| Nahum | |
Nahum Intro—1:1 And has this nation of mine come to that place today? This little book has a message for us, my friend. Quite a few years ago I cut out this little clipping which reads: A United States Senator has stated that the average life of the great civilizations of the world has been about 200 years. He goes on to say that these civilizations have progressed (if that’s the right word) through the following stages: The Senator points out the interesting fact that the United States of America will be 200 years old in 12 years. Which of the above stages do you think we’re in? How much longer is our civilization going to last? –Dr. J. Vernon McGee quoting an undisclosed newspaper article Nahum 1:1-3 “America today is going downhill with a godly ancestry. God pity America when we reach the bottom of the hill.” Nahum 1:3-10 “The very brilliant Oxford don, C.S. Lewis, wrote a story in which he tells about a bus trip that was run from hell to heaven. It was the sort of tour in which those who were in hell could take a bus trip to heaven. The bus was filled and, when it arrived in heaven, the driver parked the bus in a parking lot (I’m sure there are plenty of parking spaces up there). The driver told everyone on the bus, ‘At four o’clock this afternoon, the bus is going to leave and head for home.’ Home just happened to be hell. And at four o’clock that afternoon, the bus was filled–everyone was back. The bus driver told them, ‘If you want to stay, you can stay.’ Why didn’t they stay? It was because they had found out they had no place in heaven.” Nahum 3:7-19 “It was the capital city of the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Dynasties, and boasted such architecture as the Greeks and Romans admired. The Greeks called it Diospolis, because the Egyptian counterpart of Jupiter was worshipped there. It was located on both banks of the river Nile. On the eastern bank were the famous temples at Karnak and Luxor. Homer, the first Greek poet, spoke of it as having 100 gates. Its ruins cover an area of some 27 miles. Amon, the chief god of the Egyptians, was shown on Egyptian relics as a figure with a human body and a ram’s head. The judgment of this godless and idolatrous city was foretold by Jeremiah (46:25) and Ezekiel (30:14-16). No-Amon was situated favorably among the canals of the Nile with the Nile itself as a protection. The Nile appears as a sea when it overflows its banks annually. Nineveh can read her fate in that of No-Amon, for she is no better than the mighty Egyptian capital.” |
