This is a figure for us to study, a voice for us to bear. What did Jehoshaphat-days, or Hezekiah-days, or Josiah-days, do for Jerusalem? Did judgment after such days enter by the hand of the Chaldean, though they were very fair and promising? We know it did. Did Nineveh want the day of the Lord, though once upon a time the king there descended from his throne and sat in ashes, and man and beast were clothed in sackcloth, and neither did eat nor drink? Yes, we know this also. And I may ask again, “What has Reformation done for Christendom?” Coming judgments, and not the Reformation, or progress, or education for the million, will prepare the world for the glory and kingdom of the Lord.
The earlier history of God’s dealing with Nineveh by the hand of Jonah may, in this day of judgment announced by Nahum, witness to us that He is “slow to anger”—for He sent a preacher then to warn, and turn them to that repentance which He received, and spared them. But He that is slow to anger, does not “acquit the wicked” (see Nah. 1:33The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. (Nahum 1:3)). There is a separating between the precious and the vile. “He knows them that trust in Him,” even the remnant in Nineveh if there are such, as we said before (Nah. 1:77The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. (Nahum 1:7)); but the Judge of all the earth, like the Judge of Sodom who stood of old before Abraham, “will do right.”