“Your dead shall live …” (Isa. 26:19, NKJV)
The overarching theme we are concerned with in this subsection of our teachings is to come to an understanding of why Jesus specifically presents Jonah as the only sign that will be given to humanity. Jesus could just as well have said: My death and resurrection will be the only sign given to humanity. Why use an Old Testament story as typology and complicate the message He’s trying to get across?
A very important reason for this is that the book of the prophet Jonah (THUS NOT MERELY A HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS) is read on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and that it indicates that “greater than Jonah is here” (Matt. 12:41), but clearly also – greater than Jesus is here! The previous teaching concluded with the idea that Jonah is not only the typological equivalent of the salvation Jesus offers in the first dimension (Passover); but that he also becomes a type of Spirit-filled man in the second dimension (Pentecost), where the Holy Spirit lives within the heart of the earth WITHIN Spirit-filled believers. We hope to point out what the implications of this is, and that it is all concerned with the third dimension manifestation (Feast of Tabernacles) of Jesus Christ on earth.
After Pentecost the Holy Spirit is sent into the world. If Jonah means dove in Hebrew, and actually points to the concept of hovering movement (“an avian imagery”, as we explained in the previous teaching), and if this is symbolic of the Holy Spirit, it clearly needs a body, a vehicle, which is typological of a “great fish” (Jon. 1:17). [The great fish is not necessarily a whale, but could point to any large waterborne animal (Gen. 1:21), although the KJV translates it as “whale”.]
Clearly the whale is here a symbol of the Body of Christ, within which the Spirit of God manifests the flesh of the Christ. This is a process which will be fulfilled in the Feast of Tabernacles. [In the story of Jonah this is symbolically presented by the booth under which Jonah hides. In Hebrew this translates to the term “sûkkâh”, the root word for the feast of Sukkot, or Tabernacles.] It is this “third day” within which we are now already moving, but which will only be fulfilled in future.
The prophetic book Jonah begins, interestingly enough, with the word “And”, which implies that it is preceded by something. Within this the young Jonah is situated as part of the prophets in the time of Elisha (2 Kings 13: 14-21); the older Jonah is situated in the time of the prophets Hosea and Amos. Therefore Fausset’s Bible Dictionary can argue that “Hosea (Hos. 6:2) saw the prophetical meaning of Jonah’s entombment: ‘after two days will He revive us, in the third day He will raise us up …’”! Please selah about the implications of this.
- Selah: Try to provide an answer to the last question, especially in the light of the opening
- Read: Acts 1; Tim. 1-6.
- Memorise: 1 Tim. 1:16.
