A few weeks ago, I preached on the radio and in our pulpit about the prophet Jonah. There are so many sermons that can be given from the book named after him. There are lessons about Jonah himself, Nineveh, the ocean voyage, the sailors or the great fish. When I left Jonah, Nineveh had repented and Jonah was setting under a shriveled up bush pouting.
What I didn’t preach on that day was that Jonah’s prophesy did come true! In the book of Nahum, which some say is the sequel to the book of Jonah, we see where God gave another prophet named Nahum a vision concerning Nineveh. Several decades after Jonah, the city’s fate was sealed. For a moment, let us go back in time to 713 B.C.
Nineveh has returned to idolatry and wickedness. The Assyrians, repenting when Jonah had preached to them, have relapsed worse than their former state. They are plundering other nations and idolatry is rampant. It seems God has had enough of the debauchery and appears to the prophet in a vision: Na. 1:2a God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; and in verse 1:3a The Lord is slow to anger and great in power,
God tells Nahum that He (God) will not acquit the wicked; He will take revenge against His enemies. The very mountains quake in His presence and the very earth burns in His presence! God has every right to be angry with the Assyrians and Nineveh. They had been warned before. They had repented and turned from their idols, their immorality, and their brutality. But those days are long gone.
But inside the Assyrian empire, there are those who still worship the one true God. They have not turned to false gods and continue to put their faith in the Lord. To those who are in the midst of the coming storm God makes this promise in verse 1:7 The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust him. He continues on to warn the faithful that He is going to put an end to this rebellious empire. It is so unholy and against God, the He is giving a commandment that no more of their name will be sown and out of the houses of their gods, He will make their graves, they are so vile!
God tells Judah to continue performing their solemn feasts, perform their vows, in other words, continue doing what the Lord has commanded them to do, keep faithful for He is going to utterly destroy the Assyrians. And God does just that!
At the end of the book, God’s vision to Nahum says that there is no healing of their wound for it is critical, and all those that the Assyrians conquered and brutalized would now clap their hands over them. They have become an extinct nation.
Jump back to the present and look at the current countries that had turned to God, or were started with God on their lips.
England, who the sun never set upon, who raised great churches and preachers and the translation called the King James Bible, now has fallen into moral and social decay. They are a mere shadow of what they once were.
The United States was spawned by the quest for religious freedom, to serve God as they believed and fought for independence from the before mentioned England. Our country, whose very Declaration of Independence and Constitution extol the existence, blessings and glory of the Creator God, now turns its back on Him! Politicians decree Him unworthy of our public worship!
God sent many preachers to this country, from the Pilgrims through the time of Spurgeon, Whitfield and Moody to Billy Sunday, Billy Graham and so many others of the twentieth century. But those voices are swiftly falling silent in a country that is following the lead of Europe, celebrating immorality, performing child sacrifice with abortions, turning to false idols and gods and shaking their fist at Heaven.
God has been here in the past my friends. He sent His prophets and people before us, but we as a country inspired by the Almighty are going the way of many civilizations before us. I believe He sent many Jonahs to us, but we repented for only a little while. Will we be the next Assyrians? Will we, as a nation, give ourselves over to the spirit of Nineveh? Will we Christians remember that ….he knoweth them that trust him.?
We need to pray every day my brothers and sisters, just as the faithful remnant did in Nineveh.
God may be sending a Nahum………..
