Old Testament # 33
Sharing the Gospel with the World
Jonah; Micah
Introduction
I will admit that after wrestling with Job, figuratively, these past few weeks, I thought that writing a blog entry on Jonah and Micah would be a lot easier. Not so! Although, having read John Tanner on Job and realizing that the actual book of Job is a literary creation from what I know accept as what actually happened to a real person, I can sort of apply that to Jonah anyway. John Tanner helped me understand Job in this way:
I accept the fact of Job’s existence. At the same time, I recognize that the text bears the marks of evident literary fashioning. It has, for instance, a definite three-part structure consisting of prose prologue, poetic dialogues, and prose epilogue. A prose frame thus encloses poetic dialogues. Its central poetic dialogues, moreover, are further neatly divided into three cycles of speeches, alternating between Job and each of his three comforters. I cannot conceive of these long, formal passages of poetry being transcribed verbatim from actual conversations. They are clearly literary constructions.
This does not mean, however, that Job is pure fiction. Both the prose narrative frames and the poetic dialogues may be based on the actual experiences of a real man—a good man who lost everything, was pressured to confess to hidden sins but maintained his integrity, implored God for answers and vindication, and finally received revelation and renewed prosperity. I personally think of the book as mixing both fact and fable. Some elements seem fabulous to me (e.g., the wager between God and Satan, the neatly symmetrical doubling of Job’s wealth at the end). But elements of fable do not prove that the entire text is fictional, any more than the existence of an actual king named Macbeth is disproved by the fabulous features of Shakespeare’s play. There may be much more fact behind even patently literary texts than moderns sometimes suppose. For many years scholars thought the city of Troy to be a fiction and ridiculed Schliemann when he went to dig for Homer’s “fabled” Troy—until he found it. We need to be skeptical of our own modern skepticism.[1]
If I apply those parameters to Jonah, maybe I can put away the image of his being squirted with whale stomach acid, or attacked by Mynocks.[2]But as the overarching message of Job is the pivotal importance of maintaining our belief in and relationship with God, so Jonah’s example and Micah’s entreaty encourage us to take His gospel to all the world, regardless of whether or not we feel the “world” is going to accept what we bear testimony of.
The lesson manual opens with a very sobering quote from President Spencer W. Kimball:
“I believe the Lord can do anything he sets his mind to do. But I can see no good reason why the Lord would open doors that we are not prepared to enter” (“The Uttermost Parts of the Earth,” Ensign,July 1979, 9).
Nearly forty years ago and yet so relevant to today. From what Elder Holland said in our temple devotional, the first weekend in October is going to carry right along on the track President Nelson has already shown us.
1. Jonah is called to preach to Nineveh, but he runs away.Jonah 1–2.
Somehow, and maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think of prophets being all in, immediately. And yet when I think back to Moses even, or Ether, there is a reluctance at first to make that first step to take on the immense task before them. It’s a little like Abinadi having fled for his life, being told to go back—Alma the same thing. Jonah, however, disobeys and goes as far as he can in the other direction to try to escape the Lord. After our discussion about Job in Sunday School, I realized how much we quoted King Benjamin. Especially “willing to submit” (Mosiah 3:19). Jonah needed to go through a harrowing experience before he became willing to submit. Actually a few. Elder Maxwell had this to say:
It is only by yielding to God that we can begin to realize His will for us. And if we truly trust God, why not yield to His loving omniscience? After all, He knows us and our possibilities much better than do we.[3]
2. The people of Nineveh respond to Jonah’s message and repent.Jonah 3–4.
I can imagine Jonah—after realizing he was the reason the ship was sinking and allowing himself to be cast to what he no doubt thought was a watery grave, only to be swallowed by a whale!—saying to himself “I will go to Nineveh and I will preach the Gospel . . . but they will kill me. Might as well have drowned.” But who am I to judge Jonah. We hear in the Book of Mormon about Alma and the sons of Mosiah and their joy at their converts, but we don’t hear much about their failures, other than the privations suffered by Aaron and his brethren. But here we have Jonah’s grand prophesy of the downfall of Nineveh if they don’t repent, but when they do, he appears to be disappointed. I feel it is a supreme act of forgiveness that Jonah is being asked to offer. The same sort of forgiveness that Elder Larry Echohawk talked about in April Conference. And Jonah has a hard time with it.[4]
3. Micah prophesies of the mission of latter-day Israel.
One other thing that Elder Holland hinted at in his devotional was that President Nelson would have a lot to say about temple worship and family history. In Micah 4, Micah quotes Isaiah : “But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it” (Micah 4:1). And from the temples, the Gospel flows out via the people who flowed unto it.
For some sharing the Gospel comes easily, for others not so much. But it is the same principle we saw with Jonah—it’s a question of faith and responding to promptings. Two quotes—one I believe you might be sick of reading in these blogs, but one I try to implement every day, and a second that one can just imagine Joseph’s voice magnificently pronouncing:
Our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, will perform some of His mightiest works between now and when He comes again. We will see miraculous indications that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, preside over this Church in majesty and glory. But in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.
My beloved brothers and sisters, I plead with you to increase your spiritual capacity to receive revelation. Let this . . . be a defining moment in your life. Choose to do the spiritual work required to enjoy the gift of the Holy Ghost and hear the voice of the Spirit more frequently and more clearly.[5]
No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done” (History of the Church,4:540).
[1]John S. Tanner, “‘Hast Thou Considered My Servant Job?,’” in Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 266–82. Thanks to Shirley Ricks for giving me this valuable resource.
[2]See Fantastic Voyage(1966) and Wookieepedia.
[4]I am putting in a parenthetical note here because it has very little to do with the lesson, but George Albert Smith cited the conversion of the people of Nineveh when talking about the 18thAmendment and the ruinous effect it had on those presumably members of the Church who voted against it. It put me in mind of the outcry against the letter from the First Presidency urging us to vote against the Proposition to legalize medical marijuana in Utah. “ADVICE OF PRESIDENT GRANT UNHEEDED
“We are fortunate today to have the servant of the Lord who presides over the Church, the mouthpiece of the Lord to us, sitting in our midst. There are thousands of people who would walk any distance they were able, in order that they might see the face and touch the hand of the Prophet of the Lord, and yet there are many of our own people who disregard his council. From this very stand he pleaded with us not to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment to the constitution of the United States. He didn't speak as Heber J. Grant, the man. He spoke as the President of the Church and the representative of our Heavenly Father. And yet in a state where we could have retained what we had, there were enough Latter-day Saints, so-called (some of them hold positions in the Church. or did at that time), who paid no attention to what the Lord wanted, ignored what He had said through his prophet, and what is the result? Such delinquency as we have never known is in our own community today, and the sons and daughters and grandchildren, and in many cases the fathers and mothers, who defied the advice of our Heavenly Father and said "We will do as we please," are paying the penalty and will continue to do so until they turn away from their foolishness and desire with all their hearts to do what our Heavenly Father desires us to do” (1943–October General Conference:42, George Albert Smith, “And Ye Would Not!”)
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