3 days to tear down...

I once had a conversation with someone, who, let's say didn't see eye to eye with me or God about a great many things (cool Star Wars line...)

The subject of the conversation was the issue of Christ's claim that he was the temple that was going to be torn down and rebuilt in 3 days.  Just like many who heard Jesus make this claim, my buddy was skeptical.  However, since most of us know that Jesus was referring to his death and resurrection, my friend was questioning the whole validity of the the time span.

"If Jesus died on Friday night and came to life on Sunday morning, that is nowhere near three days."

Now, I pointed out that Friday, then Saturday, then Sunday would count as three days, so there...but he was not moved.  So I pointed out that there are some considerations that need to be accounted for: the Jewish day and night cycle of Jesus' time, vs. the cycle we use today.  You see for us, a day is midnight to midnight. However, for the Jews in Jesus' time, this was different:  the official day started at nightfall.  This is significant.

When Jesus went to the Garden to pray on Thurs. night, that was the beginning of the prophecy, also the beginning of the first day of the prophecy.  So on this day Jesus was captured, accused and sentenced to death. He was also put to death on the same day. 

The second day, starting at nightfall on Friday night, he was already in the tomb and his disciples were deterred from attending to his body because this is also the beginning of the Sabbath.  Now we know that sometime on Saturday night, Jesus was resurrected, but because the third day of the prophecy began at night fall on Saturday, Jesus was well into the final day of his prophecy when he came to life and saved us all from our sins.

So you see his prophecies are true and valid.    I would like to note a couple of  things that follow along with this incident.  First, everything happened so that no Torah laws where violated, including Jesus and all his disciples resting on the true Sabbath and finally...I really appreciate what my savior did for all of us on that day so long ago...