this referred to the
third day and were not concerned to keep the tomb
secured through three full nights but only until the
third day after just too nights. Clearly, therefore,
the expressions "three days and three nights" and
"after three days" did not mean a full period of
seventy-two hours as we would understand them, but any
period of time covering a period of up to three days.
Matthew 27.63-64.
Two momentous events occurred when God sent Jonah to
Nineveh to warn the people of that city that God was
about to destroy it for its wickedness. The first we
have already briefly considered, namely the casting of
the prophet into the sea and his sojourn in the stomach
of the fish over a period of three days. It will be
useful at this stage, however, to record the story as
it is found in the Qur'an and to compare it with the
story as it appears in the Bible to see to what extent
the stories coincide. The narrative in the Qur'an
reads:
And lo! Jonah verily was of those sent (to warn).
When he fled unto the laden ship, and then drew
lots and was of those rejected; and the fish
swallowed him while he was blameworthy; And had he
not been one of those who glorify (Allah), He would
have tarried in its belly till the day when they
are raised. Then We cast him on a desert shore
while he was sick; and We caused a tree of gourd to
grow above him; and We sent him to a hundred
thousand (folk) or more. And they believed,
therefore We gave them comfort for a while.
The story is rather disjointed in this passage as
there is no sequence of events showing how each
incident leads on to the next one. It is in the Book
of Jonah in the Bible, however, that one finds the
whole narrative properly knit together. Jonah agreed
to join in the throwing of lots with the other
soldiers on the boat to discover who was the cause of
the storm which threatened to drown them all. The lot
fell on him and so he was thrown into the sea where he
was duly swallowed up by a large fish. After three
days the fish coughed him up on dry land and he duly
went to Nineveh, proclaiming that the city would be
overthrown in forty days.
Surah 37.239-148.
"You pity the plant, for which you did not labor,
nor did you make it grow, which came into being in
a night, and perished in a night. And should not I
pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are
more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons
who do not know their right hand from their left,
and also much cattle?"
The second great event in this story, that is, the
repentance of the whole city of Nineveh, was all the
more remarkable when one considers that the Assyrians
neither knew nor feared God and had no obvious reason
why they should heed the word and warning which Jonah
brought. There was no sign that the city would be
destroyed in forty days as Jonah warned as life was
just going on normally from day to day without any
suggestion from the weather or the elements that any
danger was near.
Jonah 4.10-11.
The people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed
a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of
them to the least of them.
From the throne of the king down to the least of the
common folk the hundreds of thousands of Ninevites
took Jonah in all seriousness, repented in great
earnest, and desperately sought to remove the imminent
judgment from their city. Jonah in no way endeavoured
to persuade them of the truth of his short, simple
warning - he just proclaimed it as a matter of fact.
He also gave them no assurance that God would spare
the city if they repented. It was, on the contrary,
his wish and expectation that the city would be
destroyed in terms of God's warning whether the
Ninevites took him seriously or not.
Jonah 3.5
"Jonah became a sign to the men of Nineveh".
In saying this Jesus put the seal of authenticity on
the story of Jonah's ordeal and Nineveh's repentance
and confirmed that it was historically true. At the
same time he also gave credence to the theory that
the people of Nineveh had heard of Jonah's ordeal and
remarkable deliverance and as a result of this took
his message in all seriousness, hoping for a similar
deliverance in turning from their wickedness in
repentance before God. By saying that Jonah had become
a sign to the men of Nineveh he made it plain that the
city knew of the recent history of God's dealing with
the rebellious Jewish prophet. This explained the
earnestness with which the Ninevites repented before
God.
Luke 11.30
According to both the Qur'an and the Bible, Jesus
performed many signs and wonders among the people of
Israel (Surah 5.110, Acts 2.22). Even though they
could not deny these works (John 11.47), they
nevertheless refused to believe in him and that right
to the very end of his course. As he was completing
his ministry we read of their response to all that he
had done among them:
Though he had done so many signs before them, yet
they did not believe in him.
Time and again we read that the Jews came to him
seeking signs (Matthew 12.38) and on one occasion they
expressly asked him to actually show them a sign from
heaven itself (Matthew 16.1). On other occasions they
taxed him with questions like these:
John 12.37
"What sign have you to show us for doing this?"
While the Greeks of that age were primarily
philosophers, the Jews wanted every claim proved by
the ability to do and perform signs. As the Apostle
Paul rightly said in one of his letters:
"What sign do you do, that we may see, and believe
you?" John 2.18
John 6.30
For the Jews demand signs and the Greeks seek
wisdom.
The Jews knew full well that Jesus was, in his own way,
claiming to be the Messiah. If so, they reasoned, he
must do signs to prove his claim. A1though he had
already done many great signs, they still were not
satisfied. They had seen him feed up to five thousand
men with only five barley loaves and two fishes
(Luke 9.10-17) but they reasoned that Moses had done
similar miracles (John 6.31). In what way could he
prove that he really was the chosen Messiah, they
reasoned? What sign could he do to show them that he
was greater than Moses?
1 Corinthians 1.22
"This generation is an evil generation: it seeks a
sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the
sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the
men of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be to this
generation".
They wanted a sign that would prove beyond all shadow
of doubt that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the
Saviour of the world. Here Jesus gave them a clear
answer and set before them just one sign by which they
could be assured of his claims, namely, the Sign of
Jonah. Although we have mentioned it already, it will
be useful at this point to refer to it once again:
Luke 11.29-30.
"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in
the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be
three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth".
Here Jesus quite plainly outlined the proof of his
claims. Jonah had been three days and three nights in
the stomach of the fish. Not only was this a sign to
Nineveh, it also prefigured the sign Jesus was to be
for his people and not for them alone but for all
people in all ages. He would be in the "heart of the
earth" for a similar period. What did this mean? Would
he be dead? Why would he be there three days? Assuredly
the Jews must have been very perplexed about this claim
but every time they asked Jesus for a sign, he promised
them no other sign but the Sign of Jonah. During one
incident with them he plainly told them its meaning.
Matthew 12.40
When Jesus saw that the Jews were transforming the
Temple (the great place of worship where God's glory
was in the centre of Jerusalem, known in Islam as the
Baitul-Muqaddas) from a house of prayer into a place
of trade, he drove out the moneychangers and those who
sold sheep, oxen and pigeons. The Jewsthen said to
him:
"What sign have you to show us for doing this?"
In other words, by what authority do you, a man, enter
the Temple of the living God and act as if you are the
Lord of it? Once again they requested a sign and again
the same sign was promised by Jesus:
John 2.18
"Destroy this temple and in three days I will
raise it up".
Once again Jesus gave them the Sign of Jonah. Again
there came the period of three days but now something
more is added. He challenges the Jews to destroy the
temple and whereas he earlier spoke of being himself
in the heart of the earth for three days, now he speaks
of the temple of God being destroyed for three days
and thereafter being restored. So the Jews said to
him:
John 2.19
"It has taken forty-six years to build this temple
and will you raise it up in three days?"
Now that was a silly question. They asked for a sign
of supernatural source to validate the action Jesus
had taken. If he had said "Destroy this temple and in
forty-six years I will build another", what sort of
sign would that be? But he said he would do it in only
three days. That would assuredly be a sign for them to
see and behold, proving that he was indeed all that he
claimed to be.
John 2.20
In him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell.
He is the image of the invisible God. For in him
the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily.
What Jesus was saying then was this: Destroy me, in
whom the whole fulness of God dwells bodily, put me
to death, and by raising myself from the dead three
days later I will give you all the proof you will ever
require that I am the Lord of this Temple, the house
of God.
Colossians 1.19,15; 2.9
Now it becomes clear why Jesus gave the Jews this
one sign, the Sign of the prophet Jonah. His death,
burial and resurrection from the dead would surely
prove to them that he was the Messiah.
"For this reason the Father loves me, because I
lay down my life, that I may take it again. No
one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my
own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I
have power to take it again; this charge I have
received from my Father".
Not only did Jesus make it plain that he would raise
himself from the dead on the third day but he also
often showed that he was greater than all the prophets
who had gone before him. When the Jews asked him "Are
you greater than our father Abraham?" (John 8.53),
Jesus made it plain that he was, saying that Abraham
had looked forward to his day (John 8.56) and added,
"Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8.58). In the same
way a Samaritan woman said to him: "Are you greater
than our father Jacob?" (John 4.12) to which Jesus
replied that, whereas Jacob had left a well in the
land of Samaria from which people could drink, only
to thirst again, he could put within people a well of
living water from which no one would ever thirst
(John 4.14).
John 10.17-18.
I explained that in the "most ancient" manuscripts
of Luke, the words '(as was supposed)' are not
there.
Very significantly he gives no authority for this
statement and we are amazed at it for it is absolutely
false. This man seems to think he can say what he
likes about the Bible, no matter how factually absurd
his statements are. Every manuscript of Luke's Gospel,
including all the most ancient manuscripts, begins the
genealogy of Jesus by saying that he was the son, as
was supposed, of Joseph (meaning that he was not his
actual son, having been born of his mother Mary alone).
There is just simply no evidence for Deedat's fatuous
claim. So much for his self-acclaimed knowledge of the
Bible! We are sure discerning Muslims will have seen
by now that this man is no true scholar of the
Christian Scriptures.
(Deedat, Resurrection or Resuscitation?, p.7).
He is telling them in the clearest language humanly
possible that he is not what they were thinking.
They were thinking that he was a spirit, a
resurrected body, one having been brought back from
the dead. He is most emphatic that he is not!
So, according to Deedat, Jesus is stating in the
"clearest language humanly possible" that he had not
been raised from the dead. Yet, in the very next thing
that Jesus said to his disciples, we find him stating
quite plainly that this was in fact precisely what had
happened - that he had indeed been raised from the
dead. He said to them:
(Deedat, Resurrection or Resuscitation?, p.11).
"Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer
and on the third day rise from the dead, and that
repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
preached in his name to all nations".
In the "clearest language humanly possible", therefore,
we find that Jesus told his disciples immediately after
eating before them that he had just fulfilled the
prophecies of the former prophets that he should rise
from the dead on the third day. So once again we find
Deedat's argument falling to the ground and that purely
because he is not a genuine scholar of the Bible and
has no reasonable grasp of Biblical theology.
Luke 24.46-47.
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is
sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.
It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It
is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is
sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a physical body, there is also a
spiritual body.
It is the body itself that is buried in a perishable
state and it is the same body that is raised
imperishable. This passage shows quite plainly that it
is the same physical body, buried as a seed - is sown
into the ground, which will be raised as a spiritual
body. This is plain Biblical teaching which Deedat so
obviously misrepresents.
1 Corinthians 15.42-44.
But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we
await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will
change our lowly body to be like his glorious body,
by the power which enables him even to subject all
things to himself.
Philippians 3.20-21.
During 1977 Deedat also published a small booklet
which plagiarised the title of a book written by Frank
Morison entitled 'Who Moved the Stone?' Much of this
booklet attempts once again to prove the theory that
Jesus came down alive from the cross, and as we have
already seen that this theory has no substance, it
does not seem necessary to deal at any length with the
points Deedat raises to promote it. We need only show,
yet again, that he has had to resort to obvious
absurdities to try and make his theory stick.
"They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we
do not know where they have laid him".
The other Gospels make it plain that Mary was not alone
when she first went to the tomb that Sunday morning and
that among the women who accompanied her were Joanna
and Mary the mother of James (Luke 24.10). This is why
she said "WE do not know where they have laid him". As
it was only after Peter and John had gone to the tomb
that she first saw Jesus there is no reason to suppose
that she did not intend to enlist the help of these two
disciples or of the other women to help her carry the
body away.
John 20.2
It was Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, the two
stalwarts who did not leave the Master in the lurch
when he was most in need. These two had given to
Jesus a Jewish burial (?) bath, and wound the sheets
with the 'aloes and myrrh', and temporarily moved
the stone into place, if at all; they were the same
two real friends who removed the stone, and took
their shocked Master soon after dark, that same
Friday night to a more congenial place in the
immediate vicinity for treatment.
He begins his booklet with an expression of hope that
he would be able to give "a satisfactory answer to this
problem" (p.1) and the cover of his booklet carries a
comment by Dr. G.M. Karim which describes the moving
of the stone as a "problem besetting the minds of all
thinking Christians". The impression is thus given that
the Bible is silent on this subject and that Christians
are beset with a problem and have to speculate as to
who moved the stone. This is sheer nonsense for the
Bible plainly says (to use Deedat's words, in the
"clearest language humanly possible"):
(Deedat, Who Moved the Stone?, p.12).
An angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came
and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.
Can there really be any "problem" about this matter?
Is it too hard to believe that an angel from heaven
could roll back the stone? According to the Bible it
took just two angels to destroy the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah (Genesis 19.13) and it took only one
angel to wipe out Sennacherib's whole army of a hundred
and eighty-five thousand soldiers (2 Kings 19.35). On
another occasion a single angel stretched forth his
hand to destroy the whole city of Jerusalem before the
Lord called on him to stay his hand (2 Samuel 24.16).
So it should surprise no one to read that it was an
angel who moved the stone.
Matthew 28.2
"Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus
who was crucified. He is not here for he has risen,
as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then
go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen
from the dead, and behold, he is going before you
to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told
you".
The angel plainly told Mary and the other women to tell
the disciples that Jesus, who had been crucified, had
also now risen from the dead. They immediately fled
from the tomb with "trembling and astonishment" (Mark
16.8). If they had thought that Jesus had survived the
cross they would have been anything but surprised to
find him gone from the tomb. But they had come to find
a dead body and were absolutely amazed to find an angel
telling them in the "clearest language humanly possible"
that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Matthew 28.5-7.
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