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Amazing Facts

Jonah

Joe Crews

Jonah, Part 1

Jonah, Part 2

A crackdown of law enforcement officers has often dried up pockets of crime in vice-ridden cities.

1 of the most lawless cities in the world was changed within 40 days to a model community without the help of a single policeman.

I'll be back in a moment with the amazing facts.

Hello, this is Joe Cruz on the Amazing Facts broadcast, facts which affect you.

In our last broadcast, we followed the tragic footsteps of Jonah's course in running away from God.

We learned that Jesus himself has endorsed the authenticity of the story, so often doubted and ridiculed by modern commentators.

There's no room for doubt on the part of Christians or anyone else.

We must either accept the story as true or accuse Jesus of deception.

To deny the veracity of Christ is to strike at the very heart of the Christian faith.

He was swallowed, Jonah was, by a great fish especially prepared by God.

Now in our last broadcast we learned how Jonah tried to avoid God's orders to preach in the great wicked city of Nineveh.

He bought a boat ticket in exactly the opposite direction and tried to run away from God.

But a terrible storm arose which threatened to sink the ship at any moment.

The heathen crew of that ship finally cast lots to find out who was guilty of offending the God of the seas.

Jonah was designated by the lots and finally he confessed his guilt in offending and disobeying God.

So with prayers of forgiveness, the pagan seaman cast Jonah into the ocean and he plummeted straight down into the black depths of the water.

Down, down, down he sank, until suddenly a great big black mouth opened up and he went down into the fish, and then the fish went down into the bottom of the sea.

Down, down, down, just as far as he could go.

By the way, friends, when he came there, he was really down.

Down in hope, down in the dumps, down in the ship, down into sleep, down in the water, down in the fish, and then right down to the very bottom of the sea.

It was rock bottom as far as Jonah was concerned.

But you know, in spite of all this, God had not forgotten the Prophet.

God had not forgotten Jonah, even after all that he had done.

It doesn't make any difference how far down you've gone.

You can't go so far into sin that you can't come back to God.

You can't become so vile or black or terrible that God will leave you alone.

He'll call you back and receive you to Himself again.

Now people often say to me, Oh, I've been so wicked that God wouldn't have me.

His great heart longs for you, no matter what you've done, no matter how far down you've gone.

It's an interesting thing to picture the circumstances that face Jonah down there.

He was on the whale's valet and it was hot, stuffy, and dark, no doubt.

Here's a little picture of it in the book of Jonah, chapter 2, verse 5.

Yes, I imagine there were digestive juices sort of swirling around him there in the stomach of that great fish.

And he also says in verse 5, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

Whale had something else for dinner besides Jonah, and it was dark.

Just picture yourself in that situation for a moment.

Maybe it wasn't so wise to run away from God, after all.

And so, way down there in the bottom of the sea, he began to think.

And he did something else, as brought out in Jonah 2.1.

Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly.

Oh no, the Lord directed that fish through God's heavenly radar system over to the shore and somehow miraculously deposited Jonah on the dry land.

The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

So the Lord was saying, Now Jonah, you've recuperated.

It's the same job I gave you before, and I want you to preach the same message that I ask you to preach.

Now listen, friends, it doesn't make a bit of difference who you are or what your background is.

God will never bless you and you will never succeed until you do what God asks you to do.

Now, this applies to you and to me and to everybody.

If you go running off to Tarshish, as he did, and buy some tickets far, far away, you will never prosper.

So Jonah decided that he'd go to Nineveh.

He took his journey and walked into that city, a part of a day's journey, no doubt, and he began to preach.

Yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

Oh, I can imagine people looking at him and saying, Who is he?

Probably somebody asked, Have you ever seen him before?

And another said, No, I don't know who he is.

And they thought, I'm sure, well, he's just a crackpot of some kind.

Don't pay any attention to him." But he wasn't gone tomorrow.

Tomorrow, he said, you have 39 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

And people began to say, well, that's a different message anyway, isn't it?

I've never heard anybody talk like that before.

And then 30 days and Nineveh will be destroyed.

By that time, everybody was looking and listening.

I can imagine they followed him along and looked him over.

More days passed and he was saying, all right, friends, 25 days and this great city will be destroyed.

The inhabitants said, you'll certainly have to give him credit for this.

Again the days passed by and he was saying 20 days.

And some of the people said, what if he's right?

I don't believe he is, but suppose he is right.

A few more days passed and he was saying, yet 10 days, you have only 10 more days, a little over a week.

And some of them began to say, I don't know what you think, but I believe him, I'm going to do something about this.

And I imagine by the time he was saying 5 days, 4 days, 3 days, they had all made decisions.

According to the Scripture, from the king on the throne right on down to the beggar on the street, they repented in sackcloth and ashes, the entire city.

Well, that was probably the greatest revival ever held, bar none.

And that was probably the most wonderful experience that ever came to a preacher or evangelist, bar none.

But now let's come to the lesson for us, friends.

The devil knows that God commands and that we can only have true joy and peace and happiness when we keep those commandments.

So he tries to picture God's commandments as impossible.

The only way to joy and peace is found in following those orders of God.

The devil knows that, and so he puts his lies in force to keep you from doing what God asked you to do.

The Lord says, go to Nineveh, do this, do that, and the devil comes along and says, now wait, you don't want to do that yet, and while you wait, he builds that thing bigger and bigger and bigger and makes it seem more impossible until you feel that it just can't be done after all.

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Jonah

Jonah, Part 2

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