He Said What? Understanding the Conditional Nature of Prophecy

Often we do not understand the full nature of the Lord's compassion and love for His children, and that can seep into how we read prophetic statements made in the past regarding others. A chief example of this is Jonah, a prophet who I believe gets the short end of the stick more often than not when we read his story of personal repentance and struggling with self-doubt and loathing after his mission was complete due to a limited understanding that plagues mortality. According to Jonah’s book:

And the word of Yahweh came to Jonah, son of Amittai, saying: “Rise up; go to Nineveh the great city. Cry unto her, for her evil has come before my face.” But Jonah rose up to hide in Tarshish from the face of Yahweh.[1]

Then, after a grueling three-days journey through hell, much like Alma the Younger or Saul undertook, Jonah repents:

And the word of Yahweh came to Jonah a second time, saying: “Rise up; go to Nineveh the great city. Cry unto her the message that I will speak to you.” So Jonah rose up and went to Nineveh according to Yahweh’s word. (Now Nineveh was an extremely large city – a three days’ walk across.) And Jonah began to go in the city, going a day’s walk, crying, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed in God, and they proclaimed a fast and wore sackcloth – both great and small.

…

And God saw what they had done, for they had turned from their evil paths. And God changed his mind about the evil that he said he would do to them, and did not do it.[2]

For many people, the story would end nicely if left there. In fact, many are often less willing to confront the next part of the story that is difficult to reconcile with what we should think about a prophet and what actually happened: “But this was displeasing to Jonah, and he became very angry.”[3] Jonah prays to the Lord, listing attributes of the Lord’s mercy, yet desires to die and “waited to see what would happen to the city.”[4]

Jonah’s book ends with a reproval from the Lord, yet many of us today do not realize or understand the full significance of Jonah’s predicament. Why, after all, would a prophet who feared being killed by a wicked city not be glad that his message was received and he was unharmed? Why would a prophet be angry at the Lord for choosing not to destroy some of His children?

The answer, I believe, is a problem many Latter-day Saints likewise struggle with, even if we don’t realize that we do.

Nowhere in Jonah’s prophecy did the Lord offer conditions by which the foretold calamity would be averted. According to the prophecy the Lord delivered to Jonah, forty days would see the city destroyed, no questions asked. Perhaps like the Jaredites or Nephites, the wickedness of the city had grown too great for there to be a hope of repentance – until they heard the word of the Lord, felt the Spirit testify to them of their wickedness, and unlike the Jaredites and Nephites, chose to act on what they had been told.

God, who does not desire any harm to have to befall His children, saw their works. He saw that they were trying to be better, and so He welcomed them with open arms. This prophecy with no conditions given for the people’s salvation from death even should they repent was averted, and Jonah no doubt felt like a failure.

He had spent a long and arduous journey to reach Nineveh, wrestling with God for three days in the depths of a personal hell. This prophet, perhaps newly-called, finally got the courage and power to fulfil his duty just to have the words that God Himself gave to Jonah go unfulfilled. What would that make Jonah? A failed prophet?

While Jonah may have felt like a failure, the Lord assured him that he was not, and that he had served faithfully to the extent of the salvation of a hundred and twenty thousand individuals.

While Jonah saw a prophecy as unconditional, many times in the scriptures the conditions are not fully laid out. There is much yet to be revealed, and so few absolutes regarding the gospel and plan of salvation that will certainly leave us amazed and in awe at the ultimate love and mercy of the Savior and our Heavenly Parents. While some scriptures may be read as an absolute statement of fact (as Jonah believed his prophecy was), should the offender repent, who is to stop the love and mercy of a father and mother who see a penitent prodigal yet a ways off, and running to them, they fall on the prodigal’s neck and welcome them home at long last?

As we read the scriptures, especially yet-future prophecies regarding the last days, life after death, etc., keep in mind that perhaps not all of these scriptures or statements by prophets are absolute prerequisites to any outcome. As Jonah learned first-hand, the Lord is all-merciful and all-loving, and as the Prophet Joseph Smith testified:

There is never a time when the spirit is too old to approach God. All are within the reach of pardoning mercy, who have not committed the unpardonable sin, which hath no forgiveness, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.[5]

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[1] Jonah 1:1-3a. All translations from the Hebrew Bible here included are mine.

[2] Jonah 3:1-5, 10. The verb translated as changed his mind in verse 10 is the same verb as to repent or to regret or be sorry. To avoid the confusion of whether or not God needs to ever repent of anything – He does not – I have translated the verb as such, following the lead of the New Revised Standard Version.

[3] Jonah 4:1.

[4] Jonah 4:5.

[5] "Discourse, 3 October 1841, as Reported by Times and Seasons," p. 577, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed April 19, 2021, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-3-october-1841-as-reported-by-times-and-seasons/1.