I preached this message 50 years ago, 40 years ago, in different times, and it's quite an eye-opening message. It applies to us today as many times. Now, God ordained Jonah to preach the Nineveh. He ordained Nineveh to basically invent the practice of crucifixion, believe it or not. And he ordained the shipbuilder. He ordained the captain. He ordained the crew. He ordained the ship itself. He ordained the storm. He ordained the fish, the leviathan, the dog. And I want you to tell you one thing. Everybody that heard Jonah preach was saved. All of them. Everyone. Everyone, he was the most successful prophet. He preached between 793 and 753 B.C., somewhere around there, basically. Then it was about 500 miles northeast of Jerusalem. He was supposed to go that direction. I'm going to show you here something awesome here on this globe later. Here's a Mediterranean here. This is where Jonah started out, right here. And he was supposed to go to Nineveh, up here, northeast. But he went this way instead. He went the opposite direction, which way he was supposed to go. He could have gone more opposite if he could have, but he had to go this way to get away. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. Gemma means dove, means peace, means safety. The son of Emetai sang, Arise and go to Nineveh, 500 miles northeast of Jerusalem, the great city, and cry against her. Now I'm changing the wording of this to go with the Hebrew language that it's actually written in. Now, here we have Jonah. The Word of the Lord came to Jonah. Now, that's pretty direct, isn't it? Has the Word of the Lord ever come to any of you out there anymore? Did God ever speak to you directly? You might say, when you were convicted of sin and judgment to come, you can say that, yes, God spoke to my heart and told me I'm a sinner. And He did through His Spirit. But you didn't have a message directly from Him. The message we have today is from the Word of God. Now I said, rise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against her, for her wickedness has come up before me. Now remember now, this is a city that's going to invent crucifixion. 793 to 753, somewhere around that period of time, B.C. And Jesus is going to be born. Let me take this little thing down here. We're under this part of the time, right in this period of time right here. Jesus is going to come and be crucified, but crucifixion had not been invented yet. These people are going to admit it. Now let's look at this for just a moment. Here is the way crucifixion began. It became, it was a stake. Originally it was nothing but a stake. They would take a man or woman and they would set him on this stake or her on this stake And it was slowly, it was greased, taken, sharpened, and it would go up through their rectum, up through their guts, and slowly kill them. That was crucifixion. Staking. And then, the Romans come along, and they want to use this, except they're going to make it last longer. Death is going to be elongated. It's going to be dragged out death. They're going to suffer for a long time. So first thing they did was they nailed their hands up here, and her feet down here to a stake. That was a pretty painful death, but it could be improved. So they made a different kind of a cross. This is an X, like a key cross, but one hand there, one hand here, one foot there, one foot there. And they lasted quite a while. Some people lasted in the state of crucifixion sometimes a week to two weeks. That's bad to be suffering like that. Then they come along with a masterful idea and they made it a towel cross. And your hands were up here and up here. Your body and your feet with your nails on one side and the other are on top of each other. And what they'd actually die of was suffocation. They would suffocate because they couldn't breathe with their arms up like that. They had to push themselves up to get a breath. It would collapse their chest otherwise. Now these people are going to devise the first form of this crucifixion. And he said, well, Jonah rose to run away to Tarshish. Tarshish now is Spain. Here we are. He's in the Mediterranean here. Here's Israel down here on the coast of that. Now he's gonna run all the way out here to Spain. Here's Spain way over here. Long way off. So he's out here in a boat in the Mediterranean Sea. We'll go see what happens out here in the Mediterranean Sea. Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Now, how are you going to get away from God? God is omniscient, omnipresent. So he went down to Joppa. Joppa? By the way, Joppa was ordained. And a ship which was going to Tarshish and paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He was not going to go up there. He was a men of a hater. He's going to go 2,500 miles the wrong way. Not 500 miles northeast. He's going to go the nearly opposite way. 2,500 miles. Now the shipbuilder was ordained, the ship was ordained, the captain was ordained, the crew was ordained, everything was ordained. Everyone that Nineveh will preach to will be saved, everyone. And the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea, that's the American training scene. And there was a great storm in the sea so that the ship was about to break up. Now, they were very superstitious people. These pagans were very superstitious, and they believed in a lot of gods. And one of the gods they believed in was a fish god, Dog. And by the way, the main god of Nineveh was a fish god called Dagon, the house of the fish god. So now he's out in the middle of the sea. And they believed that these great fish, these great leviathans of deep sometimes they were demons in the water. And one of the great demons and gods, whatever you want to call them, was a great fish god and it would cause the sea to be disturbed in great storms. And the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his god. They are pagans, they are polytheists. And they threw the cargo, which was in the ship, into the sea and lightened it for them. had gone below in the hold of the ship. Now this is a pretty good sized ship. And he laid down and he had fallen sound asleep. He's a rebellious prophet. Instead of staying where God planted him, bloom where you're planted, okay, he took off and went the opposite direction to run from God. And a captain approached him. and said, how is it that you are asleep? Get up and call on your God. Get up and call on your God. We're calling on all of our gods now. Maybe one of them will hear us. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. And each man said to his neighbor, come, let us cast lots so that we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us. And so they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. God guided the lot. God ordained the lot. God intervened with these people, these pagans. Then he said to him, tell us now on whose account has this calamity struck us? And what is your occupation? What are you, Jonah? Are you a bank robber? They had banks, by the way. They were pagan temples. Are you a malefactor of some sort? Are you a robber? Do you go out and kill people? Who have you robbed? What have you done? What terrible deed have you done that you have caused God to come down upon you or one of the gods? What's your occupation? Where do you come from? And what is your country? And what are your people? They're really disturbed. They're dying. And he said to them, I am a Hebrew. And I fear the Lord. I fear Jehovah Elohim of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Now, every one of their gods had some part. Some of them made it thunder. Some of them watched over the sea. Some of them watched over the land. The Behemoth watched over the land. And now he tells them something different. I fear the Lord, Jehovah Elohim of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. He made the sea, the sky, and the dry land. He made it all. Then the men became exceedingly frightened. And they said to him, how could you do this? How could you do this? for men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of his God, his Lord, Balaam, or Baal, that is, or Adonai, Jehovah, because he had told them. So they said to him, What shall we do? And to you, that the sea may become calm for us. Well, the sea was becoming increasingly stormy. Now, they had thrown all over their livelihood. They threw over, they kept on throwing, it said they kept on throwing away the cargo of the ship and that, and they could have been, if you don't take good care of the cargo for the people that you're taking the cargo for, sometimes you would be executed. And he said to them, pick me up and throw me into the sea. and then the sea will become calm for you. And I know that on account of me, this great storm has come upon you." However, the men rode desperately to return to land, but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them. Now, he tells them what they need to do, and they don't want to do it, because they're afraid of his God. They're afraid of Jehovah. He said, I serve Jehovah. And they're afraid of Jehovah now. They believe that Jehovah is powerful because he's castigating this here prophet, so-called. And they called on the Lord. They called on Jehovah. And they said, we earnestly pray, O Jehovah, do not let us perish on account of this man. Now they have changed gods. They've become believers. Do not put innocent blood on us. For you, O Lord, have done this as you have pleased." So they picked up John and they threw him into the ocean, into the sea. And the sea stopped its raging instantly. It stopped. It literally stopped its voice. Its voice stopped. Have you ever listened to the roaring waves? Have any of you out there been in the ocean where the waves roared? Instantly they became calm. And then what do these guys did now? They all believed now. They are all believers. From the captain down to the lowest deck scrubber. And the men feared Jehovah. And they offered sacrifices to the Jehovah and made vows. They made their vows to Jehovah God. Now they had changed God. They had believed. Jonah was supposed to preach to this crew, you know that? All these pagans would believe. What's this tell us today? That God can save any low down, no good scoundrel. I remember when he saved my Uncle Bill, that rat, that scoundrel, that killed man and robbed and stole and terrible. Every time I get around him, he tried to pull my ear off or my hair out of my head. Terrible man. I went and preached to him. He was dying in the hospital. And I preached to him and told him, oh, you're such a dirty rat and everything like that. And I was enjoying preaching to him, telling him he's going to go to hell. Except God ordained this moment. He ordained this time that he might believe. And Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights. He was dead. Dead. A lot of people say, well, see, people can be swallowed by a whale and live and all this, but we don't even know whether it's a whale or not. I have more confidence in it being a leviathan, a supernatural fish of some sort. Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights, dead. Now, when Jesus talked to the Pharisees and the scribes and the Levites and all these people, what did they say? Give us a sign. He said, I'll give you a sign of Jonah. As Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, so would the Son of Man be in the belly of the earth, in the tomb, dead. If Jonah wasn't dead, then Jesus wasn't dead and the tomb wasn't. This is a sign. Jesus gave us a sign. He said, as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be dead. Did Jesus swoon? No, he was dead. Now let's see, now Jonah is praying from Sheol. Now, remember, Sheol, there wasn't any heaven at this. People didn't go to heaven, basically. When they died, they went to Sheol. And that's all before the cross. When Jesus died, when He went down into Sheol, according to Peter, He went down there and was in Sheol for three days, and then He took those with Him up. Now, all the way up to here, from here, all the way up to here, there was a promise. From Genesis 3.15 onwards, it was promised that Jesus would come, He would die, and He was the Redeemer, and He would be the second Adam, and we'd have life through Him. We had death through the first Adam, now we have life through Him. And Jonah prayed to the Lord of God from the stomach of the fish. His body was there. He said, I called out in my distress to the Lord. And he answered me, I cried to help from the depth of what? Sheol. Sheol. Sheol means the place of departed spirits. That's Sheol, Hades in the New Testament. So his body was in Sheol. Not his body, but his soul and spirit were in Sheol. His body was in the fish. You have heard my voice. For you have cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and a current engulfed me, and all of your breakers and billows passed over me. And I said, I have been expelled from the sight, from your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again towards your holy temple, Jerusalem, and also to the holy temple where God where God dwells. Water encompassed me beyond and to and beyond the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. What this fish swallowed, he's in the fish and all of his contents of his stomach is being digested. And there's weeds down there. I descended to the roots of the mountains. Now, down in the ocean, you know, here on Earth, in our front yard, we have 14,000 foot mountains out there. And then we have a valley here from 5,000 feet down to 4,500 or so down on the south end. Now, in the ocean, it's like that too. You'll see an island or something up there or even a continent up high. And then there's, in the ocean, there's deep valleys and hills and rocks and everything down there. There are desert areas down there that are all of this. Just like you have above the earth. The desert areas in the ocean are just sand, just sand. And then there's great forests of seaweed and so on. He said, I descended to the roots of the mountains, way down to the depths of the depths of the sea, and the earth, with its bars, kept on being around me forever. But you have brought me up, my life, from the pit, from hell, from Tophet, O Lord my God, O Jehovah my Elohim. While I was fainting away, I remembered the Lord. While I was dying, I remembered the Lord. And my prayer came to you in your holy temple. Those who regard vain idols, forsake their faithfulness. But I will sacrifice to you through the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed, I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord. Then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah up upon dry land. Now, this is a great problem. As you look at this map, we find out that Jonah started right here in the land of Canaan. He was going over here to the Mediterranean. Now, if he was vomited up on the shores of Nineveh, he had to either fly this way, or he had to go all the way around the whole African continent, up into the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, and all the way up here into the Gulf, up into Persian Gulf, and all the way up the river, That's a long way, isn't it? How many thousands of miles is that? Thousands of miles. Now, did he send the fish to there? Did he really send the fish up here? Did he go over here and spit him out up here someplace? We don't know for sure, but if he'd spit him up right there on the shore of Nineveh, he took quite a trip. Quite a trip. And I'm sure he was well digested by the time he got there. Just think about the Anastasia, the resurrection of Jonah. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, Arise and go to the center of the great city and proclaim. If he went all the way around, did he come up here to Tigris and the Euphrates and go up through there? and proclaimed it to the proclamation, which I am going to tell you. So Jonah rose and went to Nineveh. Now, most of the time you see these pictures and Bibles and things, you have Jonah being spit out right there on the banks of the river toward Nineveh. If he did that, he had to go a long way. Maybe he took him right back there to the Tarshish and spit him out on the land there and they took his trip on up there. What happened? The gentleman is alive and he's going to go preach now. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days walk. It's about 60 miles wide. And Jonah began to go through the city in one day's walk, and he cried out and said, 40 days, and Nineveh would be overthrown. Now God has prepared every person in this city to believe. He's foreordained them to believe. Then the people of Nineveh believed God, and they called a fast. In other words, they didn't eat. They weren't going to eat now. They put sackcloth on the greatest of them to the least of them. Now they put on real rough clothing. They didn't put on their fine clothing. They put on their rough clothing and they start crying to the Lord. When the Lord of the Lord reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne and laid aside his robe and covered himself with sackcloth and set in ashes. This is what you do when you're repentant. Believe, believe. Everybody's believing, aren't they? Not a person here, every, I mean, I wish that I was 100% successful from preaching. I preached the word of God and walked out, and saw all sinners walk out and that was it. You know, there's only two kinds of sinners, there's saved ones and lost ones. And he issued a proclamation, and he said, in Nineveh, by the decree that the king and his nobles do not let a man, a beast, a herd, or flock taste anything. The animals are going to put the animals on fasting also. Do not let them eat or drink water. Both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth and let men call on God earnestly. This is the God of the Bible. This is Jehovah. This is not their gods. This is not Dagon. This is God of the Bible. And that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish. And when God saw their deeds, that they turned from their weak way, then God relented concerning the calamity. And He declared that He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. is upset now. You know, when I preached to my Uncle Bill up there in that hospital, Gerneral Hospital in Bakersfield, California, so many years ago, I was upset when he told me that he wanted to be saved and didn't want to go to hell. All I could see was that man that Gary Hartwell and I found that he killed. I felt him pulling my ears off, pulling my hair out. I saw all the wicked things, everything that I got, every toy that I ever had, he'd take off and sell it for wine. He was a wino. And when he asked me to lead him in prayers that he might be saved, I was upset. Reminded me of Jonah. I was like Jonah. It was very successful, and for years, later on, years and years and years, I mean, what time he had left on the earth, he didn't die then. But he'd always, I'd go by and see him, and he'd take my hand and kiss my hand. Boy, he sure never did that before. If he'd do anything, he'd bite my hand. And he'd give me money to put in the church. Here, Jimmy, this is for the church. Thank you. Thank you for telling me about Jesus. When he died, and I know where the books are. They're out in my garage right now. my cousin gave me two of his Bibles. Now my grandfather, my great-grandfather, which was his father, was a godly man. And he named him Bill, and he was born in 1903, and he had a Bible. When he was born, he had a Bible for that boy. And he wrote in there all the scriptures that he might look at to be saved. And yet he was a killer. He was a wino, he was a drunk, He didn't care about anybody or anything. He ran off with William Gable's wife. William Gable was Clark Gable's father. Clark Gable actually was William Gable also. I have their marriage certificate someplace here where she was married to him and then Bill ran off with her. And she lived in absolute poverty with that man. From Hollywood and oil fields wealth to poverty. I can never understand that, but she stayed with him till the day she died. Gladys was her name. Anyway, Bill was a wicked man. But after he was saved in that hospital that day, he repented. I don't think he ever drank again. And he would give me money, and they gave me his Bibles. And my great-grandfather had written in there, Bill, this is the book of life, eternal life, a book of salvation. Live by it. And it was 1903. When he was born, he wrote this in the Bible for him. And he wanted that boy to be a preacher. Can you imagine that? He wanted that boy to be a preacher. Another book that he gave him in 1920-something before he died, he died in 1930-something, my great-grandfather did. But he gave him another book, and he wrote all in the Bible in different places, and Bill, these would make good sermons. Boy, I can't even imagine that. But you know what, he had a great-grandson that was a preacher. And the great-grandson didn't want to lead him to the Lord, but I did. He had a leg cut off from diabetes and from being a wino, He had gangrene and he was dying. They didn't expect him to live, but he did. And he lived his life, the rest of his life, with the Lord. And he prayed to the Lord and said, Please, Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarsus, for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, and slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness. One of the titles of Jehovah is the God of loving kindness. And one who rejects and relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life. I didn't tell the Lord to kill me when my Uncle Bill was saved. I didn't do that. I didn't go that far. But I watched that boy, that man, and he changed. And I saw the greatest gift that I could ever imagine to a man that was so miserably mean. I mean, none of my family could get near him. He would hurt them. His brother one time, they went hunting together in Oklahoma, my Uncle Jim. And he had a dog that he loved very much. And they were hunting rabbits because they didn't have very much to eat. And my Uncle Bill got out there and shot that dog just to watch his brother cry. He got him another dog later on. He went out in the barn and beat that dog to death. Jim told me that blood was all over the walls of that wall where he'd beat that dog to death. Mean man, mean. But you know what? God can take somebody like that and change them. Jeffrey Dahmer, you know, the eight people killed and eight people. They say that he was saved. before he died. And the Lord said, do you have a good reason to be angry? Then Jonah went out from the city and he sat east of it. Now God ordained a lot of things in this. Preordained and foreordained. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under the shade until he could see what would happen to the city. Maybe they'll get bad again. Maybe they'll become rascals again. And maybe I'll get to see them destroyed. So the Lord God appointed a plant. This is a castor bean plant by the way. It's a castor bean plant. That's what it says in Hebrew. He preordained a castor bean plant to grow up over Jonah. to be shade over his head and to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plan. Oh boy, God still loves me. Even though I hate these people, God still loves me. Because I'm a Jew. I'm a Hebrew. And these people are heathens. But they weren't heathens anymore. The people in the boat weren't heathens anymore either. How would you like to have a 100% conversion percents each. But God appointed a worm. God ordained a worm. And the dawn came. And the next day it attacked the plant and he withered. Now the plant is the type of what he was going to do to Nineveh. And it came about when the sun came up that God appointed a scorching east wind. And the sun beat down on Jonah's head. So he became faint and he begged with all his soul to die, saying, death is better than life to me. Then God said to Jonah, do you have a good reason to be angry about the planet? And he said, I have a good reason to be angry, even to death. Then the Lord said to him, You've had compassion on the plant for which you did not work, which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. And I should and should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who did not know the difference between the right hand and the left hand, as well as many animals. God, there's 120 people in that city, 120,000 young people. Before they know the right and from the left hand, this is the toddler, there's 120,000 babies here. Plus animals. You wanted me to kill all these animals? God is a God of compassion. Look at your own life, your own soul. Are you worth saving? Am I worth saving? I mean, at times I wonder. God loved us before we loved Him. God loved them before they loved Him. They were still serving pagan gods, Dagon. And yet God called, ordained Jonah's life. You know they said one time when Jesus was preaching everything, was there ever a prophet from Galilee? Did ever a prophet come out of Galilee? Well here's the one right here. This is the first prophet that came out of Galilee right there. 120,000 young people weren't destroyed. Young souls, little babies. All the animals were saved and Jonah was taught that for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of eternal life is Jesus Christ our Lord. If you believe in the heart that God sent His Son, that He was born of a virgin, that he lived basically 33 and a half years of his life, showing miracles that he was Messiah, a Messiah of the Old Testament. That he died on the cross of Calvary for you and for me. He was our substitute. That God allowed him to be killed on that terrible cross that we talked about, that these people invented. You know, there were many Romans saved, weren't there? Many Romans saved. There were centurions saved. There was all these kind of people who were saved. Because God is merciful. Well, they could be Muslim saved today if they would only look and believe. And from what I hear in Iran, there are many Christians, people becoming Christians in Iran. And it's their turmoil right now. Does God love people all over the world? Yes, he does. He still loves people. He still wants people to be saved today. Our Father, we send this message out for your honor and glory. Please use it. I pray also that you'd be with Marilyn today and her difficulties and falling and everything. Please let us keep her a little longer. Father, please forgive me where I fail you and let this message go wherever it is in the world. It might touch lives and hearts and souls to salvation and to service.