User blog:AdamSch/Everything was fulfilled: Part 2-Grave time and Ressurection

Everything was fulfilled in the Ressurection and the grave time of Jesus. This is part 2 out of 2 for our two-part blog about how Old Testament biblical prophecies were fulfilled in the Crucifixion and Ressurection of Jesus Christ, celebrating Good Friday and Easter (Ressurection Day). This blogpost (part 2) talks about how prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus's time where he was dead and his ressurection. You can check out part 1 about the Crucifixion and Death's fulfilment of prophecies.

Sign of Jonah
While Jonah may seem distant, having lived hundreds of years before Jesus, his account provides an interesting foreshadowing of Jesus in the grave. When Jonah ran from God, so he didn’t have to travel to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh , he was thrown into the ocean to appease God in a storm. He was then swallowed by a fish, in whose belly he remained for three days and three nights, which). Jesus Himself uses this to foreshadow his time spent three days and nights in the “heart of the Earth” - a prophecy to His time in death the grave.

His Body would not decay...
Though not much of the Old Testament directly refers to Jesus’ rising from the dead, there is one passage in Psalm 16 which undeniably declares this truth about a thousand years before it happened. Towards the very end of this Psalm it is proclaimed that God would not let his “faithful” or “holy” one see decay, this being a reference to Jesus Christ and His body never decaying. While Jesus’s body is damaged and scarred from the crucifixion and for a short time is physically dead it never decays. Jesus was physically dead for 3 days until He rose and His body was no longer dead. This does not leave time for the body to begin decay. Not only is this prophesied in the Book of Psalms but is also affirmed multiple times in the Book of Acts. First it is affirmed by Peter when he addresses the crowd and mentions the Psalm in which David wrote about Christ. He quotes the last several verses of Psalm 16 and specifically notes that while David died, Jesus Christ was not left in death forever, nor did His body decay. This psalmic prophecy is once again affirmed by Paul when he spoke in Pisidian Antioch discussing how God resurrected Jesus so he would not be subject to bodily decay, quoting the Psalm directly.

Conclusion
These are only just a few of the numerous prophecies and foreshadowings to Jesus Christ. The few we touched upon in these two  blogposts are only concerning the final twelve hours and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a very small timeframe and so there are many more for the rest of his life (including his birth) and many more for this timeframe. All of these foreshadowings make it evident that the Bible, God’s Word never fails. Everything classified as an ancient prophecy was written hundreds to thousands of years before these events. Even when Jesus Himself affirmed these facts it give insight to important detail of the unfolding of events, months to days before it even happened. As we know from these prophecies and from the biblical account, Jesus Christ who did not sin did not break any biblical law, who didn’t even break any Roman laws was killed to compensate for the deserved punishment for the rest of humanity for sinning. God allowed a man who was perfect and without sin to be killed, by Crucifixion, involving brutal whippings, nails stabbed through the arms and feet and being stretched across two pieces of wood to die. Then in honor of Jesus Christ being perfect without sin, God raised him up out of death after 3 days, not allowing his body to decay. Easter is about the Resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah, after his death as a perfect, undefiled sacrifice on behalf of those sinners included in God’s covenant to build a people. This occurred to fulfill all the feast of Passover and the many sacrifices of the Law. After having received prophetic foreshadowing of the events, most of Jesus’ own countrymen failed to recognize him, but every Sunday, Christians remember the day now set apart as a holiday about the time of Passover every year. Let us each take time to remember all Jesus has done for us as we contemplate on the events of that first “Easter” week. And as we shout a glorious “He is Risen!” let us resolve to continue to obey Jesus Christ in the face of a hostile world.