We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

What is the significance of Jonah 1:2; 3:2, 4–10; 4:2?

God “changed his mind” (3:10) about the destruction he planned to carry out on Nineveh.

If all events in history are eternally settled and known by God as such, his word to Jonah that he planned to destroy Nineveh in forty days was insincere as was his inspired testimony that he in fact changed his mind about his planned judgment. It is interesting to observe that while some today think that being willing to change one’s mind evidences a weakness and thus can’t be attributed to God, Jonah recognized that this willingness was one of God’s attributes of greatness (4:2).

Category:
Tags: ,
Topics:
Verse: , ,

Related Reading

Free Will: How free will presupposes a great deal of determinism

This particular video was recorded last week when the forecast called for a high of -4F.  Greg makes light of the freezing conditions before he settles into the topic of how a mostly determined world is actually the needed context for free will to operate. Stay warm out there!

Doesn’t the open view demean God’s sovereignty?

The Open view demeans God’s sovereignty only if one assumes that “sovereignty” means “meticulous control.” By why think this is the way God wants to rule the world? The biblical narrative presents a God who gives humans (and apparently angels) free will, who is flexible and creative in running the world, and who relies at…

Topics:

Open2013 Reflections

Both participants and leaders share about what was happening at Open2013 and some of their thoughts on Open Theism. Listen in and hear from Greg Boyd, John Sanders, Tom Oord, T. C. Moore, Jessica Kelley and many more.

If God Can’t Control, How Can I Trust Him?

Question: If God can’t always answer our prayers for healing, for example (and I completely understand why—free will etc), then HOW can he promise to bring good out of the bad things that happen? Surely he is powerless to do that too? And if he can bring good why can’t he therefore heal in the…

Who Rules Governments? God or Satan? Part 1

Running throughout Scripture is the motif that depicts God as the ultimate ruler of the nations. On the other hand, the NT teaches that the ruler of nations is Satan. What do we do with these two apparently conflicting motifs? First, because OT authors tended to understand the creation along the lines of a king-centered…

Is speaking in tongues the initial evidence of receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Pentecostals have traditionally taught that speaking in tongues is evidence that a person is filled with the Holy Spirit. Those who defend this position do so primarily on the basis of a pattern they discern in Acts. They note that when the disciples were first baptized in the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, “all…

Topics: