Radical conclusion of Nineveh's king, million people

(new article tomorrow)

"There isn't much written about Jonah, but most of the time the (writers) overlook the fact that the two commissions in the book really are somewhat different.

Jonah 3 begins: [1] And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

[2] Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
[3] So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

"Nineveh is this huge city and when it says that it is exceeding great, look at chapter 4. The Lord is talking to Jonah about him being upset that God forgave Nineveh and He says to him in verse 11: [11] And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

"When He talks about persons that can't discern between their right hand and their left hand, He's talking about people who have not come to the age of accountability," explains Richard Jordan.

"If you go back to Deuteronomy 1, look at when He talked about the people in the wilderness, how they didn't know good from evil. He talked about it in Isaiah 7.

"There's a place of accountability a person comes to and there are 120,000 people in Nineveh who are minors. That gives you an idea that the population of Nineveh was pretty big. You'll see figures given that are somewhere between 600,000 and a million people.

"The International Bible Encyclopedia says that Nineveh was surrounded by a wall. Donald Trump would be proud of them. A wall that was 100 feet high. It was wide enough for three chariots to ride three abreast on it. So, the wall would have had to been much wider than this room.

"If he goes three days journey to cross the thing, what's a day's journey? Maybe 30 miles? Take a big city like Chicago. When it says it's an exceeding big city, you're talking about this great, humongous metropolis. We're not talking about a po-dunk holler. We're not talking about Plum Nilly or Slapout in central Alabama.

"Jonah's going to go there and preach and say, 'In 40 days Nineveh is going to be overthrown.' By the way, Nineveh is 600 miles from the coast. Jonah goes down to Joppa on the Mediterranean coast, gets in the boat, they go out.

"He tells those guys in chapter 1, 'Throw me overboard because I'm the problem.' Before they do, they row: [13] Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.

"The indication is that they tried to get the ship back to where they left from, which would be Joppa.

"Well, after the storm calms itself . . . Jonah is overboard, the fish gets him and the fish vomits him out. It doesn't tell you where in Joppa he vomited him out but wherever it was, Nineveh, if you look on a map, was like 600 miles from the coast of where he was.

"Jonah had to travel from the coast all the way to Nineveh to do what you're reading in chapter 3. This isn't just one day he's burped out of the fish and the next day he's there.

"This took awhile and that's important to notice because when you see what happens in response to his preaching, obviously the people of Nineveh know about Jonah.

"There's stuff going on here that you have to read behind the lines about. By the way, it was 40 days and 40 in the Bible is the number of testing. They don't have forever to get right. Now they've got 39 days to get right.

"Jonah goes three days journey in and says, 'You've got 37 more days and the wall's coming down and everything's going to fall around you because of your wickedness. The judgment of God is coming because of your sin.'

"He preaches, 'Here is the consequence of your sin: Destruction; you're going to be overthrown.'

[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.
[5] 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.

"Now that's a startling statement. You read that and you say, 'Whoah!' What did they believe? They believed the word that God sent them through Jonah.

"Remember verse 2 says, [2] Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

"They heard this strange character; he's not a Ninevehite. He's a stranger. What that tells you right off about the Gentiles--what you learn in Jonah, as opposed to Nahum, is that God is telling Israel, 'Listen, the problem isn't that the Gentiles won't believe; the problem is you aren't doing your job of giving the Word to them.'

Chapter 3 goes on : [6] 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.

[7] 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:
[8] 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.

"That's just a spirit of deep humility and abasement. You remember Job puts on sackcloth and sits in the ashes. That's an outward expression of, 'We realize we're the problem.'

"Now you can do that as a ritual, but God looks at the heart. In these people's case, it's obviously an expression of the heart. That's why you have so many verses that describe it here.

"Notice in verse 7, it doesn't take long that word gets back to the king. When I read that, it's almost just unbelievable that this heathen pagan king and his nobles, and all the men of Nineveh, could come to that kind of conclusion.

" . . . That they could believe God and have that radical a change and come down to the end and have the king say, 'We'll cry to God and get rid of all the evil and, who can tell; maybe God will take notice.'

"He doesn't think he has any claim on God; he knows he's an outcast. He doesn't say, 'If we do this, then God will do that.' He says, 'This is what we need to do. Our sin is going to get us this judgment, so let's put it away; let's turn our back on it. Let's realize we've been wrong. There's a real God in Israel.' "

Ultimate ground for ALL of our being

To pick up where I left off in my testimony, I came in second among all the competing females (more than 200 from all different ages ) in the bicycling portion of the Dick Schafrath's renowned triathlon in my hometown of Loudonville, OH.

As a team, Karen and I didn't fare too great. Our canoe actually tipped over near the starting line. This was a huge embarrassment for me since I knew some of the volunteers working the event, including my history teacher, Mr. Carlisle. Also, my brother had worked for the real big canoe livery on Route 3 going outside the city limits and I should have known better.

When it came time for the running, I did fine (Karen had to stop several times because she was overheated running the big hills in 90 degree heat) since it was on the road that led to Wally Campgrounds (yes, it was there long before "Wally World" in the Chevy Chase classic) where I managed the Putt-Putt and helped man the waterslide for two summers (my freshman and sophomore years at college) and would always ride my bike to work.

No one more than me knows what an advantage I had as someone who knew very well the bicycling course Schafrath had picked. After I bought my 14-speed Raleigh bicycle during the summer of my junior year in high school I quickly learned to ride the hills on the highways surrounding our little village and this eventually led to me taking on more and more highways leading to more and more different places.

As a quick aside, I loved to ride my bike to Malabar Farm where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had their wedding. A very picturesque landscape surrounded the beautiful old farm with white-painted buildings and a quaint bed-and-breakfast estate.

I loved to cycle through the Mohican State Forest, stopping at the famous gorge and the fire tower usually (there was a big old-fashioned wooden image of Smokey the Bear I loved) and then stopping at the Mohican State Park Memorial Shrine (on Route 95) that had engraved names and plaques with portraits of hundreds of Ohioans who served in all wars.

There was a granite bench behind the little stone building that sat on a beautiful hill filled with trees and the back looked out at heavy woods with a steep drop-off.

This shrine, partly because it had an outdoor stone drinking fountain on the property, became a "secret spot" of mine that I treasure to this day (more than you could ever imagine actually).

There was a prominent stone inscription across the back of the building with the verse from Psalm 121: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."

There were times when I reached this spot and sat totally alone on that back bench and was lost in tears of grief and heartbreak. I remember pouring my heart out there to God and Jesus Christ when I was in the "depths of despair." I remember praying about my future and for emotional "strength" to go into it with courage.

This was a place I relied on going to, both in the summer after my senior year of high school (when I first discovered it) and then through the first two years of college when I was home for summer break.

*****

God is all-powerful; He is the Creator. But He can create and He can also delegate. He can give His power to others for them to operate.

If you know anything about delegated power, you know that’s a very threatening thing because, you know, you have micro-managers that want to control everything and macro-managers that just tell you, “Here’s the goal—go get it.”

When God created all things, Colossians 1:16 says, [16] For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

He created positions to whom He delegated authority to work and have the “powers that be” be ordained of God, explains Richard Jordan.

What delegating His authority means is He’s willing to share of Himself with others. When you think about God as a triune God, sometimes we just think, “He’s trinity, holy, holy, holy, big deal.”

You need to understand how important it is; we’re not just monotheistic, believing in one God. It’s not enough to say I believe in God; Satan’s the “god of this world.” You might be believing in the wrong one.

You need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You can’t even believe in “christ” because the devil is a christ in Ezekiel 28. You need to believe in the Lord’s Christ.

The trinity is the demonstration of the trustworthiness of the godhead. If there was only one person in the godhead and He said, “This is it and it’s it because I said so,” how would you know He’s right and you could trust Him?

Do you just take one person’s word for anything? It would be an arbitrary statement. If somebody said it and another person witnessed it and said, “Yep, that’s what He said and He’s pretty consistent,” you’d question him because you’d wonder, “Well, are you all?”

But if you had a third person, these three people in the godhead have lived together forever. They’ve seen everything the other one has done. And they can testify of the integrity of the other members of the godhead.

That’s a good thing when you think about it. When one member of the godhead said something you can trust it because you’ve got two eternal witnesses to tell you, “He’s never said something wrong. He’s always spoken out of His goodness. He’s always been a lover. Love works no ill toward his neighbor. You can trust Him.”

It’s not an independent statement; it’s an eternal witness. That’s why Jesus said, “If I testify of myself my witness isn’t true, but I’ve got others to testify of me.”

So in the triune God you’ve got the godhead, and you know what every member of the godhead does? They all live for each other. The Father lives to exalt the Son, the Son lives to exalt the Father and the Spirit lives to exalt the Son. Every one of them exalts the other; they all live spontaneously for one another.

So the life of God is not lived to see what I can get out of it. God’s life is to give to others! That’s the way God’s life operates.

So when you talk about His omnipotence, it’s not, “Get all I can and can all I get.” You see, He has power to share His life.

Here’s the godhead and you think, “Why in the world would they have made creation?” Because they want to take this life that they have and spread it out—they want to GIVE it! They’re interested in moving out with it and they have the power to do that. And they have power to delegate because God is love.

If we’re the church of the living God it’s because we have a personal relationship with Him and He’s good because He’s loving.

*****

The Bible is considered the greatest love story ever written because it is all about real people choosing to be in a real love relationship with the Creator of the universe--the one who says of Himself, "God is love."

For those who believe the Book includes fables, concocted characters and made-up allegories written by men, there's nothing really real about their love.

A best-selling Christian memoir from the past includes this passage: “With our own love stories, every detail comes alive. Our own love stories are so poignant, so detailed, so unforgettable—at least to us. When it’s someone else’s love story, however, we will be polite and listen, but usually it’s entirely forgettable. It’s like looking at someone else’s vacation pictures. When I have skin in the game, the outcome all of a sudden matters to me and I become engaged.”

*****

Believers are in a special type of love affair with the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who brings God into EVERY aspect, facet, experience, etc., of life.

I John 4:7 says, “Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” That means if you don’t know God, you don't know how to love people.

When you live in a consciousness of God’s love for you in Christ, it gives you an insight. You’ve got the information, and when you believe it, it becomes the energy, the life, the transforming power down in your soul that His life then works out through you.

It’s a love that abounds in knowledge and in judgment. It’s a mental-attitude love. It’s the capacity to look at a thing and value and esteem it the way God does.

At a Bible conference once I was asked during the Q&A session, “What do you find the most exciting subject in the Bible?”

For me personally it’s to stand back and look at who the Bible says Jesus Christ is and appreciate the fact that I’m in Him and that I’m complete in Him. He is the source of all my blessings, and the source of my true, real identity, and He's the one I have all my status in.

You see, the thing that's so wonderful about the grace of God is that it makes Jesus Christ everything! And the Bible says that it pleased the Father that in Him should "all fullness dwell.” If you asked God the Father what is to Him the most exciting subject in all the universe, He'd say, “My Son.”

Any way you slice it, dice it, look at it, think about it, take it apart, put it together, Jesus Christ is the apple of the Father's eye, as Psalm 17 tells us. He's the thing that causes the Father's heart to rejoice. He's the one.

It's mind-boggling when you look at who the Scripture says He is. It sort of numbs your mind. It's so big, you can just never get your arms around it.

*****

When Jesus Christ came back to earth following His death on the Cross, He said to His disciple known as “doubting Thomas,” “Just come and feel me so you know I’m real.”

The reason Christ is called the Word is because He’s the manifest person of the godhead; He's the one who brings God out of the theory—the ether and the unknown—and down into the place where He could actually enter into your experience.

He steps out of eternity where He is and steps into His creation and literally takes it upon Himself. And that’s something my mind doesn't grasp! He literally joins Himself in creation to Him, and in that unique person of all of the universe—the celebrity of all time—He becomes the man Christ Jesus.

When you look at that, you say, “Wow, I understand what Jeremiah's talking about back there when he writes, 'Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee Lord.’ He's saying, 'Man, there's nobody like Him! Nobody!’

You say, “Wow, God, thou art great—who wouldn't fear you?! Who wouldn't bow before you and say, 'You're the man!'?"

After Thomas did as Christ instructed, he cried, “My Lord and my God,”  to which Christ responded, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

When He says, “I'm the Lord, there's none like me,” He's saying, “There isn't any room in my heaven and earth for anybody who says he's me. No room out there. I've been all over creation; I've looked, I've seen; there isn't anybody like me out there.”

When John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” the statement’s saying, “I am the ultimate ground of all being and existence. Without me, there's no existence. Without me there's nothing.”

Paul says in Colossians that “by him all things consist.” In Acts 17, Paul says of God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” How do you know there's a God? Well, how do you know who you are?!

You see, whatever you call God—whatever you name Him and whoever He is, if He's just that “holy other” that you can't contact and don't know who it is, like the Unknown God of the Athenians, at least you have to recognize there has to be some grounds for existence; some reason to believe you exist. There are great philosophers in the world who don't believe you exist. They believe all of this is an illusion.

By the way, when Jesus said, “I am the truth,” that's what He meant. He wasn't talking about, “I’m just always right and you're always wrong.” He wasn't talking about truth like “two plus two equals four.”

He was talking about truth in the ultimate basic sense of the ultimate ground of ALL of our being and who we are—the essence of our being—and Christ said, “It all resides in me.” Now, there's not a sane person on the planet who would ever claim that!

earth flat? Not Bible

Psalm 33: [3] Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.

[4] For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth.

I love that "play skilfully," says Richard Jordan. You know, a lot of folks play with loud noise, but He says "play skillfully." That means be on pitch. Here’s what you’re to sing and praise and be excited about: "For the word of the Lord is right."

David writes in Psalm 8, "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained . . ."

When you ordain something, you order it and set it up in a very specific way. That's why when people ask, "Why am I here?" the answer is, "God ordained some things that you're a part of."

When you do something with your fingers, you're doing it with a great deal of skill and carefulness—with purpose. The finger of God is a reference to the Holy Spirit.

In Deuteronomy, when God wrote the tables of stone and gave them to Moses, it says He wrote with His finger. In Luke 11, when the Lord Jesus Christ refers back to the finger of God, He calls Him the "Holy Spirit."

In talking about the greatness of the Messiah, Isaiah says, "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counseller hath taught him?"

It's like God figured to Himself, "You know that lake over there—I want it to have so many gallons of water." He goes over and dips out so much dirt—gets it out of the way so it will hold so much water—and then He fills it up.

Now, you know He didn't literally do it that way, but the point is He had a plan. He knew just how big He wanted the Pacific Ocean to be, just how big He wanted the Indian Ocean, the Adriatic. He had a plan minutely designed.

The word "span" in the passage refers to a way of measuring, akin to a measuring stick. God measured the distance between the earth and the sun and made it exactly the 93 million miles that it is.

You ever think about the fact that the universe is put together with that kind of care? Ordinances. That's why everything works the way it does.

Isaiah asks pretty much the same question of Israel when he writes:

[21] Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
[22] It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

If God sits on "the circle of the earth," what shape do you think the earth is? Nobody who was ever a Bible-believer thought the earth was flat. You know who thought the earth was flat? Scientists. The people who were stating the science of their day.

God created the universe as tent for Him to dwell in. He was creating a house in which He intended to live. He created it in a way that honored, pleased and satisfied Him. He set it up the way He wanted it set up.

*****

Concerning the earth, these presumed masterminds (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) came up with such bizarre, hare-brained ideas as to be found laughable by any civilized intelligent standard.

If the Bible were to assert that the earth was carried on the shoulders of the god Atlas, who stood on the backs of giant tortoises, which stood on the backs of elephants, this would be more than sufficient reason to discredit the Holy Scriptures as being of God. And still the Greek scholars are revered today by those who refuse to recognize the wisdom of God and His Holy Book.

In contrast, Job, the oldest book in the Bible, explains that God spread the skies over empty space and "hangeth the earth upon nothing." (Job 26:7)

Isaiah, a book dating as far back as 698 B.C., confirms that the Lord sits enthroned above the "circle of the earth." (Isaiah 40:22)

Up until the 15^th century, without the benefit of a telescope or a knowledge of the physics of astronomy, no one knew nor would many people believe the earth was not flat.

As Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee used to say, the word "circle" is synonymous with "globe"; a round geometric figure.

The Bible is not a book of science and yet not even in one point does it contradict any principle of modern science that has been established as fact rather than mere theory.

College Christian memories

For my sophomore year at Ohio State I lived in an all-female dorm on the north side of campus.

One evening after coming back from dinner at the cafeteria, a girl came knocking on doors all down our hallway looking for someone to play basketball in an outdoor court that was just outside our dorm building.

I played briefly on the girl's basketball team in junior high (and I was tall at 5' 10") so I did pretty good with her group of athletic-type females and a couple of days later this same girl, Karen, came to our dorm again, this time looking specifically for me to come out and play in a pickup game.

Karen was a year older than me and studying biology. I ended up inviting her to be my partner for a much-touted triathlon being put on in Loudonville by Dick Schafrath. It consisted of bicycling, canoeing and running.

Schafrath, who later became an Ohio State Senator, owned a canoe livery in Loudonville (still recognized as "The Canoe Capital of Ohio") and I was actually a classmate and friend of his son, Ty.

Schafrath was a real legend in Ohio football history. He was captain for the Ohio State Buckeyes under Woody Hayes and won a national championship in 1957. He later blocked for Jim Brown on the Cleveland Browns 1964 NFL Championship team.

In the course of training for this triathlon, Karen and I became inextricably connected. We would get up real early and run the track inside Ohio stadium. This was a huge treat because they actually left the famous horseshoe stadium open to students for such uses! We would also run the streets in and out of campus.

Then we'd schedule bicycling excursions together at local parks. As the triathlon got closer, we were adding to our training sessions, both for distance and speed.

The whole time we both knew we were Christians and this was a real anomaly for me. I actually think she was the first Christian I got to know after starting college and, believe me, there weren't many to follow--as in maybe three or four other females!

One day Karen asked me if I would go with her to a special meeting being held on campus by Campus Crusade for Christ.

I'd never heard of the group but readily accepted her offer. The thing is--and this was a huge takeaway for me--I was totally turned off by the event!!

I remember not liking that there was this band with drums and electric guitars. I thought the lyrics to the "hymns" were really amateurish--literally stuff like, "Oh Jesus, we love you, Oh Jesus, we adore you."

I remember standing for the longest, longest time along with everyone else in attendance. Even more memorable, though, was how I refused to participate at all while the large crowd, Karen included, lifted their arms in the air and waved them back and forth along with their hands. I thought, "Yuk!"

(to be continued . . .)

Tribute to Swaggart

Hearing about Jimmy Swaggart dying today registered with me in a unique way. For the past week or so, thinking about how best to write up my experience at Ohio State (which was an unbelievable, fundamentally crucial time for me), I actually thought about how was I going to explain that the man who kept me going at the time as a Christian was Swaggart, who I'd watch on my little black-and-white portable TV when I came home (off-campus rental house on Patterson that I shared with two roommates) from classes during my junior year at OSU.

Before you think badly of me, I became fully aware in a relatively short time that he was a "holy roller" Pentecostal preacher not to be trusted. I knew about his scandals when they first became news and I remember being very turned off.

For some reason, even to this day, I've never really been that embarrassed to let Grace Believers know that he was the only preacher I ever really listened to in my adult life prior to finding Shorewood!

I will just as easily tell people that in high school I was a big fan of the Rev. Robert Schuller and his "Hour of Power" national TV show on Sunday mornings.

Schuller was a big deal in my family, as far as watching him on TV and giving him money to support his ministry. We even had some of his "positive thinking" trinkets (as gifts for donations) placed around our kitchen and family room. We even had a kitchen plaque engraved with Schuller's signature slogan: "Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do."

You see, I was raised by people who believed in preachers. In fact, my dad was saved in his late 30s by the very popular preacher, Dallas Billington, in my hometown of Akron, OH. Billington, the head man at the Akron Baptist Temple, was a patient of my dad (who had a private medical practice in Firestone Park at the time).

I didn't find this out until one day in my 30s, but when I actually finally asked my dad how he became saved, he told me Billington got him saved, even giving his own Bible to my dad during one office visit!

The funny thing is I received my very first Bible as a little child attending Billington's church. It was a pocket-sized red leather King James Bible (New Testament) embossed in gold with the words, "Akron Baptist Temple. The World's Largest Sunday School."

Billington was a big enough name that even my current pastor, Richard Jordan, readily acknowledged knowing all about him when I told him I grew up in his church (from ages 2-5) before we became missionaries in Costa Rica and then Ecuador.

At the time, Akron was home and headquarters for the national "celebrity preachers" Ernest Angley and Rex Humbard!

This is a quick aside, but my mom tells the story of how she shocked fellow missionaries in Costa Rica when she told them her church in Akron had 20 ushers for its main Sunday service.

Well, I guess I got off on a real tangent there, but this is the real meat of my "testimony" after all. After I left for college at 18, I didn't have anyone telling me I had to go to church or anything. I did voluntarily go to a Protestant church (I don't even remember the denomination) that was actually part of the campus at Ohio University, but I don't remember getting anything much from it, and because I only attended by myself, I would skip many Sunday mornings.

Once I got to Ohio State I didn't know of any church to try and don't remember even being very interested in trying to find one. I don't remember how I came across Swaggart, as he was nobody anyone in my family ever mentioned, but I think it must have been through tuning into a Christian TV station.

What I know for sure is I readily gravitated toward him and thought highly of his preaching skills. His Bible was always open and he would walk around with it in his hands as he crisscrossed the stage, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling, sometimes laughing.

I loved his piano playing and thought his singing voice was great. I loved everything about him, as I remember, and would give money to his program because that's what the show was always asking for to keep his ministry going and I was taught by my father to believe in tithing.

I never told anyone in my family about my watching Swaggart and it wasn't until after I met my first (and only!) boyfriend during my junior year that I started to consider Swaggart might be a phony.

Fred was the one to first tell me Swaggart was a "phony" and he would laugh at me for giving money to his program. Of course, Fred was an unbeliever and that's what ultimately led to our breakup.