Repent, for the End is Near!

 

The people of Nineveh believed in God, and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.  Jonah 3:5

 We’ve all seen it, even if only on TV, the guy with the sandwich board calling people to repent. The end of the world is near. Does anyone take him seriously? I doubt it. He walks around the city day after day, night after night, warning people that their sin has a price, and the bill is coming due. Kind people might smile and nod at him. Mean people might mock him or even throw things at him. Most people ignore and avoid him. What would you do? What did you think when you saw this post?

 Jonah entered the city of Nineveh immediately after being “disgorged” from having spent three days in the belly of a whale. The man had to look (and smell) a sight! How did he approach the city? He wasn’t happy to be there, of that we can be certain. Was he stomping? Had he picked up a large walking stick along the way? His presence certainly drew attention, and then he began hollering that the city was about to be destroyed! And here’s the crazy thing, people believed him!

 In Jonah 2:5 it tells us that the people declared a fast, even before it came down from the king. They put on sackcloth and sat in ashes. Once it reached the ears of the king, he followed suit and just to be sure, he issued a proclamation that no living thing in Nineveh was to eat or drink. All this was done “just in case” the destruction could be averted.

 Jonah was not particularly invested in this mission. He did not have hope or desire to see the people’s hearts changed. He didn’t try his hardest to be eloquent, to come up with a convincing speech. I get the impression he was doing his “least,” the very minimum expected of him from God. He just didn’t want to get swallowed by another whale! What passed through his mind as he saw the people? The women drawing water at the well, the children playing in the street. Knowing that destruction was coming for them, did his heart break for them? I don’t think it did, based on what he did next, but how is that possible?

 And yet God used him. God took his simple message and caused it to burn in the hearts of the people. This had to be an act of God, I can’t imagine it otherwise.

 I’ve seen one parallel after another between Jonah and Jesus as I’ve read through the book this week. They both fell asleep in a ship during a storm. They both spent three days and nights in a grave-like environment. And now the parallel is drawn in a future book, two actually.

The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. Matthew 12:41 AND Luke 11:32 NET

 It seems that humanity is set on a course of self-destruction. Back in Jonah's day, the people in a wicked city responded immediately to Jonah's preaching. During Jesus' time, a great number followed Him, but they were still willing to kill Him. Today people barely even hear the message. Revelations tells us about future humanity, if it can even be called that by then, in Revelation 11:3-12. Two witnesses will come to a city and preach for 1,260 days dressed in sackcloth. Not only will people have 400x more time to hear the message, these messengers will also have amazing power to back up their message with fire coming from their mouths to destroy their enemies, the ability to stop the rain from falling, and the power to turn water to blood and other various plagues. Even so, when their time is finished and they are killed, the world will rejoice, even to the point of sending each other gifts in celebration of their death. It seems that each generation's hearts grow a little harder.

Here’s the Thing: Jesus is coming back. For Him, it will be soon. What that means in our timeline I do not know, but I know that we should be found ready. If you’re instructed to do something by God, just do it. You have no idea how He’ll use it!