Lately, I have been blogging on the various false prophecies and teachings of Ellen White. Because of this many SDA have said to me that since Jonah was also a false prophet that means it is okay for Ellen White to be a false prophet too. This gives her a pass I guess in the eyes of some. In this post I am going to demonstrate from scripture that Jonah was a true prophet.
I would recommend before proceeding with reading my blog post on this that you take a moment to read the book of Jonah. It is one of the shortest, it shouldn’t take you more than ten minutes.
Most have heard the story, even those with no Christian background. There are a lot of messianic themes that most seem to gloss over. But the story itself is well known.
“Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,; Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.; But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Jonah 1:1-3 KJV
There are two questions I intend to ask and then answer later as we analyze this book.
- What did God mean by “cry against it”?
- Why did Jonah flee?
To summarize the rest of chapter 1 and 2, Jonah is thrown into the sea during a storm. A great fish of some kind swallows him up and then spits him out later on to dry land. There is also a beautiful prayer that Jonah gives while in the belly of the beast that is worth taking a look at in Chapter 2.
At the start of Chapter 3 we see that the story resets back to God’s original command to his prophet.
“And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying,; Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.” Jonah 3:1-2 KJV
Here we see “cry against it” is reiterated with the words “preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee”. This is important to understand. Jonah was commanded to speak God’s words to Nineveh. Not his own words, so we can expect his words to the Ninevites to be those commanded by God for Jonah to speak.
“And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.; So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.; For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.; And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:; But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.; Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.” Jonah 3:4-10 KJV
“and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”
Above we see that Jonah pronounces an ominous warning of doom upon all inhabitants of Nineveh. Don’t miss God’s purpose in speaking those very true words to Nineveh. For this is not unlike the doom that Paul preaches upon all of us today.
“They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.; Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:; Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:; Their feet are swift to shed blood:; Destruction and misery are in their ways:; And the way of peace have they not known:; There is no fear of God before their eyes.; Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.; Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Rom 3:12-20 KJV
Jonah is doing the same thing as Paul, he is preaching the Law to call sinners to repentance. This is the same call to all of us today, except instead of the destruction of a city the threat of hell and damnation presides.
This is a call for repentance which God used the king of Nineveh to proclaim to the entire city from fear of destruction.
“For word came unto the king of Nineveh”
“cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands”
“Who can tell if God will turn and repent”
“and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not”
Do you not think that God knew the King of Nineveh? Did he not create and place his king for for the very purpose of these events? The point is that God had his divine purpose in sending Jonah to preach a message of damnation. That is, to preach the law and move the people to repentance as their wickedness is revealed to them. What is done is an act of mercy and grace ordained by God. And it is this mercy that Jonah knew about and doesn’t much care for in this particular instance. Jonah is a sinner too just like the rest of us.
“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.; And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.” Jonah 4:1-2 KJV
Based on the above passage it would appear that Jonah had the same knowledge of God’s mercy that Jeremiah did.
Jonah knew from the beginning what was going on, this is why he ran away. He wanted Nineveh to be destroyed, he didn’t want them to hear the law and repent of their sins. He knew God would save them because that is and has always been his promise. Read the rest of the chapter, you will see that God uses the illustration of a plant to convey the love and mercy that he has for the people of Nineveh.
What we see in the book of Jonah is a conditional prophecy. It is the same one we see throughout all of the Bible. The teaching is that God’s wrath has come to bear upon you for transgressions which you stand guilty of. If you do not repent and place your trust in him this wrath will remain upon you (John 3:36).
So we can see that when put in the context of the historic narrative we have a lesson with regards to repentance of sin and salvation from being damned. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah is type and shadow of the Judgement of God, Nineveh is type and shadow of God’s mercy through the preaching of law and gospel. This is why Jesus Christ places his stamp of approval on Jonah as a true prophet and likens his mercy to that which is brought to the world in antitype fulfillment.
“But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:; For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.; The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” Matt 12:39-41 KJV
If one is going to be obstinate and ignore the council of scripture to twist a false prophecy out of context then you must also have to reject Jesus. For his standard on a prophet is absolute perfection (Deut 18:21-22). The word of the prophet must come true or they are no prophet. Jesus recognizes Jonah as a prophet, therefore his word did come true. I find it so sad that SDA will be willing to go so far as to reject Christ on this to save their Ellen White.
The rabbit hole doesn’t end their either. If your confession is that a prophet is allowed to prophecy falsely then what grounds does one have to reject prophets of other religions such as Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy?
I very strongly caution those SDA that go the route of unjustifiably attacking the Bible to keep their false prophet. The Bible says we are to test all things. In order to fulfill that command it must be possible to falsify things that are untrue. Ellen White is simply one of them. She is just one of the many false prophets Jesus warned us about (Mark 13:22), nothing more nothing less.
Armchair Theologian 
There is actually a much easier defense of Jonah to defeat the scurrilous SDA claim. Jeremiah tells us in Jeremiah 18:7,8 what God has to say about Nineveh. Jonah came to Nineveh and declared, without any conditions, that God would destroy the city in 40 days, isn’t that right? Here is what God said in Jeremiah 18:7,8. “If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.” Did God declare that he would destroy Nineveh? Did Nineveh repent? Did God relent? Is Jonah a false prophet? By SDA logic, GOD is the false prophet!!! The SDA would rather tear down God’s prophets in order to lift up their own “prophetess.” That is evil!
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Thank you very much. I hope you don’t mind if I add that passage to the blog post!
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The Lord rebuke you!
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This is no joke friend, the most comment defense I have seen for Ellen White’s false prophecies is SDA will say “Jonah was a false prophet too so it is okay!”
I am not okay with that argument, maybe you are? Let me know.
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Are the people who tear down the Bible to defend Ellen really even Christians? Christianity teaches that Jonah is a true prophet and the Bible supports this view. So anyone claiming otherwise is really telling us he or she is not a Christian but an unbelieving follower of Ellen White. Sadly.
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Any1 who say ellen G white is nt a true prophet is a non believer of God……read THE DESIRE OF AGES. They av done their part so pls think of urself, ask urself will we argue abt u of been a good christain when u r dead n gone.
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I proved that Ellen White is a false prophet just like Joseph Smith and the others in her day. You scan see my findings here:
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I am a Seventh Day Adventist. Any SDA who may have said what you are claiming doesn’t speak for what we as a denomination believe. SDAs don’t say that Jonah was a false prophet. Clearly, he was not. What we believe is that the message that God gave Jonah was conditional. If the people of Ninevah did not repent of their wickedness, they would be destroyed. The people did repent of their wickedness so they were not destroyed. Therefore, Jonah was not a false prophet. Ellen G White was given a message by God in a vision. She said that some of those that were present in the room with her would be alive when Jesus returned, yet Jesus did not come in their lifetime. Just like Jonah said that Ninevah would be destroyed, but was not. But as her critics are so quick to overlook, Ellen G White also later gives us the answer as to why this would no longer be true. She said that God’s people hadn’t finished the work of spreading the gospel like they were supposed to and therefore Jesus’s coming would be delayed. So her prophecy that certain people in her day would still be alive when Jesus returned was conditional. They didn’t meet the conditions and so the prophecy didn’t play out. Jonah was not a false prophet and for the same reason Ellen G White was not a false prophet for the reason you claim. Ellen White passes all the Biblical criteria of a prophet. She uplifted Jesus and never sought any glory or financial gain for herself as a result of her ministry. SDAs don’t worship Ellen White like critics like to say. We worship God alone. We put the Bible first. Nothing that Mrs. White wrote contradicts the Bible. All of our doctrines are based on the Bible and not just on some teaching of Ellen White. If we were to get rid of Ellen White, none of our fundamental beliefs would change. The SDA religion, and Ellen White are two of the most misrepresented, slandered, and lied about churches and people in our day. Look back at history. Almost all of God’s prophets were slandered, hated, disbelieved, and many even killed by the people of their day. The world, and apostate Christianity, accepts their own. The truth has always been rejected by the majority. The book of Revelation tells the state of God’s true people in the very end of the world. They are called the remnant. A remnant is a small minority. The vast majority wonders after the beast, but the small remnant, who is persecuted by the majority, remains faithful to God. And what are two characteristics, given by Jesus, of His last day remnant people?
Revelation 12:17
“[17]And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
They will keep the commandments of God, of which the 4th Commandment to keep God’s 7th day Sabbath is a part. And they will have the testimony of Jesus. And what is the testimony of Jesus?
Revelation 19:10
“[10]And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And there is only one Christian church that I know of that keeps ALL the Commandments of God, including the 4th to keep the 7th day Sabbath holy; and that also has the spirit of prophesy, which was given to Ellen G White.
Please don’t fall for all the lies. The SDA church is not a cult. We believe that we are saved by grace through faith just like everyone else does. We are only saved by the blood of Jesus. God bless!
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Key point I’d like to make is that I wasn’t arguing that SDA generally believe Jonah was a false prophet. Most I’ve spoken to do not believe that. Some I had spoken to in the past did believe that Jonah’s prophecy did not come true just like some of Ellen Whites prophecies did not come true. That’s the idea I was getting at.
You on the other hand argue that Ellen Whites prophecies were conditional. I do not agree, your point about SDA’s mission not fully completed therefore Jesus hasn’t come back yet doesn’t really hold water. For starters first she taught that the door was shut and nobody could be saved. Then over time she shifted that to 144,000 need to be converted but that happened so the prophecies shifted. Now it’s that the three angels message needs to go out while Jesus is working on the investigative judgement. We aren’t talking about a conditional prophecy her. I see a pattern where the conditions surrounding her prophecies keep shifting, which makes it difficult to have a consistent and reliable interpretation of her messages. This is the same thing you see with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons by the way just a different narrative. So your argument about criticism being a validation of her authenticity would apply to them just as easily.
The honest truth is she gave many prophecies that were not true and trying to claim that they were all conveniently conditional is kinda weak don’t you think? Aren’t you asking for some kind of special pleading? Here’s a link to my blog posts on her false prophecies and false teachings.
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