Dive deep into the tales of transformation from the heart of Iran in this episode. As we dissect the profound stories of individuals like Arman, who embraced faith against all odds, we also study the ancient prophecies of Nahum. Learn about the implications of these narratives and how they resonate with modern believers today.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee. If you’re a fan of movies and shows about the great events of the Bible, then you’ve seen your share of chariot races. Remember the one in Ben-Hur? If the directors did their research, the chariots in those battle scenes were equipped with swords mounted on the axles of the wheels… so they could cut down anything or anyone that got too close. Well, with that picture in mind, let’s turn to our lesson in Nahum chapter 1. Those same kinds of battle chariots were used by the Medes to destroy the army of Nineveh, which we’ll learn about in this study. I’m Steve Schwartz, welcoming you to board the Bible bus with us. And as you find your seat through the Bible’s president, Greg Harris, and I have some sobering but pretty amazing reports on our ministry in Iran.
SPEAKER 02 :
That is correct, Steve. One of our great team members, James Rosa, also went with Ray Allery, two of our great global partnerships team members, went to a conference that we want to tell you about. And it is written about in this month’s newsletter article. And so we really want to encourage you to get our newsletter. If you know anything about Through the Bible, we don’t fundraise. We won’t be begging or asking you for money. So I know sometimes people think, well, if I get a newsletter the next month, I’m going to get a mailing for money. We don’t do that. In fact, as you’ve pointed out, if you get on our newsletter list, you won’t be put on the other list. You want to join World Prayer Today. And that was Dr. McGee’s way. This is so important, and you could get this article right now by going to ttb.org, or you could have a beautiful print copy that you and I both get and put in our Bibles, and we use it throughout the month. But this article is a really serious and impactful article.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, Words of Hope, which is a partner of ours. That’s right. And they’ve been doing this ministry for a long time. They have a ministry to Christians and almost Christians, people interested in the faith, shall we say, in the country of Iran, which is not an easy country to be a Christian in. They will take folks from Iran to a third country or a second country other than Iran, and they will have a series of meetings, and they will actually have people baptized in those situations. Yeah. And it’s there’s some tension there. And there’s a couple of stories that James communicates in this newsletter. Greg, why don’t you kind of draw out the first one?
SPEAKER 02 :
Let’s start with Arman. And it says he arrived identifying as a Muslim. He was quiet, observant and respectful, but also hesitant, reserved. He was not quite sure what all of this was about. And let me just stop there. You mentioned it. They invite people that have shown some interest. It isn’t just random. They’re very careful about who comes to these meetings. And it isn’t a large meeting, maybe 20 people, 20, 30 people. Yeah. But Armand, the story about Armand is he was very quiet, but he began to soften his sort of posture and his nonverbals. Then he began asking deeper questions. He warmed up to the group. And then during the last session, just before the baptisms, he stood up and walked forward to profess faith in Christ. And his son and his wife were there, and they wept because they were already believers. And as James said, I will never forget their faces. And you and I have been in these contexts. faces.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it’s incredible. And then another attendee, and we’re calling him Defar, quiet but in a different way. I would say a lot more antagonistic. Into the room, arms crossed, scowl on his face, not really interested in engaging in any way. And there was even a concern that he might be a spy in there to figure out what these folks are doing, and I’m sure then tee them up for some sort of persecution or arrest when they get back to Iran.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
But Let me continue now and read part of James’ testimony here. On the night of baptisms, when everyone was supposed to meet in the conference room for a walkthrough about how to be baptized and celebrate respectfully, DeVar was nowhere to be found. This is when people’s suspicions started to kick in. Maybe he was a spy. Just as the last components of prep were being made, he came into the room, he paused for a moment, and then immediately, and this is the pivot, began to cry. I’m sure nobody expected that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
He wanted to place his faith in Jesus and get baptized as well. And then James goes on. The room melted. We could not believe the depths of the mercy and grace of God and how beautifully it was unfolded before our very eyes. And this is important. This is important if you’re listening as well. If God could save Defar, he could save anyone. And we should all live our lives accordingly. So maybe you’re out there. Maybe you’re not a believer. Maybe you’re listening to this program and you’re Defar sitting, figuratively speaking, with your arms crossed, cold and indifferent to the things of the Lord. Our prayer is that your heart would be melted and that you would come to Christ and you would be like Defar and trust Christ for your salvation as he did. It’s just a great story.
SPEAKER 02 :
It is, and it’s God doing the heavy lifting. It’s just we show up and do our small part, and he does the amazing work.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, Defar goes on to be baptized, and then he wants to be discipled, and he was sent home saying, I feel like I’m standing on holy ground. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
So you can read all of this and more in this month’s newsletter. Call 1-800-65-BIBLE or go to ttb.org. You can download it or send us an email at biblebus.ttb.org and just give us your address and say, I’d like to start receiving the newsletter. It will make a difference in your life.
SPEAKER 03 :
Greg, let me pray for our program as we begin. Heavenly Father, I pray that as we study your word together, that you would open the eyes of all of us to see wonderful things from your word. In Jesus’ name, amen. Now let’s turn to Nahum 1 as we make our way through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now we come today, friends, to the second chapter of Nahum. We are going to see here in chapters 2 and 3, that is, in the remainder of the book of Nahum, we are going to see the justice and goodness of God exhibited in the execution of his decision to destroy Nineveh. God didn’t just talk about it. God did it. And he did destroy this city actually in a very remarkable way. And so we are going to see that as we get into this chapter here. Now, very frankly, this last verse, verse 15 of the last chapter, is really part of the chapter 2 here. In other words, chapter 2 in the Hebrew Bible opens up here with, “…Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace. O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts.” Perform thy vows, for the wicked shall no more pass through thee. He is utterly cut off. Actually, this is a message that is directed immediately to the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom was being carried away into captivity, but it’s a message for them also. God had a message that was good news for them, good tidings, and it’s applicable to the northern kingdom. Isaiah gives this same message, and it applied to the southern kingdom at the time of the Babylonian captivity. Now, this one has in view, that’s in Nahum, it has in view the kingdom of Assyria. Now, when Paul quoted it in the 10th chapter of Romans, and that’s the section that applies to Israel, it looks to the future. And again, good news will be brought to these people. But that is a worldwide message, and it’s applicable to today. So that we’re told, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord, he shall be saved. But how are they going to hear without somebody bringing a message to them? They’ve got to be sent. And I believe that God will do the sending. How beautiful are their feet? And it’s not because they have beautiful feet, but they have come to bring the message to them. Now, they may have traveled by boat, Or they may have come by plane. But the idea is that they brought the message. And it could be by radio. Now, there are several folk that have said to me, Dr. McGee, you have been emphasizing your foreign broadcast so much. But don’t forget this country. Well, we’re not forgetting this country because we believe that the gospel should begin right here at our Jerusalem, my Jerusalem, and that I shouldn’t bypass anybody as I go out. And therefore, by radio, we’re attempting to continue to reach this country as well as we can. and go right to the ends of the earth with it. And we’d love to expand even more if we could get the support because, frankly, I want my feet to be beautiful, not because I’ve got beautiful feet, because there’s one thing about feet, they’re not pretty. Our feet need to be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In other words, we need to be prepared to take the message out to these folk. There is a spiritual message When I get to heaven, I’m going to walk all over God’s heaven. Well, I think it’s a great song, and it certainly expressed a great hope in the hearts of those that composed that and sang that in the early days. I don’t think it’s very applicable today by any means. But friends, I want to walk all over this earth. That is, by radio. not very good at walking anymore, so I’m anxious to go by this mechanical means. And that’s the reason we want to reach out today. So this is a tremendous verse that is interpreted, you see, by Paul in a very wonderful way. And it shows how you can give a spiritual application of Scripture, I should say, rather than interpretation. These two Scriptures have direct interpretation that have two different separate nations in view. but it has an application to the entire world. We come here now to Nineveh, and Nineveh is to get the message that judgment is coming. Verse 1 of chapter 2, He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face. Keep the fortress, watch the way, make thy loins strong, fortify thy power mightily. Now, again, we have here the Medo-Babylonian forces that came under Syaxares and Nabopolassar that came against Assyria and destroyed it. And it’s very interesting that Nahum here tells Assyria, you sure better fortify yourself. I think that’s abiding sarcasm myself, because the Assyrians spared no one, and they thought that their place was impregnable, that they could withstand any kind of a judgment. Well, God is saying to this nation that you’re going to be destroyed. Now, verse 2, “…for the Lord hath turned away the excellency of Jacob.” as the excellency of Israel, for the emptiers have emptied them out and marred their vine branches. This is a detailed prophecy now, which is today an accurate historical record. of what really took place at that time. And it speaks of the finality of the judgment of God upon the nation Assyria. It would never make a comeback. Assyria never did make a comeback and never will make a comeback. Babylon will and also some other nations. But Assyria, one of the great world powers, in the ancient world will not make a comeback. God makes that very, very clear. Now, the capture of Nineveh here is described in rather lurid terms to tell the truth. And it reveals how terrible it was. And you could write over this entire passage here, you could write over it, whatsoever a man sowed. that shall he also reap. They had been a very brutal nation, one of the most brutal nations that the world has seen. When we were studying the book of Jonah, I called attention at that time to the fact that one of the things the Assyrians did to their enemies was to bury them out in the desert, in the sand, right up to their neck, up to their chins. and then put a thong through their tongue and leave them out in the hot blazing sun, first to go mad and then to die. That was one of the nice little things that the Assyrians came up with. They had several other little surprises for their enemies. And it is said that when the Assyrians were marching, that the enemy ahead would, many places, an entire community would commit suicide rather than fall into the hands of the brutal Assyrians. They were dreaded and feared in the ancient world. And we find here that now they’re beginning to move, but now the movement is in another direction. They are no longer the aggressor, but the Medes and the Babylonians are coming up against them. Now, will you notice verse 3? The shield of his mighty men is made red. Now, it was not made red, as some think, with blood. The Assyrians were especially fond of the color of red or scarlet. You will find it, well, in all of their art, in their pictures. That is a color that has been discovered there. And they were very much interested in it. They would make everything red. And some believe that they used copper shields. and that in the sunlight, the reflection of copper is red. And actually, that is the thing. And why did they use it? Well, a great many believe that they did it to frighten their enemies. As you well know, that in warfare, you intend to do as much bluffing as you do fighting. You attempt to frighten your enemy as much as you possibly can. You remember when the atom bomb was dropped and first the warning was given. The Japanese, they actually thought that America was bluffing. And that’s one time we were not bluffing, but they did not pay any attention to it at all. Today we have a great many of those that are using the crying towel and we are using flagalations on ourselves that we are guilty of this awful thing. Well, we gave ample warning to the enemy And it did bring the war to an end. But I’m very frank to say that as we see working out here in this enemy that was brutal, what they sowed, they reap. And I don’t think we’re any different. We happen to be the first one to drop an atom bomb. And I’m not sure that God’s going to forget that. That was a frightful thing to do. And I personally feel that our nation shouldn’t go in sackcloth and ashes because of it today. I see no reason for that. It was an awful, horrible thing. But after all, war was a very awful, horrible thing. And our boys were being slain. We were not winning the war by any means. That was the thing that brought it to a close. And island by island hopping that we were doing in that day just saw the slaughter, in fact, the worst slaughter that we’ve ever had. And as a result, my feeling is that we were justified in that. But the whole point is that you do attempt to bluff your enemy. And the enemy made the mistake of thinking it was a bluff when we were telling the truth. But that’s probably the reason they use red. Now, will you notice it? It says, “…the shield of his mighty men is made red. The valiant men are in scarlet.” Again, red color, you see. They had the uniforms that were red. “…the chariots shall be with flaming torches in the day of preparation.” Now, I think it’s because of the armor that was on the chariots and the way that they were built. They were not built of wood like the chariots that you see in the museum down in Egypt. The Egyptians used a great deal of wood in building their chariots. But apparently the Assyrians were the ones that got out the latest model on chariots. They were sort of the general motors of chariot building. And the chariots were like flaming torches in the day of its preparation. And the fir trees shall be terribly shaken. Now, verse 4 is another verse that’s going to illustrate to us an interpretation of Scripture, a method that is entirely wrong. For instance, it says, “…the chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one another in the broad ways, they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightning.” Now, this, by the way, reveals here that he’s talking about the chariots of the enemy and the chariots of the Assyrians. And it would be probably a battle that would be settled by the enemy using chariots. You see, what happened was that when the enemy came against Assyria, They had a well-defended city. That is, it is said that Nineveh had 1,500 towers, and each one of them was 200 feet high. And Deodorus Siculus, a Greek historian, is the one who gives us that information, by the way. So that Nineveh really was a well-defended city. But at the time of the siege, the Tigris River got up. and flooded, and it took out an entire section of the walls. In other words, it did what the enemy could not do, breach the walls of Nineveh, and the enemy was able to come in and penetrate it into the city itself, into the city of Nineveh. And then they used the flooding methods that had been for irrigation actually to flood the palace. So that was the way the enemy was able to take them. And then the breach was so great that the chariots of the enemy could get in and the others. Now, what you have described here is nothing in the world but the chariot battle of that day. Now, there is an interpretation of prophecy today. I deplore it myself. And I regret that at the present hour that we see so much of it. And here is an example of it. There are those that say that this is a prophecy of the automobile. Well, Sir Robert Anderson spoke of the wild utterances of prophecy mongers. And we need to recognize that today there’s a great interest in prophecy and great world events are taking place, great crises are taking place. And you can become fanatical in this and you can go overboard in it. Winston Churchill said a fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and he won’t change the subject. And some today are just dwelling on prophecy. And after all, that’s a limited subject. And they then become rather fanatical in interpretation. And I heard not long ago an interpretation given that this is a prophecy of the automobile. Now, friends, it has nothing in the world to do with the automobile. And I don’t think you can even make that kind of an application of it for the very simple reason that the automobiles don’t rage in the streets. To tell the truth, sometimes the drivers do. And when you get tied up in traffic, you can rage. But the automobile doesn’t rage. It just manages to stay right there and not move at all. And sometimes when it’s time to move, you can’t move it if you’ve got a vapor lock. And they don’t jostle once against another in the broad ways. Actually, when one jostles against another one, it means a wreck. And it was on New Year’s Eve. I went out to a New Year’s Eve service of a friend of mine. A young man had been on my staff when I was pastor in downtown Los Angeles. And I went out to his service because he’s a very excellent preacher. And I went out with a friend of mine, and we never saw as many officers, and that was New Year’s Eve, out on the freeways here. And there was one wreck after another. Apparently, quite a few drunk drivers out that evening. And the important thing is that automobiles just don’t jostle one against another. Well, what’s he talking about here, jostling? Now, if you have ever been in a museum… where they do have some of the Assyrian relics. You have seen on the chariot wheels, that is the hub of the chariot, you have seen a sickle, and it’s like a sword or a sickle, and it is an instrument that’s very dangerous. It extended out from the wheel, and the one driving the chariot would go up as close as he could get to the enemy when he would meet the enemy. And this very sharp instrument would cut off his wooden wheels. For many of them had wooden wheels, you see. And that would put a chariot out of business right away if you could cut off the wheels on one side. And that is the jostling together that is mentioned here. It hasn’t anything to do with the automobile. And when it says they’ll run like lightnings and they shall seem like torches. Well, they moved so fast in that day. Now, for our day, it would be very slow. But the Assyrians had developed the fighting by chariot to a very fine degree. And so the enemy had picked that up. And when they clashed in the broad ways of this city and outside this city, Why, the battle was a frightful, horrible thing. And that, my friend, is all that he’s talking about here. Now, I believe that you can make a moral and spiritual application from the Word of God. But I don’t think that you can take this up and interpret it in a literal way for our day. You see what a remarkable book Nahum is? This is another great principle for interpreting the Word of God. Now, when you read that there’s going to set out in the future strange slips in that land, don’t say they’re orange trees, because the orange, that’s its natural habitat. The land of Israel, in fact, that whole area, grew oranges way back in the days of Solomon. Because when he speaks in the Song of Solomon of dwelling under the apple tree, the apple tree was the orange tree. And as a result, may I say to you that you don’t take scriptures that have an interpretation for a different people at a different time and bring them up to date. May I say to you, that’s what I call the same thing that Sir Robert Anderson called the wild utterances of prophecy mongers. So here is another great principle of the interpretation of scripture. We’ll go on from there next time. May God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 03 :
Dr. McGee was passionate about teaching how to correctly understand and interpret the Bible. To learn more, go to our app or ttb.org and download Dr. McGee’s booklet, How to Understand the Bible. Or call 1-800-65-BIBLE if we can help you find it. Again, that’s ttb.org or 1-800-65-BIBLE. I’m Steve Schwartz, praying that the Lord blesses and keeps you as you walk with Him today. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. Through the Bible exists to take God’s whole word to the whole world. And we invite you to stand with us with your faithful prayer and financial support. Where will God’s word go today?
