Cheryl Schatz

Don,

You said:

“We see examples of this truncation in Jonah, where he gives no escape clause in his warning, yet they escape;”

While we do not have the words quoted from Jonah, we can know for sure that it wasn’t a false prophecy because God’s prophecies are provisional.  This is shown in Jeremiah 18:8

Jeremiah 18:8  if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it.

We know that Jonah knew God’s prophecy was provisional because he said as much in Jonah 4:1, 2

Jon 4:1  But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry.
Jon 4:2  He prayed to the LORD and said, “Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.

Jonah was angry at God because God’s compassion was shown just as he thought it would be.

The people of Ninevah also knew that God could be compassionate and relent from his anger.

Jon 3:5  Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.
Jon 3:6  When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes.
Jon 3:7  He issued a proclamation and it said, “In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water.
Jon 3:8  “But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands.
Jon 3:9  “Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.”
Jon 3:10  When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.

This is why Jonah was angry.  He did not have compassion on the people of Ninevah and he didn’t want God to have compassion on them either.

So while the missing part of what Jonah should have said is implied here, we can see that Jonah’s prophecy is not a false prophecy as the Jehovah’s Witnesses like to say (thus allowing them to be, in their minds, true prophets too and make “mistakes” in prophecy).  God’s word explicitly says that God may have mercy on a nation that turns from their sin and repents.

The question we need to ask, is this applicable to Eve?  It cannot be applicable since no one implies in any form that Eve was either lying or made a mistake in what she quoted from God.  Paul himself mentioned Eve twice, once in 1 Timothy 2:13 and another time in 2 Cor. 11:3 where he warned about being led astray from devotion to Christ, never once did Paul mention a deception other than the serpents as far as Eve is concerned and none of the Apostles, including Paul made any application to adding to God’s word.  In this case without any evidence we cannot insert a meaning into the text that is foreign to the context and foreign to the complete scriptures.

You said:

“and in Mark 8:12 where Jonah is not mentioned as an exception to the “no sign given” yet Mat 12:39, Mat 16:4, and Luk 11:29 DO mention the sign of Jonah.  Skeptics use such verses to claim the Bible contradicts itself and it DOES if only using Greek logic, but the problem is in the using of Greek logic, not the Bible as understood by a Hebrew thinker.”

I guess I must be a Hebrew thinker, because these accounts do not contradict one another.  The “sign of Jonah” is not a sign for that wicked and evil generation.  Jesus’ sign of being in the earth for three days and three nights that corresponds to the time for Jonah in the belly of the fish is impossible to be a sign for unbelievers.  No unbeliever ever saw the risen Lord.  The only ones who saw the risen Lord were all believers and were his followers before he died.  The “sign” then becomes a non-sign to unbelievers and only a “sign” if one turns from their sin to Jesus and believes.  It is then that the resurrection becomes a Jonah sign.  Jesus spoke about this “sign” in more than one occasion and one time in particular there is no mention that he mentions the exception.  Was this because he knew that in that group of Pharisees there would be no future believers?  Later Jesus speaks to the crowds in Luke 11:29 and spoke about the “sign” of Jonah.  For Jesus to mention the “sign” would indicate that there would be those who would believe the sign in the future.  No unbeliever ever received a “sign” of the resurrection for to them it was impossible for it to be a “sign”.  No contradiction here at all.

You said:

“I agree there is no evidence that the woman in the garden was a liar or even childlike.  But anyone can be simply mistaken.  Being deceived means one is mistaken about at least one thing, but the sin did not occur until she ate. ”

I do not agree that being deceived equals being mistaken.  A mistake is a misunderstanding or a misconception which brings an error in action or judgment.  One who has been deceived is one who has been deluded to believe something that is not true.  This is not a mistake.  It is deception.  A mistake is something you do on your own with your own false understanding.  Being deceived is something that someone else does to you and being fully deceived causes the truth to be hidden so that you cannot make a “mistake” about the truth, you cannot see the truth to even make a mistake.  One is fully and completely deceived.  No scriptural author ever stated that Eve was mistaken.  Her statement is merely stated as fact and without a hint of a contradictory view being brought forth.

We simply cannot see Eve as anything else than what scripture leave us with.  She is a woman who was created with the ability to provide what Adam lacked because she is called the same term as God is given when he helps us.  She also defended God in the beginning in the serpent’s attack against the Creator until the point that she was deceived.

We can either accept Eve’s word as correct and as something that is never impeached.  Or we can accept Eve as a liar or mistaken over nothing less than one of the simplest commands in scripture.

My push here has always been to have people see outside the box.  What happens to Genesis if we see the woman as telling the truth?  For me, Genesis came alive when I trusted the word of an unimpeachable witness.  If she was impeached, then God should have told us.

For the rest of those who are reading this, I ask just one thing.  Read through Genesis 1-3 one more time, this time seeing what you can see if everything in there is as it was written, except for the lie of the serpent.  Take Eve at her word that the forbidden tree was in the centre of the garden.  Take her word that both of them were forbidden from touching the fruit.  Then read the rest of the story about what happened to Eve and see Adam, knowing the truth, yet refusing to love his wife enough to sacrifice himself for her.  One sentence may have been all it took to stop Eve.  Maybe only one word “No”.  It wouldn’t have been a big sacrifice.  He was a man and he knew the truth.  He had the ability to speak and he knew the truth.  Yet he was silent.

Don,
Thanks for also pointing out John Piper’s take on the silence of Adam.  While I do not agree with Piper on the women’s issue, I do applaud him for speaking about against the silence of Adam and connecting it to God’s words to Adam when God spoke about Adam listening to the voice of his wife.

May none of us ever be silent.  If we know the truth, let us speak out boldly and confidently.  I will speak more about this in the next post.