This Is One Whale of a Tale; but Can You Believe It?

Excerpt From Newsletter

If you put what Jesus said to His disciples about handing down the promise to the Gentiles together with what the Apostle Paul said about that same thing, you have a fairly solid basis on which to understand the parabolic pantomime in which God told a Hebrew Prophet to take his knowledge of The Teaching and hand the promise down orally to Gentiles. Did you catch the significance of what I just said? Maybe not. So let me say it again: Gentiles.

My point is, the parabolic pantomime described in the Book of Jonah is—and always has been—a parabolic depiction of how the promise would be made available to the Gentiles after the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Prophet who wrote the Book of Jonah knew that. That’s why he recorded the parabolic pantomime in the first place. If you don’t believe that, keep reading. You will, provided you have been born again.

Now that I have explained the basics of why the Prophet recorded the parabolic pantomime found in the Book of Jonah, let me go back to something Paul said when he talked about God’s method of salvation by belief in the Truth of the promise when one hears it preached: But the declaration of not guilty from belief says this:

“Don’t say in your heart, ‘who will ascend into heaven?’ That is, to bring Christ down. Or, ‘who will descend into the abyss?’ That is, to bring Christ up from the dead.”But what does it say? “the statement is near you—in your mouth and in your heart.” That is, the statement of “the belief” that we are preaching: That if: (1) you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is His Majesty”; and (2) you believe in your heart that the {Living} God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
(Romans 10:6–9) —my interim translation

“This Is One Whale of a Tale; but Can You Believe It?” The Voice of Elijah^®, January 2008, p. 5

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