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Yet Forty Days

By Chris McCann
March 25, 2015

Jonah 3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

4 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.

Mr. Camping pointed out in his writings that God had two major programs in which He intended to evangelize the world. The first really began with the birth of Christ in the Jubilee year of 7 BC. Some 39 years later (forty calendar years) God would completely fulfill the purpose of Christ’s coming as the One to set the captives free with the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost in 33 AD.

The second phase of that two part program to evangelize the world did not occur until the year 1994, also a Jubilee year. In that year God once again poured out His Holy Spirit to save a great many people. This second Jubilee is what Jonah 3:1 had in mind when it said: “The Word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time...”

The name ‘Jonah’ itself means ‘dove.’ And in the Bible, God uses the ‘dove’ to typify the Holy Spirit (The Spirit like a dove descending upon Him-Mark 1:10). So spiritually, when the Bible tells us that the Word of the Lord came to Jonah (the dove) a second time and commanded him to go to Nineveh and proclaim the preaching that God bid him to proclaim, it means that it is referring to God’s command to the Holy Spirit the second time He is poured out. And that second time was in the Jubilee year of 1994.

So, we have a link between the pouring out of the Holy Spirit the first time (Christ born in the Jubilee year 7 BC), and a link with the second pouring out of the Holy Spirit in another Jubilee year (1994 AD) with the book of Jonah (the dove/Holy Spirit).

To say it another way, the Jubilee year of 1994 identifies with the second sending forth of Jonah to the people of Nineveh. We may also have a second tie in:

From the Jubilee year of 1994 AD, to the year 2033 is 39 actual years but forty inclusive years.

Again the Jubilee year in 1994 relates to the second outpouring of the Spirit.

The book of Jonah tells us of a 2nd sending forth of Jonah (the dove/Spirit) to Nineveh (the world). We also are given a time line for the second time that God sent Jonah (the dove/Spirit) to Nineveh:

Jonah 3:4 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.

Forty days! From the point of being sent a second time, God gives a time span of forty days.

In the Bible we know that a day may represent a year:

Numbers 14:34 After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.

Therefore we can understand the reference to ‘forty days’ as possibly meaning: ‘forty years’ and Nineveh (the world) will be overthrown.

Forty years inclusive from 1994 (the Jubilee year and the starting point of the second pouring out of the Spirit/Dove) would be the year 2033 AD.

We should note one more thing. Here’s verse 4 again:

Jonah 3:4 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 receives the command to go and proclaim ‘yet forty days.’ And he does so. But he enters into the city a ‘day’s journey’ and then cries out concerning the forty day period.

This means, according to the book of Jonah (according to the Bible) Jonah ONLY proclaimed the news he was told to proclaim for one day.

And if he only proclaimed it for one day that means:

40 - 1 = 39

For 39 days he was not involved in proclaiming the message. What was Jonah doing for 39 days? We don’t have to speculate. The Bible tells us that he went outside the city and built himself a booth and waited to see what would happen to the city:

Jonah 4:5 So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.

What was Jonah waiting for?

The obvious answer is: for the end of the forty day period so he could see absolute proof of what would become of it (especially since he proclaimed ‘yet forty days’ he was very much interested in seeing first hand the end of the forty days).

This leaves us with another interesting 39 and 40 tie in. God commanded they had yet forty days. But the character of one of the days (the day of proclaiming the warning) was different than the character of the remaining 39 days.

Why did Jonah only cry out for one day? Why not two days? Or three days? Or all forty days?

Perhaps understanding each day as a year will help us to understand the reason for this in a much better way.

Jonah’s being sent into Nineveh identifies with the sending forth of the Holy Spirit the second time. We also know that the sending forth of the Holy Spirit is something that happened twice and both times the process began with a Jubilee year (7 BC / 1994 AD).

A Jubilee year in the Bible comes every fifty years and it lasts for exactly one year. A Jubilee is always one year in duration:

Leviticus 25:10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

The fiftieth year was the Jubilee year. It lasted only for one full year.

And, if we understand that each of the forty days represents a ‘year’ then the first (the day Jonah went into the city of Nineveh) day also represents a year. And that first day pictures the Jubilee year.

Now we know that when God spiritually fulfilled Jubilee periods the duration of the fulfillment was much longer than an actual year. The first Jubilee started with Christ in 7 BC, was completed in one sense with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 33 AD; but in another sense that Jubilee ‘year’ continued until the Church Age ended in 1988 AD. It’s actual duration spanned 1955 years (or 1994 years if we go back to 7 BC).

Also, the spiritual fulfillment of the second Jubilee lasted longer than one year. It began in 1994 AD and continued for almost seventeen years until 2011 AD.

But by saying that the first day of Jonah’s warning cry relates to the Jubilee year, we are not saying that it must literally be a year. No. Only that the first day typified a Jubilee year. And a Jubilee period may have any length of time as its actual spiritual duration according to God’s perfect time table.