Nahum
My thoughts for the Itty Bitty Bible Study group on Facebook. (join if you’d like to get these in fb!) The conversation starts Monday, August 20.
Nahum is preaching destruction to Nineveh.
Where have we heard that before? Oh, right…Jonah!
So, did God want to redeem Nineveh or not?
Here’s a couple things that I’ve learned looking at Nineveh…
It was the capital of Assyria.
Our prophet Jonah was told to go and preach to them…to give them the opportunity to repent…and they did…and he got angry.
According to my research, Nahum prophesied between 600 and 740 BC.
Jonah was written in the 8th century BC.
There could be 200 years between Jonah and Nahum!
Just look at the effect 200 years has had on the United States in our focus on faith.
The First Great Awakening was in the mid 1700’s.
Second Great Awakening was in the 1800’s
Then, the third great awakening….1900’s
And the latest was the Pentecostal Awakening:
The most recent Great Awakening (1904 onwards) had its roots in the holiness movement which had developed in the late 19th century. The Pentecostal revival movement began, out of a passion for more power and a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In 1902 the American evangelists Reuben Archer Torrey and Charles McCallon Alexander conducted meetings in Melbourne, Australia, resulting in more than 8,000 converts. News of this revival travelled fast, igniting a passion for prayer and an expectation that God would work in similar ways elsewhere.
Torrey and Alexander were involved in the beginnings of the great Welsh revival (1904).
In 1906 the modern Pentecostal movement was born in Azusa Street, in Los Angeles.
I have to mention the Brownsville Revival – Because it has effected many…though I’m not sure it has had the effect on calling to Godliness that the previous awakenings did. What I mean by this, is that this revival did not have an effect on the culture of our society in the way that the previous awakenings did.
My point for discussing these, is not for a history lesson, but for comparison.
2018 back 200 years is 1818 – the second great awakening, the camp meetings.
This was the time of Charles Finney
Then we look at the 50’s, the 60’s…and the downward spiral of our social culture towards what even the writers of our constitution expected as the moral code of the common man.
Here’s some other information about Nineveh, and Assyria…if you look at that Wikipedia link above, you will see that Nineveh was where current Mosul is now. Mosul is in Northern Iraq…and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant destroyed much of the history of this city in 2010s and the Iraqi military recovered this city in 2017.
ISIL is a very cruel group.
The responses of the then current allies of Nineveh were very casual towards Nineveh’s destruction…because of the cruelty.
In Itty Bitty Bible Study – Jonah, I talk about Jonah having prophesied during a time when the Hebrews were under extreme curel oppression.
2 Kings 14:25-26 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
25 He restored Israel’s border from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word the Lord, the God of Israel, had spoken through His servant, the prophet Jonah son of Amittai from Gath-hepher. 26 For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter. There was no one to help Israel, neither bond nor free.
In the introduction to Jonah, some of the theories to which I link mentioned that Jonah may have been a victim of the cruelty of Sennacherib.
Whatever the truth is about the timing of Jonah, we do have a historical evidence that there was a great fall!
Wikipedea on Nineveh
Biblical:
The Prophet Jonah before the Walls of Nineveh, drawing by Rembrandt, c. 1655
Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian Empire[28] and was the home of King Sennacherib, King of Assyria, during the Biblical reign of King Hezekiah (יְחִזְקִיָּהוּ) and the lifetime of Judean prophet Isaiah (ישעיה). As recorded in Hebrew scripture, Nineveh was also the place where Sennacherib died at the hands of his two sons, who then fled to the vassal land of `rrt Urartu.[29] The book of the prophet Nahum is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against Nineveh. Its ruin and utter desolation are foretold.[30][31] Its end was strange, sudden, and tragic.[32] According to the Bible, it was God’s doing, His judgment on Assyria’s pride (Isaiah 10:5–19). In fulfillment of prophecy, God made “an utter end of the place”. It became a “desolation”. The prophet Zephaniah also[33] predicts its destruction along with the fall of the empire of which it was the capital. Nineveh is also the setting of the Book of Tobit.
Historical
After Ashurbanipal
Nineveh’s greatness was short-lived. In around 627 BC, after the death of its last great king Ashurbanipal, the Neo-Assyrian empire began to unravel through a series of bitter civil wars between rival claimants for the throne, and in 616 BC Assyria was attacked by its own former vassals, the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians. In about 616 BC Kalhu was sacked, the allied forces eventually reached Nineveh, besieging and sacking the city in 612 BC, following bitter house-to-house fighting, after which it was razed. Most of the people in the city who could not escape to the last Assyrian strongholds in the north and west were either massacred or deported out of the city and into the countryside where they founded new settlements. Many unburied skeletons were found by the archaeologists at the site. The Assyrian empire then came to an end by 605 BC, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its colonies between themselves.
My point is that even the pagans were given a chance to repent(via Jonah), and centuries later, their repentance was not in evidence in their children’s children.
My story….
I was a United States Sailor.
When I watched the towers fall, I KNEW it would be war…and I demanded it…from my military heart, while my spiritual heart was praying for those I knew in the area, and even for those I didn’t.
I grieved for those that went into eternity that day, not knowing Jesus.
and I wanted revenge.
Recently, we received a letter from one of our old pastors, that he and his wife were being brought into a ministry to share the gospel with Muslims that were coming into our country. I am disgusted and ashamed of my initial reaction…they are the enemy, and ….well, at that point, thank God, my Christian heart stopped me!
What I realized was that I would have difficulty committing to a ministry with this sole focus.
Yes, I have shared with Muslims that God has brought into my life…because, I share one on one with anyone.
Jim took a photo of me talking, and serving water to runners with a Muslim woman whose son was running.
I have never had any negative reaction to anyone based on their evident, or even nonevident faith, when I’ve met them.
I have sat and spoken with every type of faith, sharing what we believe, and finding common ground.
This is who I am…I don’t even think about it.
I’m not saying this to be prideful…I’m saying this to share how I thought I had my heart in a good place…until the possibility of going to Muslim Immigrants was presented…and ugliness in my heart reared up! It was racist, and whatever judging someone by the actions performed by their people group is called. I was stereotyping all and I hated seeing that in my heart!
That is what Jonah was feeling! All in Nineveh deserved to die for the atrocities. And yet, God gave them the grace to repent.
Years later, Nahum preaches the destruction…and there is no repentance as a nation/city/area.
As we, as Christians, know, God does not see people groups…He sees hearts…and there is a revival within Muslim peoples…I guess it’s not a revival if it’s recognition of Jesus as Lord for the first time. Their lives are at stake when they choose Christ. They must count the cost. God is giving the Muslims the opportunity to repent, and to believe, and who am I to stand in His way> (as if I could…duh!)
I could also talk about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah here…as Abraham was a prophet, and the angels that were to destroy those cities spoke to him before hand, and Abraham interceded for those cities…more clearly, for the righteous within them. His concern WAS his nephew, who had left his guidance and moved to this area.
Genesis 18 and Genesis 19.
Abraham prays for the deliverance of the cities for 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, 10 righteous men.
When the angels get there, they don’t even find 10.
Lot recognizes the angels, invites them in…and then, the angels have to PULL him from the city!
His wife turns to look back…an indication of her heart?…and she is destroyed.
His daughters have some crazy concepts about what they should do…and become pregnant by their father…and they birth the Moabites and Ammonites…two groups that cause problems for years to the Hebrew people! There is no evidence of repentance in this family, just that they were saved because of God’s promise to care for Abraham’s nephew – based upon Abraham’s faith!
Given a chance to repent, in the midst of seeing everything they knew destroyed…and, possibily, because of being raised in such a deplorable place, the girls created children that would be written about throughout the Bible!
There were sins in Nineveh.
There were sins in Sodom and Gomorrah.
There are sins in the United States of America.
And God has called out man times for us to repent.
God promised Noah that he would never destroy the earth with a flood again.
Yet, we have Jesus letting us know that there is another judgement coming…and Peter writs about it. And we need to be aware!
2 Peter 3:3-7 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
3 First, be aware of this: Scoffers will come in the last days to scoff, living according to their own desires, 4 saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they have been since the beginning of creation.” 5 They willfully ignore this: Long ago the heavens and the earth were brought about from water and through water by the word of God. 6 Through these waters the world of that time perished when it was flooded. 7 But by the same word, the present heavens and earth are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
The churches around the world are having revival in huge numbers.
The churches in the United States are not showing the power of the end time age.
I confess, I am not walking in the power of the end time age!
The main thing that Nahum is speaking to me is that, in light of the opportunities we are given as Christians to repent…do we? Do we get lazy?
There’s also the point of view of the Hebrews…God has decided that they have suffered enough, and He brings judgement upon their enemies, and speaks life to Judah.
another bit from Wikipedia:
Hezekiah (/ˌhɛzɪˈkaɪ.ə/)[a] was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the son of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah.[1] Edwin Thiele has concluded that his reign was between c. 715 and 686 BC.[2] He is considered a very righteous king by the author of the Books of Kings.[3] He is also one of the most prominent kings of Judah mentioned in the Bible and is one of the kings mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.[4]
According to the Bible, Hezekiah witnessed the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel by Sargon’s Assyrians in c. 722 BC and was king of Judah during the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 BC.[5] Hezekiah enacted sweeping religious reforms, including a strict mandate for the sole worship of Yahweh and a prohibition on venerating other deities within the Temple of Jerusalem.[1] Isaiah and Micah prophesied during his reign.[1]
Hezekiah brought spiritual reform to Judah…repentance, and a change of their hearts.
God heard, and answered.
We can be ministers of peace, by preaching repentance…but only if we are repentant and not lazy about our walk with Christ.
Philippians 2:12 King James Version (KJV)
12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
The warnings of Jonah, and the promises of Nahum are to help us to be more like Christ in our world.
Isaiah 50 gives us a picture of Christ…but also, some instruction for our own lives, to be like Christ.
Isaiah 50:4 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
The Obedient Servant
4 The Lord God has given Me
the tongue of those who are instructed
to know how to sustain the weary with a word.
He awakens Me each morning;
He awakens My ear to listen like those being instructed.
This is why I study the Bible.
This is why I share what the Lord speaks to me, through His word and prayer, and study guides, and yes, even Wikipedia!
I want to make sure that I, and anyone who reads this, prepare our hearts, and that we have the blessing of the Lord fighting for us…not the curse of being destroyed for being an enemy of God!
I hope you will join me for Nahum!
Hi!
My hope in the midst of despair and my joy in the face of depression is because of my relationship with Jesus Christ. If you do not have one, or are not sure you will join him in heaven, please check out these links.
Thanks for joining me in this journey,
In His hands and under His wings,
~Christi
Ps 63:7 Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.
“The Lord does not give me rules, but He makes His standard very clear.
If my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without hesitation.
If I hesitate, it is because I love someone I have placed in competition with Him, namely, myself.” – from My Utmost for His highest
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