Jesus' prognostication concerning his own death and the sign it would provide was likewise false. Jesus said, "... as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth [Matthew 12:40]." Preachers, in covering for Jesus, repeat this lie.
In two thousand years of Christian scholarship, there is no record I'm aware of of anyone having said Jesus' stay in the tomb consisted of more or less than three days and three nights. This lie is, however, easily refuted by a quick glance at a calendar.
Jesus was, according to the gospels, crucified on a Friday: expired that evening at the earliest. Our modern calendars refer to this day as "Good Friday." None of the gospels record the precise moment of his egress from the tomb, but all four gospels agree that at sunrise of "the first day of the week, [et. al.]," Jesus was out of the tomb.
The amount of time from Friday evening to Sunday morning is not three days and three nights. It is two nights and one day. Can Christians not count to three-- at least once in two thousand years? Is the moral of this enduring lie that false prophecy is the sign of Jesus?
