Word Title: The men of Nineveh shall condemn this generation in judgment
After about a thousand years after Adam, God saw that the thoughts and imaginations of the hearts of all the people in the world continued to be evil, and chose one Noah who found grace in the eyes of the Lord God at that time, and asked him to build a Ark for 120 years.
As he had built the Ark for so long periods of time, he preached for repentance saying, God would judge them by the flood, but no one repented from evil thoughts, and imaginations of their hearts.
God sent two angels to judge Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone, giving a message of judgment to Lot, the only righteous man at that time, saying that God would bring down the whole city, but no one listened to repent, to him, eventually the cities became ash and collapsed totally.
Jesus rebuked the scribes and Pharisees who were hypocrites not believing in him. The Lord Jesus spoke unto them in a parables of their hypocrites within them:
In Noah’s day, God saw that people’s thoughts and imaginations of their hearts were continued to be only evil, and God, who judged them all; now he became a man as the Son of man, and said the same message unto to the evil hypocrites. He said that all their evil deeds came out of their evil hearts. God is still see not only the acts of man, but he sees the acts if the acts are out of good hearts or from evil hearts.
For an example, even if man speaks harshly to someone else, if it comes from a good conscience in that person’s heart, God will see it as good, but even though he speaks politely, if it comes from an evil heart. In that case, God sees it as evil.
Hypocrites who came to the Lord seem to want to learn something by calling Jesus as a teacher, saying, “Master, we would see a sign from thee.” Lord Jesus immediately answered back tothem:
The Lord is telling them that Jonah, who cried repentance to the Ninevites hundreds of years ago, was the sign unto the Ninevites. The Bible testifies how Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites at that time:
Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria. for 300 years, from B.C. from 900 B.C. For 600 years, the Assyrian Empire expanded, conquered and ruled the Middle East, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, and parts of today’s Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Since around 1250 B.C., the Assyrians had started using war chariots and iron weapons, which were far superior to bronze weapons. These tools and tactics made Assyrian army the most powerful military force of its time, both doctrinally and technologically advanced.
During the reign of King Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.), Assyrians welded the empire into an even greater force: he conquered the provinces in Anatolia, Judah, and Israel, and even sacking Jerusalem. As written in the book of second King, in the time of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib sent his general to devastate the city of Jerusalem, God sent a the angel of the LORD, and killed 18500 of Assyrians in a night. The king, Sennacherib relocated their capital city to Nineveh. Assyrian Empire terrified other kingdoms only hearing its name not comparable much more beyond America nowadays.
Now the word of God testifies what kind repentance Assyrians showed unto the LORD God upon receiving one sentence of the word of God saying, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” preached by a prophet without name:
Before God spoke to them through Jonah, he did not send any kind of famines, earthquakes, or plagues to give them as warning, but gave just a simple word of warning, and the people of all the nations repented to God with one heart. But nowadays, even in the last days when Jews, Gentiles, and even most churches are apostatizing to God, the Lord has warned the world by sending many kinds of warning messages, famines, earthquakes, and plagues, as well as through the book of Revelation, the message of judgment in the day of great tribulation. Those who live in this generation, even though they have been given the words of extreme judgment, we have to think before God with miserable hearts whether they are doing repentance of their sins as the people of Nineveh.
Just as the prophet Jonah became a sign uno the people of Nineveh at that time, the Lord Jesus Christ, much greater than Jonah, true sign unto this generation of the world has been driven out of the church, knocking on the door in suffering patience.
And reminding of Job’s desperate repentance before God , let us seriously think about ourselves. Even though Job was man of righteousness and upright even recognized by God, passing through extreme suffering under the permission of God, finally he found out his own righteousness deeply rooted in his heart. The Holy Spirit must have thrown him out to kneel down in the ashes to repent finding himself just comforting himself with his honorable actions manifested from his own righteousness in the heart. Once again, we must take into consideration of the words of the Lord had spoken to the hypocrites at that time: