Fourth Quarter 2003 Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
"Jonah"

Insights to Lesson 11
The Last Word
December 6-12, 2003

(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)

ONE LAST QUESTION

It is a very common idea that in the days of Israel the Lord had no care for other nations, and they were left out of His benevolent plans for the salvation of men. Nothing could be further from the truth. What the Lord is today, that He always has been. He is that He is, and He is “no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him” (Acts 10:35).

When by the wonderful deliverance of the Israelites all the nations of the east heard of the power of the Lord, He was ready to manifest that power in their behalf. His purpose was to give the Jewish nation the high honor of preaching the Gospel to the world; but they continually thwarted His purpose by their wicked apostasies from the truth. But at the same time “He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good” (Acts 14:17), sending the rain and fruitful seasons to all. And the word of invitation and warning was also sent.

The history of Assyria furnishes an interesting example of God’s witnessing to the heathen empires of antiquity. Its history, as we have it, runs parallel with that of Israel; for it was rising to its position of power at the very time of the Exodus from Egypt, and its fall came just before the Babylonian captivity.

When the glory of Solomon’s reign attracted the attention of the world, Assyria must have heard of the true God; for we read that “all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart” (1 Kings 10:24). Later, in the days of Ahab and of Jehu, Assyria came into conflict with Israel.

About this time the prophet Jonah was sent to Nineveh to speak the words of the Lord, and warn Assyria of the wickedness which was growing with its pride and luxury. In those same days He had been sending prophets to Israel calling them to repent of their wicked ways, and to cast away the licentious sun-worship which Jezebel had introduced. At the preaching of Jonah the men of Nineveh repented. A fast was proclaimed, and the judgments which their sins had brought so near did not fall upon them. The Lord pitied the people in their ignorance, “that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand” (Jonah 4:11).

Not long after Shalmaneser came Tiglathpileser II. Israel had then so far rejected the Lord that it joined with Syria (2 Kings 16) for an attack upon the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem. Isaiah assured the king of Judah that the Lord would shave Israel “with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria” (Isaiah 7:20). So the Assyrian was allowed to come up against Israel and frustrate its wicked purpose against the southern kingdom.

The trouble which came upon the northern kingdom of Israel did not lead to reformation. Their evil ways brought upon them the Assyrians, who at last, in the reign of Hoshea, carried them away into captivity (2 Kings 17:6).

In visiting the sins of Israel the Lord used the conquering armies of the Assyrians as the rod of His anger (Isaiah 10:5). But the pride of Assyria attributed the downfall of Israel and other kingdoms solely to her own prowess, and she glorified herself, increasing her wickedness. Tiglathpileser left a record in which he boasts of his victory over Israel, greatly exaggerating his achievements. The Lord, speaking by the prophet Isaiah, rebuked this haughty pride of Assyria (Isaiah 10:12, 15).

The boasting and blasphemous Sennacherib, of Assyria, might have learned the same lesson when he came down upon Jerusalem “like a wolf on the fold,” and the Lord smote 185,000 of his men in a night, and sent him back to Nineveh (Isaiah 37). The wealth and luxury which had come with conquest were weakening the empire, and the cup of its iniquity began rapidly to fill up.

In the reign of Sennacherib’s grandson, Asshurbanipal, the storm-cloud of wrath began to hover darkly over Assyria, still glorying in her strength, and careless and unconscious of her approaching doom. Zephaniah then sounded the warning. “He will stretch out His hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh but a desolation. … This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me” (Zephaniah 2:13, 15). The destruction came at a time when Assyria was at the height of its culture and civilization. The annals of Asshurbanipal exhibit him to us as the only one of the Assyrian monarchs to whom we can ascribe a real taste for learning and literature.

But culture and artistic refinement are not incompatible with the deepest vice. Yet again the Lord repeated the warning by the prophet Nahum. The “burden of Nineveh” was: “Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not; the noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots. The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear; and there is a multitude of slain” (Nahum 3:1-3).
Asshurbanipal reverted to the antique system of executions, mutilations, and tortures. … Glorying in his shame, he not merely practiced cruelties, but handed the record of them down to posterity by representing them in all their horrors upon his palace walls.

Added to her violence were the witchcraft and sorceries, by which she had, like Babylon, corrupted the world (Nahum 3:4). For these things the Lord said: “I will show the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. And I will cast the abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing-stock” (vss. 5, 6).

Along with all these denunciations of sins was sent the invitation of mercy. “The Lord is good” was also the burden of Nineveh, “a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him” (Nahum 1:7). The Lord was ready to save to the uttermost. But the reign of pleasure continued, the strongholds of the city, the beautiful palaces, and the apparent strength of the empire seemed to promise lasting prosperity. But the word of the Lord was sure. Soon after Asshurbanipalís death, the forces of Media and Babylon besieged the city, and it fell. Nahum had said: “The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved” (“molten,” margin) (Nahum 2:6).

Ctesias, the ancient writer, says the river Tigris overflowed during the siege, washing down the wall, whereupon the king burned himself in his palace. The great empire fell to pieces with astonishing rapidity; for his vices had enervated the people, and it was full of treachery, though outwardly presenting the appearance of solidity. It was even as Nahum had said: “All thy strongholds shall be like fig trees with the first ripe figs; if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater” (Nahum 3:12). Its fall was complete.

History has repeated the lesson, and through it all the Lord has been witnessing of Himself, and gathering out of the ruin all the souls who have been willing to trust Him.

The lesson has a special significance to men now; for it was from Nineveh, and from her sister Babylon, that the abominations of paganism went out into all the world. It was by joining in these that the Jewish nation ruined itself. It was by the same pagan abominations that the worldly church was corrupted in the early centuries, and thus the papacy became by direct succession the spiritual Babylon, the mystic city which now reigns over the kingdoms of the earth.

And now, in these last days, with its doom overhanging it, the world dwells as carelessly as Nineveh of old, glorying in its culture and enlightenment. But the Lord leaves not Himself without witness. Wherever the genuine gospel of Christ's kingdom is preached the call is sounding, “Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached into the heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities” (Rev. 18:4, 5). He is still the stronghold in the day of trouble, mighty to save all who are willing to be separated from sin.

Ellen White was shown that the Lord intended for the Seventh-day Adventist Church to be the agent to tell the world of the fall of modern "Babylon." The 1888 message of Christ's righteousness was to capture the world's attention as no message in history has done. All the glorious prophecies of Scripture would have been fulfilled in the 1888 era if only modern "Israel" had received the "most precious message." But the story of Jonah encourages us to cherish hope. If the king of Nineveh and "his nobles" could lead their nation in repentance, surely "the angel of the church of the Laodiceans" can lead the church today into repentance. That "angel" is the leadership of the seventh "church" of Revelation 2, 3.

Read the study notes for Lesson 12