The Miracle of Resurrection

In the Old Testament, God used many different prophecies and foreshadowings to help people understand the coming Christ and the salvation He would accomplish. But can we also grasp Christ’s redemption and God’s love through a runaway prophet? This is truly miraculous. God doesn’t only use those who are absolutely holy and flawless; He also uses the weak. However, not all who are used by God receive reward and glory; only those who faithfully carry out His will do.

The prophets and other great figures of faith in the Old Testament were not perfect; they were only more complete in certain aspects. Nor could they foreshadow Christ in every way; they only foreshadowed Him in specific events. Regarding the prophet Jonah, his experience of being in the belly of a great fish for three days and three nights was originally discipline for his disobedience to God’s word. Yet, this very experience of failure could serve as a foreshadowing of Christ, for Christ’s death was for humanity’s rejection of God’s commands and their straying onto their own paths, for which they deserved punishment.

For a person to be swallowed by a great fish for three days and three nights, and then spat out onto the shore, is truly a marvelous miracle of resurrection, stemming from God’s supernatural power. Likewise, Christ’s death on the cross for human sin and His resurrection from the grave three days later is also a wondrous miracle—the greatest of all miracles. That is why the Lord Jesus told the Pharisees who sought a sign, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 12:39).