Mooved to prayer...

⁵ So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.  ⁶ Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.  ⁷ And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water.  ⁸ But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.  ⁹ Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?  ¹⁰ Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.  Jonah 3:5-10 (NKJV)

I love the humorous picture that is portrayed in this account of the salvation of Nineveh from destruction.  Here is a hardened, wicked king who is so stunned by the message (and possibly the appearance) of Jonah that he immediately rips off his clothes, puts on potato sack and sits in the ashes outside.  Ashes – a picture that one is helpless and has nothing to offer.  Operating from the dust bin, the king orders that all of the people and all of the cattle be covered in potato sacks and not eat or drink until the doom either falls or changes to mercy.  The people cry out to God and goad their cattle to moan on their behalf.  It’s a funny picture to see the potato sacked cows mooing before the Lord.

It’s a strange picture that calvinists like to portray that God pre-selected massive numbers of humans to go to hell without access to mercy.  The reason the calvinists believe in their leader’s imaginary idea of reprobation is because they are devoted to evolutionary doctrine and Greek philosophy instead of the teaching of the Bible.  The Bible clearly teaches that God wants to have mercy on humans and can change His plan to bring harm upon them (Exodus 32:14).  Calvin decided to write a new version of the Bible that suited his need for superiority and logic rather than humility and compassion. (If you want to call yourself a calvinist, then I hope he is a good enough advocate (lawyer) to help you out in the judgment…good luck with that.  Most believers are humble enough to content themselves with being Christians in honor of the only one that can help them in the day of judgment (1 John 2:1-2)).  Apparently, God is the sort of person who takes into account the prayers of cattle: He mentions His mercy upon them to Jonah at the end of the book – Jonah 4:11.

Obviously, God is the sort of person (Jesus is God) who will go to extremes to save humans.  Condensing himself into that which fits into his own creation, he became one of us – truly human – and worked out a pre-packaged plan to provide salvation for humanity.  The Bible clearly teaches that no one is reprobate until after he/she has been judged at the end.  The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus has made salvation available to anyone who is human.  His love for us established his finished work on the cross as the gift of salvation that can be accepted (you can’t buy a gift…you either accept it or refuse it) by anyone.

Come to Jesus.

Come to the Cross.