There’s somewhat of an amusing irony here. Having refused to heed God’s Word, God sends His prophet from the Jews to the heathen Gentiles. So it must have been unsettling when Jonah realized it took a heathen Gentile captain of the ship to awaken God’s prophet to what God was doing. Just as Isreal had a problem recognizing and responding to God’s Word and ways, so did Jonah.
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Jezebel, one of the most prominent and repeated examples in the Bible representing the worst possible spiritual seduction has something which all seducers share in common: disdain for the truth. It didn’t matter that her false prophets failed and Elijah the one true prophet of God succeeded; it didn’t matter that her god failed to provide the sign which the One True God manifested; it didn’t matter that her religion was categorically proven false. Like all spiritual seducers instead of responding to God’s Word and repenting like the people did, she seeks to return everything to “normal” by killing the messenger.
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As the Walk with the Word reading schedule takes us to Jonah this week, it’s important to note a couple of things about the context of Jonah. In the New Tesatment when the Pharisees say, “No prophet arises out of Galilee“, ^[1] always remeber that Jonah is from Gath-hepher which is located in Galilee. When Jesus said He would give them no sign except the sign of Jonah ^[2] it wasn’t just a parallel to Jonah’s three days in the fist as a picture of the resurrection, but also that like Jonah He would come from a place disregarded and even disrespected by religious authorities. Very powerful prophets do, indeed, come from unexpected places like Galilee.
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Reading a book of the prophets cannot be approached in the same manner we take with the books of the Law, history, or the likes of Psalms or Ecclesiastes. It is definitely important to understand when the propet was speaking in relationship to these other books, but we have to adjust to a different style of writing, a different way of expressing things. It’s important to keep in mind that prophets not only speak literally for their own times, but with dual and sometimes multiple future fulfillments in mind.
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Of course this sounds very familiar. It’s the key text quoted by Peter ^[1] his very first sermon explaining what was happening at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon the church. It’s telling that Hebrew scholars — even modern ones — attribute this passage to events which will happen in concert with the arrival of the Messiah.
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To be sure, one of the burdens that should be on every Christian’s heart in the Last Days is for the unsaved, that they might yet turn to Christ. But I’m not sure that we fully realize that we’re called to have an additional burden: to intercede on behalf of all Christians, especially those who have made a verbal commitment to Christ but have yet to follow through by living a changed life for Christ.
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I am sure that signs in the sun and moon will literally take place in the Last Days, as Scripture repeatedly refers to them. ^[1] There will be something physically observable in these things. But I also can’t help but notice that light and darkness is often a biblical metaphor for a person’s spiritual condition.
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