Time-locked Perspective Applied to Jonah
Now that we have a good idea of how we are going about our
study of Jonah from a time-locked perspective, let's dig into the process.
Information on Jonah is sparse. Outside of the actual book
of Jonah, he is only mentioned once in the Old Testament. Even New Testament
mentions do not shed any light on him other than to verify that Jesus viewed
him as an actual historical figure and the events of the book to be historical.
Because information is nearly nonexistent, there is a lot of
estimating, conjecturing, and uncertainty when trying to nail down just when
Jonah prophesied, when the book was written, and who the original target
audience was. Thankfully, the window that appears to be the time for all of
this, does not greatly affect the time-locked message as the original target
audience's spiritual condition remains constant throughout the whole window.
The questions to ask about Jonah, before even starting with
verse 1:1, include:
1. Who was the author of Jonah?
2. Is Jonah (the prophet or the book) mentioned anywhere
else in the Old Testament?
3. When was Jonah written?
4. When did the events of Jonah take place?
5. To whom was it written?
6. What was the spiritual condition of the original
audience?
7. What Scripture was available to the original audience for
interpretation?
Without giving away too much, I can confidently say that the
time-locked message from Jonah depended greatly upon getting the date of the
book right because of the original target audience. Now, the right date
is actually a window of around 78 or so years, but we can safely place the
book's writing after certain kings and before the exile. But, first the
questions.
I'm going to break the section here so as to give anyone that is interested time to research the questions above. I will try to give you all a week before posting what I discovered.
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