If we could turn to Jonah, chapter 3, I am going to read Jonah 3:5-10:

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.

This brings us to the end of Jonah, chapter 3. In our last study, we were looking at the king of Nineveh as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ and His immediate and humble reaction to the Word of God that Jonah, the dove or Holy Spirit, had brought. It really points to Christ Himself, who is King of kings and LORD of lords and He reigned in heaven from eternity past. Then He became the Lamb of God that took upon Himself the sins of His people and He left that glorious throne, as it were, and all that mighty power and authority and enormous glory that belonged to Him from all eternity past. It is really something to consider. This great God has always been God and He created other creations in eternity past and reigns over a vast kingdom that our limited finite minds cannot even begin to comprehend. We cannot even imagine this kingdom of God, as God has had eternity to build His kingdom and bring glory to Himself.

At the foundation of the world at some point in eternity past, the Lord Jesus humbled Himself and left His throne. He put aside that “royal robe” and He covered Himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. That is the spiritual picture that forms the basis of God’s entire salvation program and its times and seasons. It always relates back to that. It does not mean that Christ died as the Lamb right before He spoke and created the world, but His death is that foundation for everything that happens in this world and in the world to come, the new heaven and new earth.

So, here, the king of Nineveh and his humility is a picture of the Lord Jesus. We see it says in Jonah 3:7:

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles…

He was causing the word the Jonah brought to be proclaimed, so the king’s criers (or however they were known) would have gone out to the people. Remember that they did not have a printing press or anything along the lines of communication that we have today. It is really amazing what we have today, is it not? We have phones and computers and radios. For several hundred years, we have had the printing press and we could publish Bibles that could go out to the nations of the world. I do not know the exact time period that Jonah went to Nineveh, but it was over seven hundred or eight hundred years before Christ, so they did not have any printing press. Perhaps they had scribes, but this was an urgent matter and it was a big city. There could have been a written decree that a scribe wrote on a scroll, but copying it would not have been simple. However, he was king and he could have put all the scribes in the kingdom to work and maybe that would be how the written word would have gone forth at that time, but it was probably “word of mouth” for the most part, with the Ninevites sharing it with one another until the entire city heard.

We can see how this fits with what God did in the time leading up to May 21, 2011 in proclaiming and publishing the news about Judgment Day on May 21, 2011. We see this in the deeper spiritual meaning here. As Christ said in Matthew 13:11: “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” He gave this as the explanation of why He spoke in parables. But to some it is not given and for anyone God does not give ears to see and eyes to see, they can read the book of Jonah and they can come up with a few good moral lessons about why it is good to obey God and not be disobedient. They can see historical things and moral things, but no spiritual things. Christ said in the New Testament in Matthew 12:40: “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.” So, they can see that much, but as far as going through the book of Jonah and seeing deeper, spiritual pictures, you do not typically see that in the churches and congregations.

In fact, what we would hear from the churches and congregations contradicts what we are seeing here. They would say, “No time paths!” You know, they do not even do this with any gentleness or kindness, like a teacher would do with a child. No – it is forbidden and they view it as the “lowest” form of the Gospel. In the church’s eyes, to put forth a “date” from the Bible is lower than speaking in tongues. Of course this is the case because over a quarter of the two billion in the churches are openly speaking in tongues. Too put forth a timeline or a date is lower than “falling over backwards” and it is lower than “holy laughter.” It is lower than any error or false doctrine one can imagine and the false doctrines are numerous out there. It is the lowest thing possible: “You are a date setter!” It is almost said with disgust.

And, yet, when we look in the Bible, we see that God told Noah, “And yet seven days,” and then He would destroy the world with a flood. So, I am sorry to tell these people that God is a “date setter.” He set a specific date for Noah. It was one week. It is as if He said, “The date is Thursday today, so you can circle a week and next Thursday is the day.” As a matter of fact, it was “the seventeenth day of the second month,” in the days of Noah and that is the same underlying Hebrew calendar date for May 21, 2011. Or, we can look at what God said in Genesis 15 where He told Abram his seed would be captive, as it says in Genesis 15:13-14: “And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.” That is a timeline! It is a timeline and it is “verboten” to the churches. (Did I say that write in German?) It is forbidden! “It is not allowed. It is not permitted!”

But God gave the timeline and if God gave a timeline, why are timelines forbidden? He gave a timeline to Noah of seven days. You could go elsewhere in the Bible. What are the “seventy weeks” of Daniel 9? It is a timeline: “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off.” It is a timeline to the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are time paths that can be followed to a major event in Biblical history and it was God who moved the prophet Daniel to write it. Was Daniel a despicable date setter?

The problem is that those in professed Christendom do not recognize who wrote these things in the Bible. They look at it as from Paul, John or Peter, but they do not understand that all scripture was given by inspiration of God. They would say, “Daniel said that or Abram said that.” No – it was God who said that. God is a date setter. He gave a date to Ezekiel when He commanded him to lie 390 days on his left side and 40 days on his right side. And on and on it goes throughout the Bible.

In Jonah, it is very clear that God says, “And yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” We have a timeline with a definite event at its conclusion, which is the destruction of the city of Nineveh and this is what the king caused to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh.

We have looked at this before, but let us look at how Nineveh is a type and figure of the world. It says in Nahum 1:1:

The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

In this context of Nineveh, it says in Nahum 1:5:

The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.

Then it goes on to discuss the wrath of God, but it was the “burden of Nineveh.” What does the earth and the world have to do with Nineveh? It is a type or figure. Nineveh pictures the world and within the world we find God’s elect as represented by the people of Nineveh that God saved. They picture His elect people that are saved out of the world, so we are looking at this historical account and we did look a little bit at the moral lesson that it is not good to disobey God. But now we are getting to the spiritual lesson or the “meat” of the Bible, as Eddie Ramos pointed out in his study of the “milk of the word” versus the “meat of the word.” As long as you stay in the historical or moral application, you stay on the basic “milk.” It is only when you look at the deeper spiritual meaning that you get the spiritual nourishment and growth of the “meat of the word.”

Again, the spiritual meaning is in direct contradiction to what the churches teach when they say, “No man knows. Do not get involved in that – you are not allowed or permitted to do that.” This idea is promoted by popes, bishops, reverends, elders and deacons. There is only one problem. None of these people have any authority because God has ended the church age and they have no authority over the people of God. God removed all spiritual authority from them and they are just men that do not like to hear time paths. Why do they not like to hear time paths? It is because it brings the things the Bible says to a level that is “too real” for them. It becomes something that could point to a certain date, like May 21, 2011 and it was a date that was not that far away in the days that led up to it, so it was an event that they did not want to deal with, so they attempted to be “holier than God.” God is a date setter and there are many scriptures that are timelines that go to major events that God then fulfills. So, if God is subject to His own Word and His own law and if He finds it permissible to give a date, then it is also permissible for the people of God. Of course, we cannot bring a date from our own minds, but we look to God for direction in the Bible regarding His time paths.

Going back to the book of Jonah, the king caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by his decree. We see that when God causes something like that, it does go throughout the world. It is mindboggling to think about what happened leading up to May 21, 2011. If someone thinks this can be done just any time, why is no one doing this today with a message like Judgment Day? Why are the churches not doing it? It is because they cannot do it if God is not behind it and orchestrating it by opening doors. We read that God opened a great and effectual door during the time of the Great Tribulation.

Let us turn to Matthew 12, before we continue in Jonah. The scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus to see a sign and it says in Matthew 12:39-40:

But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 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.

This has to do with the end of chapter 1 and chapter 2 of Jonah. Then it says in Matthew 12:41:

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.

This has to do with Jonah, chapter 3 and chapter 4. So, Jonah was a “sign.” We always think, “Yes, he was a sign because he was in the whale’s belly for three days and three nights.” However, it is more than that. Jonah is twice a sign. He is a sign of the Lord Jesus in the first two chapters. He is a sign of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus and the body of Christ. Again, it said in verse 41: “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it.” Who do the men of Nineveh represent? They represent the elect that were saved out of Great Tribulation. They are “foreigners.” They were not Israelites, so they were not those saved during the church age, but they represent the great multitude saved out of the little season of the Great Tribulation. Then it said that they “shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it.” We can see that as God saved all His elect prior to May 21, 2011 and then brought Judgment Day, Christ is judging the world with His people; He came with ten thousands of his saints. Those saved during that time are represented by the people of Nineveh and they are that great multitude that rise in judgment with this generation and condemn it. The unsaved are condemned as God opened the scriptures to reveal the fact that He brought to pass a spiritual judgment on the world. As we understand and share it, we partake in the judgment: “Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?” It is time that God’s elect to know this. Christ came with ten thousands of His saints to judge the world. The men of Nineveh will judge the world. Yes – it could be that some that were saved during the Great Tribulation have since died, but the majority of the great multitude are still alive and living on the earth in the Day of Judgment.

It says at the end of Matthew 12:41:

… because they repented at the preaching of Jonas…

What does the word “Jonah” mean? It means “dove,” or Holy Spirit. It was the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit that began in September 1994 and went through May 21, 2011. There was tremendous repentance all over the earth, but outside of the churches and congregations. No – it was not something as visible as that which took place historically in the city of Nineveh. But what took place there pictured what happened in the hearts of God’s chosen all over the earth during the Latter Rain. There was a humiliation. There was a humbling of these souls, as they approached to the Lord and beseeched Him for mercy, crying out like blind Bartimaeus that they might be saved. There was repentance after God saved an individual in giving that person a new heart and new spirit, as it says in Jeremiah 31:19: “Surely after that I was turned, I repented.” Repentance is a gift of God that flows forth from salvation; a man can only truly repent from their gushing forth of sin if God turns them.

There was an oil field a few years ago that was gushing forth oil from far down in the earth and they could not cap it for a long time and there was a gusher of oil polluting the Gulf of Mexico. All they could do for a time was to skim the surface of the water because the waters were being polluted and they were trying to clean it up, but they could not fix the problem that was deep down in the sea bottom. They went around cleaning the animals with Dawn liquid. [Laughter] But they did everything they could to clean up what was visible on the surface and that is what people do when they “repent” without God first turning them by giving them a new heart. When God gives someone a new heart and He removes their heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh, it is like He has put a cap on that gusher of filth, dirt and mire that oozes out of the soul. Remember, it says in Matthew 15:18: “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.” In salvation, God caps the sin. Unless God caps it through salvation, people can run around, saying, “Well, I am going to stop drinking, smoking and lying,” but they clean up only the surface of their lives. If they can clean up three outward areas, they think they have definitely repented. But, it is not necessarily so because the problem goes deep down in the heart and that must be resolved and God must take care of that. I am sorry to say that God is no longer taking care of that because there is no longer salvation, so it had to be taken care of before May 21, 2011 or it will never be fixed. (We are still in the flesh and there still can be problems with sin and we do “turn” from these sins as we see them on the surface of our lives, by God’s grace and power.)

Again, the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonas, which directs us back to Jonah, chapter 3 when Jonah was sent to Nineveh the second time, which identifies with 1994 and the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Then it said in Matthew 12:41:

… and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

We can understand that Christ is saying, “a greater than the Holy Spirit,” because we have to be consistent. Remember, there is the Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And what did Jesus say of the Father? He said, “For my Father is greater than I.” So, of the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus is greater. It has nothing to do with status or anything like that. The Father sent the Son and the Son sent the Spirit, so Christ is greater than the Spirit and the Father is greater than the Son. So, Christ is pointing out that He is greater than the “dove” or “Holy Spirit,” only in the sense of the sending forth of the Gospel or the Word of God.

Let us go back to Jonah, chapter 3. In verse 8, the king is directing them and it was part of the king’s decree. In the day of salvation, the true believers always encouraged people to cry for mercy. We were called things like “hyper-Calvinists” because we told people to cry for mercy. It is really amazing how God works. Not too long ago, EBible Fellowship was charged with being “hyper-Calvinists” because we spent so much time telling people to cry for mercy and we told people that if someone told them not to cry for mercy, they should cry for mercy all the more, like the blind beggar. It was the proper thing to do for that time period, but now we are accused of being heartless and cruel because we are no longer telling people to cry for mercy. They just flipped it right around on us. On the one hand, we were “too soft” and we spent too much time telling people to beseech the Lord for mercy, but now we are like “stone” and we are heartless and cruel, according to these critics.

But, if we look at the spiritual meaning, Christ was typified by the king of Nineveh as he gave instruction for people that were hearing a timeline with a date for destruction, in Jonah 3:8-9:

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?

Is it conditional? Was it not definite? What does this mean? I am sure there are some modern Bibles that have corrected this and made it more “readable” for the modern Christian. Obviously, if it is true you can accept Christ and choose to become saved at any instant, then the Ninevites could have accepted the Lord and become saved, but, no, it is the same salvation program in the Old Testament as in the New Testament. Salvation is always conditional based on God’s good pleasure. He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and if He chooses to harden a heart, then He hardens a heart. It is all God’s doing. It is all based on His will, as Jesus said: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” That is the true Gospel. It is God’s choice, so we see that here as it is very wisely coming forth from Christ. He is not violating the Bible’s precepts at all. The king is not saying to go and repent and God will save you, but he is saying to go before God and approach humbly before Him and maybe God will spare you. This is in keeping with the truths of the Bible and the true Gospel.

Let us go on. He said, “Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?” Then it says in Jonah 3:10:

And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way…

Again, this would point to the work of Christ that was performed on their behalf being counted to them and God turning them in their hearts by giving them salvation and then they could turn in their souls from their sins. Then it says in Jonah 3:10:

… and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

God did it not toward the Ninevites. The city pictured the world, but within the city were the Ninevites that would rise in the judgment and condemn the world. So, when there was a great repentance of the Ninevites, which typified the elect, it points to God saving His people out of the world. We know that the Bible tells us that God will save His people. He has saved His people. And He will complete the salvation of His people by bringing them out of this world. Then what will He do to the world? He will destroy the world. The forty-day timeline, historically, did not result in the destruction of the city. But, spiritually, since Nineveh represents the world, it can point to a time in the future in our day and we have lived through a good portion of that “forty years,” spiritually. At the close of that forty years, God will fulfill the deeper meaning of what His prophet had proclaimed: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown.” We could say, “Yet forty years from the point of the Jubilee, the world will be destroyed.” It is not as if God has rescinded or changed His mind. All we have to do is look at the Bible and ask the question: “Is God going to destroy the world?” The answer is, “Yes.” And we can see that this still has application to the world itself.

Before we close, I will mention this. God said, “and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them.” We know it says in Numbers 23:19:

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it?

This is another one of those apparent contradictions in the Bible that casual readers of the Bible like to point out and say, “The Bible is full of errors.” But it means that God is not a sinner, like the son of man. He is not infected with sin as is mankind. If you are sinner, there is a command to repent, but God does not have a sin problem, so there is no need for Him to repent of sin. But repentance has to do with “turning around” or turning to something else, so God can “repent” in the sense of “turning.” He intended wrath upon His elect in the world during the Great Tribulation because we were children of wrath even as others. We were in our sins and as long as we were in our sins, we were subject to the wrath of God, but He turned from that intended wrath against His elect in China or India and all over the earth. He turned away that anger and He did it not to them. He did it not to the individual people that were His elect, although He is still going to bring His wrath upon His non-elect and they will experience the wrath of God.

It says in Exodus 32:7-14:

And JEHOVAH said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And JEHOVAH said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. And Moses besought JEHOVAH his God, and said, JEHOVAH, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And JEHOVAH repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

You see, Moses came before God and interceded on behalf on Israel that He destroy them not and this was a picture of the Lord Jesus. God intended “evil,” which means He intended to destroy them. Anything that brings destruction, like hurricanes and earthquakes, and it is an “evil.” God was going to destroy Israel until Moses interceded, which paints the picture of Christ interceding for His elect people. Then the Lord “repented” of the evil. He was going to destroy His people, but He turned from that “evil.” This is what was going on in the book of Jonah and this is what happened in God’s atonement for His people. In Jonah, God saw their works and they returned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that He said He would to unto them and He did it not. If God turned from His evil intended for the Ninevites, where did the “evil” go or where did the wrath of God go?

Jonah 4:1 is, perhaps, the most poorly translated verse in the Bible. It is really bad, even though the King James Bible is the best translation. I would not dare to use any other Bible. They were the best translators and I am sure the Lord worked through their translation. It is the best possible English translation. But, from time to time, we need correction and I encourage anyone listening to check out Jonah 4:1 in the Interlinear. It says in Jonah 4:1:

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

This may seem to be in keeping with the narrative regarding Jonah, the rebellious prophet. It displeased him and he was angry that the Ninevites repented because he knew God was merciful and gracious. But, let me read the literal translation of Jonah 4:1: “But to Jonah’s eye a great evil was kindled to him.” That is the literal translation. Do you see the word “eye” in this verse? Do you see the word “evil” here? Instead, it says he was angry, like we would get angry when we are upset, but it really says that wrath or anger was kindled for him, where he is the object of the wrath or anger. He is not the one feeling anger.

We will have to pick this up in our next study. We have to ask the question, “Why did God say it was a great evil to Jonah’s eyes?” It is strange. Why would He say this? We will look at this in our next study.