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History or Allegory

Do you treat the bible as history or allegory?  Take for instance the prophecy of Jonah.  You will no doubt be unsurprised to hear that I treat it as history. However I have made an interesting and important discovery about allegory; in order to get the most out of an allegory you have to treat it as literal.  Do you remember your drama teacher telling you that in order to fully appreciate a play you have to "suspend your disbelief"? If you go to watch Hamlet it is no good saying to yourself,"This man is not called Hamlet at all.  He isn't even in a real castle, and that woman certainly isn't his mother and in the programme notes it says Ophelia has appeared in "Casualty" and "East Enders" so she's much too smart to drown herself." No, when watching this play you have to "suspend your disbelief" and then you will be able to see what Shakespeare had to say about life and tragedy.  And so it is with Jonah.  If you don't do this you will miss the several examples of God's prevenient grace, that is His undeserved favour which He prepares before-hand to shower on His children.  Here is the first example.  God commands Jonah to go to Nineveh to tell its people that He will bring disaster on them if they don't repent.  Jonah foolishly runs in the other direction and boards a ship.  God is never taken by surprise and has a plan even in this disobedient behaviour.  There is a catastrophic storm and the pagan mariners discover Jonah is the reason.  They ask him where he comes from and who his God is.  When they hear Jonah's God is the God of Earth and sky, unlike their gods who are limited to geographical regions, they are alarmed.  Jonah tells them to throw him overboard, which they do and then they worship Jonah's God and so God has brought His grace to these foreign sailors through Jonah's disobedience.
   Jonah is swallowed by a big fish/whale.  Here again God's prevenient grace is seen as the whale we hear "had been prepared." I like to think of God preparing that fish right back at the beginning of creation when God built its DNA into the first two whales.  This fish was special and designed specifically to house Jonah.

To be continued.....

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