It was over a time period of a hundred years....maybe a hundred and fifty years....between the writing of these two books. Jonah's story we all know....Nineveh repented....for a while....but when it came time for God to send another prophet to Nineveh....there was no forty day warning period....as it was more a declaration to get ready....for judgment was at hand.
I see America during our Civil War as similar to Nineveh during Jonah's warning. We repented....in a way....certainly during the war itself....later on in it anyway....and there was revival even before it began....but it did not take long at all after the war for America to forget everything it went through....and everything that it had repented of....and here we are today....a little over 150 years after the war ended....having totally collapsed as a people and as a nation....while our more recent Jonah's....Billy Graham and R. C. Sproul...and a few others....are gone to be with their Lord....their tasks having been completed. No one seems to be warning today.....unless it's a political warning....and to make matters worse we have gone after a false prophet in Donald Trump. We are hopelessly adrift in the lame reasoning that he's not as bad as Biden....for both of these men are judgments of God for what we have become....and yet if you ask the same Christians....they will admit that they have read nothing on the real Donald Trump....preferring to listen to talk radio for their information....where they do not have to think at all....only commit to memory the talking points....that lead them further away from the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Read at your leisure if you will our Senate's.....Proclamation, for a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer....which was signed by Abraham Lincoln....stopping to contemplate at times just what was being said. Notice how this wasn't the one party condemning the other....notice how the Civil War was perceived as judgment....for our "presumptuous sins"....notice the phrase...."intoxicated with our unbroken success"....and then think of Donald Trump's constant 'intoxicated' rantings of "winning...winning...winning.." Stop and meditate upon words used such as..."humility" and "pride" and references to vanity and pride. Is there anyone in our Congress today....who would sign onto a proclamation like this.....let alone write it?
Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day
Washington, D.C.
By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation. And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh. By the President: Abraham Lincoln
