Listen here: “Granted“
Jonah, a preacher of some sort, did not want to offer repentance (the gospel) to “those people” because “those people” were not the kind of people that Jonah wanted in God’s kingdom. So Jonah took a ship to Tarshish and ended up in the belly of a whale who puked him up on the shore of Nineveh.
Can an imaginary story convey a worldly truth? Which is more important: the details of a story, or the moral of the story? Is the moral of the story a higher truth?
Jonah was fundamentally angry with God, ostensibly for saving people he didn’t like, but the comfort of the shade had masked Jonah’s anger for a time.
Paul was ready to die, but understood that God gives life and death in God’s time. His death was not up to him. He was not afraid of it; he would even welcome it. But only when God gives it.
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