Three Days

There are many events in the scriptures that took place over three days.  A search on the phrase “three days” shows that there are 136 occurrences in the scriptures, whereas a search on “two days” gives 26 results and “four days” occurs only nine times.  While not all of the events described that took three days are significant, surely many of them are meant to be symbolic and point us to Christ. The Savior used the fact that Jonah was in the whale three days to teach about His coming death: “For 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).  Christ was dead part of three days after his crucifixion until He was resurrected, and Jonah’s three days in the belly of the whale was one of many “three day” instance pointing us to the Savior. 

               Here are some of the other “three days” events which seem to point us to the Savior and His death and resurrection.  In one of the plagues that Moses brought down upon Egypt “there was a thick darkness in all the land” and “they saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days” (Exodus 10:22-23).  This three-day darkness reminds us of the time among the Nephites at the Savior’s death when “for the space of three days… there was no light seen; and there was great mourning and howling and weeping among all the people continually” (3 Nephi 8:23).  Another three-day period of mourning is recorded in the book of Esther when she encouraged the Jews to fast and pray before her attempt to sway the king: “Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king” (Esther 4:16).  After Alma was called to repentance by the angel, he was “three days and three nights in the most bitter pain and anguish of soul; and never, until [he] did cry out unto the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy, did [he] receive a remission of [his] sins” (Alma 38:8).  He went from spiritually dead to being a man born again in these three days, just as Christ brought us new life at the end of three day.  Similarly, after Saul had his vision of the Savior and was called to repentance, “he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink” (Acts 9:9).  After those three dark days, he also became spiritually alive and learned to see as the Savior wanted him to see. 

              When Christ was twelve his parents couldn’t find Him after their trip to the temple, and “after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, and they were hearing him, and asking him questions” (JST Luke 2:46).  I have to think that those three days when He went missing in order to teach the people were a foreshadowing of the three days He would be in the Spirit World to fulfill “his ministry among those who were dead… between the crucifixion and his resurrection” (D&C 138:27).  Nephi taught us that “all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of him,” and surely these and other “three day” instances in the scriptures help us to remember what happened those three days after the Savior’s death (2 Nephi 11:4).