There
is a second component to the coming judgment. It is the last days
Harvest. My impression is that our focus as the church should not be
solely on the theme of judgment but our response should be central to
the Harvest of lost souls. Certainly, we are to warn all but the call
is to accept salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is called
the Nineveh Factor. Those who will hear the message and repent will
be saved.
Jonah
1:1, “Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai,
saying, 2Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it;
for their wickedness is come up before me.”
God's
desire is that all men come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ,
repent of their sin, submit to God and be saved. This principle
applies to all, even the great city of Nineveh full of disobedience
and idolatry. God's message through Jonah was that if the people
would heed the call to repentance, they would be saved.
Unrepentant
sin demands the judgment of God. The judgment this world is
experiencing is the result of sin. The world is reaping the seeds of
sin that have been sown by past generations. This generation is
reaping the sins of previous generations. How can that be so? The
failure of past generations to hold themselves and their children
accountable to the standard of God has brought us to where we are
today. We are witnessing the results in government, in our public
institutions and in society as a whole. But if people will heed the
call to repentance, God will save by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
I
believe there is a correlation between the pronounced judgment in the
Book of Jonah and these last days. If we are to understand this
connection, we must look at the historical data for both the city of
Nineveh and the prophet Jonah. Evaluation of the historical setting
is essential to understanding historical events and the people they
affect. Our perception of history will invariably affect its value in
the final analysis. Some people may think that history is just a list
of random events strung together over time. Still, others may suggest
that history just happens without any specific order, reason or
purpose. My conclusion is that life happens and history is created by
the response of individuals and groups of people to life events.
History is created by our human responses to life events. This
thought is never more clear to me than when I read and study the
Bible.
The
Bible is not simply a record of random historical events strung
together over time. The Bible is the infallible, eternal Word of God
and as such it is the intricate, priceless plan of God to lead and
provide for His Creation. In every generation, God has given mankind
the choice to determine his own destiny. The journey would have been
perfect had it not been for disobedience. Because of man's
disobedience, history has recorded the diverse accounts of the rise
and fall of people groups, nations, and empires. Man's response to
the eternal plan of God has determined his place in history. (To be
continued). The Message: A Critical Review Of End Time Events, p
53-54, available at Amazon.com.
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