Hank Smith: 00:05 Hello, my friends. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith, and I’m here with the incredible John Bytheway.

  00:11 Welcome, John Bytheway.

John Bytheway: 00:12 Thank you.

Hank Smith: 00:13 If you’ve been following followHIM Favorites this year, you know that we’re taking a single question from every lesson and we’re just talking about it. The question this week, John, is, what are we supposed to learn from the story of Jonah? This is just a crazy story of Jonah running away from God and being swallowed by a fish, and by the end of chapter one, you’re going, “Holy cow. What is happening here?”

  00:37 So, John, what do you get out of the story of Jonah?

John Bytheway: 00:40 Oh, man. There’s a few things that I think are kind of interesting. One of them is that he gets a call to go to a place that is known for being really wicked and really brutal, to Nineveh. And I like the words it used to describe, he went down to Joppa, and went down into a ship, and they threw them in the water. And then he goes up. The fish swallows him. He vomits him up on the shore. He goes up to Nineveh. It’s like, when you’re going away from God, you’re going down, down, down. There’s something to learn about, if the Lord calls you to do something that sounds really hard or impossible, you can do it with his help. And that’s a beautiful part.

  01:19 The fun part is, Hank, and we’ve talked about this before, is that Jesus talks about the story of Jonah. When the scribes and Pharisees are demanding a sign, “We would see a sign of thee.” Jesus says, I won’t give you one except for the sign of Jonah. So, what does he mean by that, do you think, Hank?

Hank Smith: 01:35 I love the sign of Jonah, the idea that I can give you a sign that Jonah was in the whale for three days and three nights. And here’s a sign for you. I’m going to come out of a tomb after three days and three nights. In the belly of the whale, Jonah was there three days and three nights, somewhere he never should have come out of. And yet, he came out of it. Because I think the sign Jesus is talking about is, I can do something even bigger than Jonah did, not just come out of a fish, I can come out of death after three days and three nights.

  02:05 I’ve had students ask me, “Do you really think that Jonah was in the belly of a whale for three days? Is that scientifically possible?” And I’ve often thought, that’s not the question we should be asking. The question we should be asking, “Did Jesus come out of the tomb after three days and three nights? Is that scientifically possible?” Because that question is going to have eternal consequences. The Jonah question, whether it’s a metaphor or not, I’m not overly concerned about that. I’m concerned about Jesus and if he really did come out of the tomb. And if he did, wow, that changes everything, doesn’t it?

John Bytheway: 02:40 Yeah. Like you said, Jonah came out of a place no one’s ever come out of before. And Jesus came out of a tomb. Nobody had ever done that before and came out of a tomb and resurrected. I guess I was thinking he healed Lazarus, but he brought him back from the dead. But Lazarus died again later. Jesus came out of the tomb, resurrected never to die again. And so, how’s that scientifically possible?

  03:03 The Book of Mormon calls it the Power of Resurrection. It’s the opposite of entropy of everything breaking down. It requires a power. And he came forth. And so, I love that Jesus would reference the sign of Jonah and say, “No. I’m not going to give you a sign, except for the sign of, he calls it Jonas in the New Testament. But in the New Testament, Greek names that end in an H end in an S and the New Testament, I guess.

Hank Smith: 03:28 And I think one more lesson from Jonah is let people repent. Be happy when people repent. Jonah’s so upset that God doesn’t destroy Nineveh. He’s almost like saying, “Don’t give them a second chance like you just gave me a second chance.” We’ve got to allow people to repent and be happy about it. It’s almost like the parable of the prodigal son, here, where he’s upset that his brother is doing the right thing.

John Bytheway: 03:52 That he came back.

Hank Smith: 03:53 We’ve got to be happy when God allows people to repent, when God is kind.

John Bytheway: 03:57 I really like the connection that you make, there. Jonah just got a second chance. Why should he be upset that the people of Nineveh are getting a second chance?

Hank Smith: 04:06 Right.

John Bytheway: 04:06 I guess it was Elder Holland that said that God is a God of second chances, and repentance is a thing. What did Elder Holland say? The most hopeful, encouraging word in the whole Christian vocabulary is “repentance.” And the people in Nineveh did it. “Well, Jonah, you should be happy the Lord let you repent. So, let the people of Nineveh repent, too. Maybe he really wanted some justice because they were pretty brutal, those Assyrians in Nineveh.

Hank Smith: 04:30 He maybe wanted them to suffer for their deeds. But remember, someone has already paid. The Savior has already paid for those deeds. So, let’s be happy and rejoice when other people repent and come back to the Lord. I think Elder Holland said, “Be kind. And be grateful that God is kind. It’s a happy way to live.”

John Bytheway: 04:48 I like it. I like, too, in the Book of Jonah, where it says, “Doest thou well to be angry?”

Hank Smith: 04:53 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 04:55 Showing us, “How’s this working for you?”

Hank Smith: 04:57 Yeah. How’s that working out?

  04:59 We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. This week, we’re with Dr Josh Sears. You’re going to love it. So, come over and join us there. And then, join us next week for another followHIM Favorites.