By Deng Qi

The Bible records: “Now the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me” (Jonah 1:1-2). “And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). And Jehovah said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come to Me; and if not, I will know” (Genesis 18:20–21). “Then Jehovah rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven; And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground” (Genesis 19:24–25). Without doubt, all those who have read the Bible know that there were two well-known cities in the Age of Law; one was Nineveh and the other Sodom. Both these two great cities had become corrupt to the extreme and were filled with violence, which provoked God’s anger, so that God was going to destroy them. In the end, however, because of the different attitudes of the inhabitants of the two cities, God saved the city of Nineveh and destroyed Sodom. What aspects of God’s disposition can we perceive from these two things done by God? First, let us look at the attitude of the people of Nineveh. When these people heard the news that their city would be overthrown in forty days, their attitude was to repent willingly. As it is written: “So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God: yes, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands” (Jonah 3:5-8). When God sent Jonah to proclaim the message to the people of Nineveh, they believed that God would destroy the city, so they forsook the violence in their hands, turned away from their evil ways, and confessed their sins and repented before God in sackcloth and ashes. Seeing the people of Nineveh truly repent, God changed His heart and spared them from the catastrophe. But the people of Sodom did the exact opposite. It is written: “But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: And they called to Lot, and said to him, Where are the men which came in to you this night? bring them out to us, that we may know them” (Genesis 19:4-5). When the two angels sent by God came to the city of Sodom, not only did the people in it not stop their evil deeds, but they were more evil than ever, attempting to harm the two angels. Their evil deeds of resisting God finally provoked God’s anger, and they were destroyed by brimstone and fire from God.