Greetings, dear reader, in the Holy and Hallowed Name of JESUS! JONAH (4 chapters) is God-sent to Nineveh To prophesy doom, but instead he runs away. He sails for Tarshish, but there's a great storm at sea - The sailors cast lots - and find Jonah the cause be. Throw me overboard!" he cries. At first they refused, But when they did were shocked - the storm was defused! Then God sent a great fish to swallow the prophet; Repentant, three days and nights in its gullet, He prayed, was vomited on a beach - changed in ways, At Nineveh preached God would judge in 40 days. He was vexed when they repented, and God lives spared, But when God dried his shading plant, for life then cared. JESUS IN THE BOOK OF JONAH The "sign of Jonah" was Jesus being dead for a period (Matt 12:40). The words of Jonah in the belly of the great fish that swallowed him (Jonah 2) seem prophetic for Jesus also: Jonah 2:1 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly, Jonah 2:2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. Jonah 2:3 For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Jonah 2:4: Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. Jonah 2:5: The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. Jonah 2:6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God. Jonah 2:7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. Jonah 2:8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. Jonah 2:9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.
Re the Bible code, Yacov Rambsel has noted in his second book (His Name is Jesus) that in this prophetic passage of Christ (Jonah 2) are encoded several words at an ELS spacing of 153: "Jehovah" (v4), "the chief corner"(v6), and "The Shepherd Lord"(v8). Jesus is Our Chief Cornerstone, Divine, Our Shepherd, and Our Lord. I have commented in an earlier posting re the significance, from John 21:11 and Gematria studies, of the number 153 in connection with the word fish. The word "Yeshua" (Hebrew for Jesus) is also encoded at 12 letter spacing in Jonah 1:17: Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. If you are not familiar with the Bible code, you should know that Yacov Rambsel, a messianic Jew, is presently the leading Christian researcher on the Bible Code. When interviewed on TBN in 2000, he noted how after prayer the Lord showed him the words "His Name is Jesus" (Yeshua Shmi) encoded at an ELS (Equidistant-Letter Sequence) of 20 characters in Isaiah 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. In the next verse, again every 20 th letter, is encoded: "Exceedingly high, Yeshua is my strong Name". Yacov's book also lists about 40 names and phrases found encoded in Isaiah 52 and 53 of Messianic significance. These include: Yeshua, Nazarene, Messiah, Shiloh, Passover, Galilee, Herod, Caesar, Caiaphas, Annas, Mary (this name occurs 3 times, in successive verses Isaiah 53:9-11, and there were 3 Marys at the foot of the cross), names of the disciples with the notable exception of Judas and including Matthias his replacement, the phrase "let Him be crucified", and His Cross. Apart from Isaiah 53, the only other place in the Old Testament where the names of the disciples of Jesus are clustered close together (including Matthias again) is Exodus 30, dealing with the altar and the atonement sacrifice, where the words/phrases Yeshua, Nazarene, Messiah, Shiloh, Passover, Galilee, Mary (thrice again), and "let Him be crucified" once more recur! These facts alone are convincing evidence that Jesus is the true Messiah. Those familiar with the Bible code will also recall that it appears that all of earth's history may have been condensely coded into the 5 books of Moses. Re Jonah, in Genesis 23:16, the phrase "Jonah cried out" is encoded at an ELS of 386 (the numerical value of Yeshua or Jesus in Hebrew), and the
adjacent letters to each letter in this phrase actually spell the word "Yeshua"! This is a beautiful example of the Bible code and how it backs up the surface code of the Scriptures - Jonah crying out in the belly of the whale being prophetic of Christ in the grave, even as water baptism is a symbol of death. Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life (Rms 6:3-4). I believe Jonah 4:7 also speaks of Christ: Jonah 4:7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. You will recall that God had caused a shading gourd to grow to protect Jonah from the sun. Then God appointed a worm (tola'at in Hebrew) to consume the plant of protection. I suspect that not only was God teaching Jonah a lesson, but that He was painting a parable of Christ. The crimson (scarlet) dye used for the tabernacle and both Temples came from the tola'at worm. The crimson colour represents the redemptive power of the blood of Jesus. Jonah was probably aware of the significance of the worm, showing that the Gentiles could also be the recipients of God's redemptive plan. I also see in this picture of the worm eating the natural shade of protection the fact that our own righteousness cannot shelter us; we must reckon with the blood of Christ. The Bible Code seems to hint at the messianic nature of this verse, for beginning in Jonah 4:7, at an ELS of 243 spaces, is a 10 character Hebrew phrase reading "a breastplate for upright Yeshua", with the adjacent letters spelling "the prophet". Only the High Priest was allowed to wear the breastplate, and Jesus is both the Prophet prophesied to come "like unto Moses", and Our High Priest. I close by quoting a passage from Jesse Duplantis, in his book on his visit to heaven in 1988 (Heaven, Close Encounters of the God Kind), where, from p.105, he writes of an interesting conversation he had with Jonah in heaven before returning to earth. I had seen Jonah earlier, but the angel was constantly moving me towards that appointment I had. But on the street where the prophets live I recognized Jonah again as he was coming from his house. I was so interested in knowing about that whale that swallowed him. I wanted to
know if it was a fish or a whale and what it had been like to be in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights. I rushed up to him and said, "Boy, you were in that whale! How was it like being in that fish?" It seemed to me that he hesitated, as though he felt discontentment for just a second. I felt that maybe I had brought an unpleasant event to his memory he had been allowed to forget. Then Jonah corrected me. He said, "No, I was in disobedience." "Disobedience," I repeated, realizing that I had focused on the wrong part of the story. I remembered how God told Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and proclaim that their attention on worthless idols was causing them to forsake God - their Source of mercy and lovingkindness. Chapter 4, verse 2, of the book of Jonah shows how Jonah sensed that God would revoke His sentence against them, and he ran from God's assignment. While on a ship headed in the opposite direction from Nineveh, a great storm rose up and the mariners cast lots to see whose fault it was that the evil had come against them. The lot fell on Jonah. After questioning him, they tossed him overboard! The storm stopped immediately. When the mariners saw that, they worshipped Jonah's mighty God! A great fish, or some Bible versions say a sea monster, swallowed Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. (Jonah 1:1-17). But I could see now that Jonah wasn't concerned so much about the fish during those three days; he was concerned about his disobedience to God. "Disobedience is a powerful thing against you. Not only in the life that you live now, but here." I still don't quite understand what Jonah meant by that statement, but he majored on the point of disobedience. I think he meant that disobedience causes a delay in reaching the level we could reach. We may reach the level in eternity, but I believe that disobedience to God's Word moves us more quickly to the level that God has planned for us.
I remember his exact words to me. He said, "God's Word must be followed to the letter." Jonah continued, "When I came out of there, I had one thing on my mind, and that was to do what God had told me to do. But when God kept the city, instead of wiping it out, I felt irritated about that." I was trying to grasp every word of what he was saying. I knew that Jonah had prophesied to the people of Nineveh that God was planning to overthrow the city in forty days. The people believed Jonah, and the king proclaimed a fast to begin penitent mourning for their sins. Neither man nor beast tasted anything, nor drank water to show their sorrow. The king pleaded, Who can tell, God may turn and revoke His sentence against us [when we have met His terms], and turn away from His fierce anger so that we perish not (Jonah 3:9 AMP). Chapter 3, verse 10, records, And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. Chapter 4 shows that Jonah knew that God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. But because God is merciful and didn't back up Jonah's promise that the people of Nineveh would be overthrown, Jonah wanted to run again. I guess we could say that he pouted. Then Jonah said to me, "I felt irritated because I thought more of myself than I thought of the nature of God. His nature is not to destroy, but to heal and to bless." One final thought: when Jonah finally re-emerged from the fish's belly, he may well have been bleached white from enzymes! Maybe that is one reason the people in Nineveh repented so fast when he preached! God bless you! PC