If everyone could turn to Jonah 3. It goes Amos, Obadiah, Jonah. Jonah was a prophet of Israel hundreds of years before Christ came. We really do not read much about him elsewhere in the Bible. There is a reference in, I think, Kings to him. But in the book of Jonah, God gives us the account of an historical event, as He sent this prophet to Nineveh to bring an incredible message, to bring a message of judgment. A message, really, that only contained two elements: time and judgment. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown;” that was the whole message that Jonah was to bring to Nineveh.
We know when the Lord first sent him that he ran away. He got on a ship to Tarshish; but then, of course, God’s purposes will always be accomplished. No one can run away from God or the will of God because He is sovereign. He is in control of everything. Of course, He is the Creator and He can control the seas, and so He caused a great storm to come and that ship was tossed. The mariners, being experienced seamen, knew that the ship would be broken and they would all drown soon. Then the account tells us in Jonah 1 that they asked Jonah who he was and who his God was. Then they find out that the storm was because of him and the only way to calm the storm was to throw him overboard into the sea, but they did not want to do that. They were decent people and they did not want to throw him overboard, so they rowed hard to see if they could get out of that storm but they could not. They had to throw him into the sea and, immediately, the sea was calm.
So Jonah was sinking into the sea when God sent a whale, and the whale came and swallowed him up, just like we read in the Bible; that is exactly what happened. Again, we see the incredible council of God as He controls all creatures and all events, everything in its perfect time and place, and there was that whale, just as the sea calmed, and he swallowed up Jonah, and Jonah was in the whale’s belly for three days and three nights. Then from the whale’s belly, he was praying to God. We know, spiritually, he was a beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus because Jesus refers to him in the New Testament, “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.”
After he prays, and, really, Jonah, too, is a beautiful picture of the faithfulness of Christ while under the wrath of God, not cursing God, not angry at God, but praying and thanking God. That, of course, demonstrates and shows Jesus’ obedience and faithfulness. Then he was finally spit out. The whale vomited him out on the shore, which was near the city of Nineveh. It was close to the city. It does not necessarily have to be that he was vomited out and then walked up the beach and into the gates of Nineveh. We do not know how far the city was, but he went from there directly to the city, and that is what we read in Jonah 3.
I am going to read the whole chapter. It is only ten verses. It says in Jonah 3:1-10:
And the word of JEHOVAH came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of JEHOVAH. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. 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.
That is the end of Jonah 3, and there is something in Jonah 3, to me, that is even more incredible than the raging sea being calmed or that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and then vomited out. Do you see what I am seeing here that is so incredible? What is it that is absolutely amazing in Jonah 3? It is unbelievable, we would say.
Look at verse 4, Jonah 3:4:
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.
Period. That is it! A single sentence that is eight English words long. That was the message that he brought to Nineveh that God sent him to bring.
What is even more incredible is verse 5, Jonah 3:5:
So the people of Nineveh believed God…
Eight words. Eight words! That is it! No more. It is true that God sometimes takes, we would say, snapshots out of historical events and He gives us just, sometimes, bare information.
So did Jonah go into the city repeating this as he went? He could have. He could have walked a few blocks and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” and kept walking, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” but God does not tell us that he did that. He only tells us that he said it and He only tells us that he said it once, so we would really be speculating.
Could he have added more information? Maybe. He could have said, “The Lord has sent me,” possibly, but we do not know any of that. That is all speculation and, therefore, it could be untrue. Maybe that did not happen. Maybe.
I would say that this is all we have to go on, so this is how we have to understand it. He went into the city of Nineveh, which was a great city of that day. We know from the next chapter that there were 120,000 people, at least. He spoke a single sentence that God had given him to speak and they all believed him, from the king on down. The king sat in sackcloth and he decreed that everyone do so, and the whole city then began to repent. They did repent. They turned from their sins.
Look at Matthew 12:41:
The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation…
This means that they are going to be resurrected unto life. They were saved.
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.
So they were saved. They repented and they are going to be resurrected on May 21st in 2011 and they are going to, in their resurrection, condemn all of those who are left behind or all of the unsaved of the world, along with the Queen of Sheba and along with all of the others who are being raised up to life.
So God makes it very clear, as He gives us more information in the New Testament, that this single sentence that He gave the prophet to bring to the people of Nineveh brought about great salvation, tremendous salvation. And I think that it is incredible, because men are spiritually dead men, of themselves. If you are dead, you do not have eyes to see, you do not have ears to hear, you do not have any life, and yet God brought the message and then He saved a great many people in the city.
Now, why don’t we look at this from the world’s perspective. Let us look at this from man’s perspective. If we are saved, we have been in the world. We know how the world thinks. And here you have a man who is a stranger, number one. He was not an Assyrian. The Ninevites were Assyrians. He was not from their nation. He was not from their city. He did not naturally speak their language. He was a foreigner and a stranger. It was not like he had lived there for forty years; he just showed up. He not only was from another nation, but he was someone who just appeared on the scene. As far as we know, they did not know him at all. They did not know who he was. The men on the ship did not know him, “Who are you? What is your occupation?” “I am a Hebrew and I fear Jehovah.” It is interesting that when he said this, it says in Jonah 1:8-10:
Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear JEHOVAH, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid…
You see, there is an association with truth because the world knows. The world knows that the Bible is true. The world knows that Christianity is the truth. Deep-down, I think, the world knows this, and so Jonah had the right association. He was a Hebrew—that is, the Old Testament people of God—and he feared Jehovah who is the only God, the true God. He had the right God and he was identified with the truth, in that sense, and so the men feared.
Now, as this Hebrew entered into the Ninevite city, into Nineveh, he also would have had that same association, because he is coming with a message from Jehovah, even though he does not say it. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” He does not mention God. He does not mention Jehovah. He does not mention any of that, but he was a Hebrew and, I am sure, people in this city, some of the people, would have recognized him as a Hebrew and that he would have had an association with the nation of Israel and the true God, the Lord Jehovah. And so he is going into the city and here are people of the world, they are outside of Israel. They have no connection with Israel.
Can you think of any other responses that the Ninevites could have had, other than the one that they did? What if you or I or any of us went to downtown Philadelphia and we said—well, actually we are doing this with a tract that tells the people of the world that the Rapture is coming May 21st and the end of the world is October 21st; we are just relaying what God has revealed to us through His Word and we are giving a longer time span—but if we went downtown and we just cried out a single sentence, “So much time, two years, two years and Philadelphia will be overthrown!” What kind of reaction would we get? Or New York? Or Los Angeles? Or London? Or Paris? What kind of reaction are we going to get from the people of the world? Is it going to be the reaction of the Ninevites, as far as the city itself and the mayor and the rulers of the city and all the people in the city?
No. God is saving a great multitude, but that is not going to happen. That is not going to happen. That is not going to happen. What instead would happen is that it would be laughed at; it would be mocked. We can think of so many reasons why you would not believe something like that, but the Ninevites believed. They believed it, and that is really what is amazing.
This is what got me thinking, “What convinced them?” What convinced these people that this was true and really from God and that they should act upon it? It was not the volume of evidence, was it? Jonah did not come with an encyclopedia of studies, of teachings that were derived from the Bible, and lay them at the doorstep of the city of Nineveh and start saying, “Look at all of this information that is coming out of the Bible,” which, by the way—maybe we cannot approach the number of words in an encyclopedia—but today, how much information could we lay at someone’s feet? How much? A lot. There have been books written: The End of the Church Age…and After, Wheat and Tares, Time Has an End, We Are Almost There!, To God be the Glory!, and tracts written and so forth, a lot of information, tons of information. But, you know, information is not going to convince anyone. This volume of information is not going to convince anyone. Anyone who is waiting, “Okay, give me another study. Give me some more information. Come on. Show me some more. Maybe that will convince me. We might be almost persuaded,” like King Agrippa, maybe, “Almost, Paul, thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” “Almost,” that is as far as man’s reasoning with man, or that is as far as any natural man can come to salvation—almost.
Of course, that is a tragic place to be, to come right up to the doorsteps of the Kingdom of Heaven and to be left outside when the door is shut. That is an awful place to be, almost there, almost saved, almost believed it to where I reacted, to where I did something and I responded, but not quite.
This is why it is so incredible and so amazing that God gives us this example that is very similar to what is going on in our day, where there is a message of time and judgment. That is it. Not the love of God. Not the Saviour hanging on the cross. It was just, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Judgment: you have a time and you have a date. “Forty days from this day that I am entering your city,” and it was true and it was faithful because we know what is in the Bible. Every Word of God is true and faithful, and God would have destroyed them in forty days; however, they reacted and they did respond.
So that is what I would like to take a look at. Why? Why did they respond this way and why do not so many others respond this way? Why do so many people need more and more? For instance, if you go to the Gospel of John, in John 1, there is another interesting bit of information. Beginning in verse 43, it says in John 1:43-46:
The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
So he is skeptical. Nathanael is skeptical. He is not gullible. He is not naïve, as some people might say that the Ninevites were for believing such a thing. He is a skeptic. He is like a Doubting Thomas here, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
How is he going to be convinced? Jesus is going to have to make him one of the disciples, and then he will have to see miracle after miracle after miracle for three and a half years before he actually believes that Jesus is the Messiah. Is that true or false? That is false? No. No. He does not go and be Jesus’ disciple. Yes, he was a disciple and he did follow Jesus, but it did not take three and a half years. He did not have to see mighty miracles that Jesus later would do. What convinced him? “Come and see,” Philip said to him, and then in verse 47, John 1:47-49:
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.
Wow! How simple! How quick! How fast!
I remember when we were studying the topic of the end of the Church Age. I think it was four or five weeks after we came back from the conference at Towson that Robert and I were talking, because we were a church at that time and we had been doing a study since we came back. I just said to Robert and he said to me, “I am convinced, so let us just disband and cease being a church.” I remember the day because it was the day after 9/11. It was September 12th. We said, “Yes, that is it.” Then, of course, it was only four or five weeks that we had been studying the issue when some people said, “You did not study long enough. You really have to dig in there. Your study was too quick, too fast. You came to a decision, really, too fast,” and they were offended, and also recently with the doctrines that have been coming out.
Over the last few years, I think Robert and I had been teaching hell as much as anyone when we would teach, that it was eternal damnation and suffering forever and ever. I remember doing a series on hell and just emphasizing and reemphasizing the idea that hell was forever. Then I heard that Mr. Camping had begun to see that it was not forever, that you are actually destroyed forever; you are eternally destroyed. On October 21st, every bit of you is completely gone. You are gone forever—you cease to exist—and that goes into eternity. So I started looking at it, and that was quick; it was only a couple of weeks. And some people still are saying to me, “You just believe whatever he says; you just follow a man.”
I mean, I am sorry. I am sorry. What can you do? When you go to the Bible and you see something, even if you did not see it before, if God opens your eyes and you understand something, then you are obligated, you are responsible. You cannot keep following something that is not true. You have to change and you have to repent and you have to turn and you have to believe what the Bible teaches.
So it was really amazing when I saw this about Nathanael. How did Jesus convince Nathanael that He was the Messiah, that He was the Son of God? “I saw you under the fig tree.” That is it. That is it. It is the least, the least, we definitely could say, of Jesus’ mighty works, without question. Of course, there is a spiritual meaning there; but still, He saw him under a fig tree, and that was enough for Nathanael. Then Jesus says in verse 50, John 1:50:
Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.
Of course, Jesus was not amazed, really. He is just emphasizing that Nathanael believed like a little child. He believed like a little child, like a little boy or a little girl when father or mother is saying something to them. He believed it immediately. He believed it right away and he acted upon it. He became one of the disciples of the Lord Jesus, just like the Ninevites believed.
Now, please, do not misunderstand. When we hear something, we have to check it out, as Robert was saying earlier. We have to be like the Bereans and search the Scriptures daily to see if it is so. But how much searching are some people going to do? How much evidence do some people need before they believe, before they act on what they believe?
God is calling for action. He is calling for action. You know, to think and agree in your mind, “May 21st, 2011, yes, that is the Rapture. October 21st, 2011, that is the end of the world. Alright, I will go along with that. It is coming from a reliable source, someone identified with the true Gospel. For 50 years, they have been bringing the Gospel to the world. I will go along with that.” So you now believe it? No, you do not. No, you do not. What is belief? They repented at the preaching of Jonah.
If the Ninevites had said, “Well, yes, I do not know why, but the king believes him, others believe him. In forty days, we will be destroyed, so let us put on sackcloth.” If they just went along with it and did it but they did not really believe it, then I do not know if they would have been saved. You see, God tells us that belief requires action. It requires obedience and repentance. But the question was why did they believe? Why did Nathanael believe so quickly that Jesus was the Messiah?
If we go to John 10:1-5, it says:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.
The sheep hear His voice. Nathanael, of course, heard the voice of Christ, the Great Shepherd, and immediately recognized it. It was confirmed in his heart that this was the Lord. And the Ninevites heard the Shepherd’s voice.
Go to Acts 22:14:
And he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will…
This is being spoken to Saul who became the Apostle Paul.
…thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth.
You see, that is the elect. Paul is representing the elect.
The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest…hear the voice of his mouth.
It really is as simple as that. It is as simple as that. Why, when you give someone a tract, “Does God Love You?,” do they open it up? They are just drawn to read it and when they read it, they believe it and they are troubled in their heart and they begin to pray and God saves them. And then you give another person the exact same tract, it could even be his twin brother—it could be his twin brother, it does not matter, they are so much alike in the world that you could not tell them apart—and he takes it and rips it up and throws it in the trash. Why? Because God has chosen one. “Jacob have I loved, but Esau I hated,” and they were twins. He has chosen one and not the other, and He has predetermined, predestinated from before the foundation of the world, that the one will hear His voice.
By the way, what is going on now in our day? If we go to Habakkuk 2:2-3, it says:
And JEHOVAH answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak…
“It” is better translated “He.”
…He shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it (He) will surely come, it (He) will not tarry.
At the end, He will speak, and that is related to God sealing up the Word till the time of the end, and then He lifts the seals.
He is not going to speak audibly. He is not going to give us further revelation. He is not going to add to the Bible, because the Bible is complete. We have Genesis through Revelation, and you cannot add a word, but He is going to speak by opening up the Scriptures to the understanding of His people.
That is why it says in Mark 13 (again, I will just read one verse), in verse 11, the last part of the verse, Mark 13:11:
…whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost is speaking through the truth that is coming forth out of His Word. There is a lot of truth coming forth and one of them is that May 21st will be the Rapture; October 21st will be the end of the world, 5 months later.
This is coming from the Bible. God had sealed up this information. He closed it up to the understanding of everyone, throughout history, till the time of the end. Now that we are at the time of the end, He is opening it up and, in a way, He is speaking and His sheep will hear. They will know His voice and they will believe it. They are going to believe it.
I think some people really think that believers who are seeing these things, understanding them, and believing them, I think that they think, deep-down, that they really do not. But, actually, God’s people believe God.
You know, the Ninevites heard one sentence from Jonah, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” and the next verse says that they believed Jonah. Is that true? What did it say in Jonah 3?
So the people of Nineveh believed God…
They believed God. It does not say that they believed Jonah. He was the one who went into the city. God did not speak from Heaven. He sent, probably, a scraggly prophet. You have to consider that he just came out of three days and three nights from a whale’s belly. He was probably a little disheveled and he could have had an odor about him also. Really, he was three days and three nights in a whale’s belly. He was a foreigner who had no place to go and get cleaned up, as far as we know. He went into the city and he declared this to the people, and they believed God. They believed God.
You see, God knows. God knows that His people hear His voice, even though He uses ordinary, typical human beings to declare it to others. So I do not mind, really, if people say, “Well, you believe anything that Mr. Camping says. You are following a man.” I really do not mind, because I know that this is the world’s reaction.
When God spoke to Saul on the way to Damascus, he was struck blind and his whole life was changed; but the others that he was traveling with did not hear it. It was as though it thundered. One heard the voice of God and the others, right there with him, did not hear.
That is how it is, and people, really, they are just wasting time, putting it off, trying to say, “No, it is not from God.” “It is not from God,” is really what they are saying; and they can keep doing that, but that is not the response of the Ninevites. That was not their response. They believed God and they repented at the preaching of Jonah.
Okay. We will stop here and close with a prayer.