5 Smooth Stones

bondage. (Ma tt hew 8:16, 12:15, 14:35; Mark 1:32, 4:24). The good news of the Kingdom of God brought through the preaching and evangelization was always good news. The fruit of evangelistic preaching euaggelizo always brings the same results - glad tidings, good news, and great joy. As Jesus increased the in fl uence and reach of His ministry He did so by sending out his disciples to euaggelizo across the local countryside. As these disciples went about preaching the good news the results were the same as those Jesus a tt ained. Ma tt hew 4:23 “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.” Luke 8:1 “Now it came to pass, afterward, that He went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with Him,” Luke 9:1 “Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. 2 He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” Jesus used the record of Jonah to explain that He would die and be raised from the dead after three days. There is no clear scripture in the Old Testament that states speci fi cally that the messiah would die and be raised after three days. Jesus extracted this understanding from scriptures such as what he said to detractors: Ma tt hew 12:39 “But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fi sh, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” Even the disciples could not understand that Jesus would die and be raised from the dead on the third day. Afterward they remembered, John 2:22 “Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.” While Jonah is called a prophet under the old order, the book of Jonah certainly contains the most symbolic representation of the gift of an evangelist in the Old Testament. While Jonah himself was not excited about 106 Ma tt hew 24:14 “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”