Jonah was not only the right preacher for revival; he came with the right message. And there is only one way that the message can be “right”: Is it God’s message? In Jonah’s case, the message for Nineveh was simple and to the point: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4).
Jonah’s message was a harsh message of judgment. It was a message you seldom hear in pulpits today: that God is going to judge sin. Preachers today seem to be so afraid they are going to offend somebody that they never preach about the judgment of God. They never say there is a place called hell. If I can offend someone into heaven—and keep them out of hell—by preaching on hell, then I will. They will be far more offended if they get to hell and no one told them there is such a place.
One of the ways we should preach that message today (in addition to the way Jonah preached it) is to declare that the judgment of God has already come, and that judgment was leveled upon Christ as He hung upon the cross. Because he was judged, we don’t have to be. That’s the message of the Gospel. One of the reasons why revival will have a hard time coming to America the way it is now is because no one will preach repentance and judgment. We tell people to be better, but we never tell them that before you can get better, you must deal with sin through repentance. In every revival in history there has always been the message of repentance.
Excerpted from The Runaway Prophet
, by David Jeremiah.
Jonah’s message was a harsh message of judgment. It was a message you seldom hear in pulpits today: that God is going to judge sin. Preachers today seem to be so afraid they are going to offend somebody that they never preach about the judgment of God. They never say there is a place called hell. If I can offend someone into heaven—and keep them out of hell—by preaching on hell, then I will. They will be far more offended if they get to hell and no one told them there is such a place.
One of the ways we should preach that message today (in addition to the way Jonah preached it) is to declare that the judgment of God has already come, and that judgment was leveled upon Christ as He hung upon the cross. Because he was judged, we don’t have to be. That’s the message of the Gospel. One of the reasons why revival will have a hard time coming to America the way it is now is because no one will preach repentance and judgment. We tell people to be better, but we never tell them that before you can get better, you must deal with sin through repentance. In every revival in history there has always been the message of repentance.
Excerpted from The Runaway Prophet
, by David Jeremiah. 
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