Wednesday, August 5, 2015
“Arise go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:2-3a).
Hey Gang: After cutting, splitting and stacking more than twenty cord of wood, we have finally said enough for a while, hooked up ye-old camper and split for a camp grounds in Cadillac where I am writing this morning blog to you. If you are familiar with the camping world, you know that when the sun begins to set in the west all the campers become pyromaniacs and build their evening fires. We are camp fire cookers so we tend to keep our fires burning throughout the day.
For the past several weeks I have been revisiting the Minor Prophets and have been amazed how many verses stand out in bold print. This morning I happened to open, my Bible to Jonah and, even though it was not in sequence with my reading, I tend to pay attention to those Scriptures I open my Bible to; a habit I picked up years ago when time was short and I needed a quick word from the Lord to get my day started on the right foot.
When I read Jonah it always reminds me of the many times I made stupid mistakes that placed my family and loved ones in the belly of the whale. God could have used a multitude of different ways to get Jonah’s attention but to prepare a very special fish to get his attention was truly a unique way and, I suspect, there were no long dissertations.
I wonder, after recovering from the shock of figuring out where he was, if he praised God that he was alive or prayed to God that he would perish very quickly. I have done things in my life that placed me in embarrassing situations but “the belly of a while”, NEVER!
As I was reading several points seemed to stand out and cry for attention. In verse four of chapter three we read, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Why? Because “their wickedness had come up before God” (vs. 1:2). I wonder if Nineveh was any more evil than our country has become in the past several decades? Did they murder their babies? Did they make gay marriage part of their law? Was their government more interested in power and control and creating nest eggs for their membership than being a government of the people by the people land for the people?
One of the verses that really grabbed my attention was “Then, Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried out and said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (3:4B). In recent months we have heard a great deal about the Hebrew Shemita Year. In past Shemita Years God has chosen to send His wrath upon the nations of the world who reject His Word. Statistics indicate that in the last two Shemita years our stock market has come unglued.
Soooo, my friends and neighbors, here is something for you to run through your human-computer hard drives: today is the fifth of August- which happens to be forty days to Shemit, the last day of the Sabatical year. In the past several weeks I have received a number of warning from several sources, even the government, warning that in these days of unpredictability we should be prepared for difficult times.
They even sent out a listing of those things that we should have tucked away in our homes, such as extra water and food and first aid materials. I will send more of this list out to you on Saturday. Keep in mind an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
My prayer, and it should be your prayer, that God will spit-up a Jonah- prophet that can catch the attention of the believers of this country to humble themselves before God and pray for His mercy as we have never prayed before. Drop everything you are doing and seek God until you hear His voice; and put away all the bangles and beads of the world and place Yeshua as King of kings and Lord of lords of your life and your house.
Blessings Gramps
