<TITLE>08. Par 26-30</TITLE>L-26 And Jesus said, referred to the days of Jonah, and He said, "The man of Nineveh shall rise in the generation, because they repented at the preaching of this prophet Jonah."
Now, many times we call Jonah, and like to refer to him as some backslidden prophet that didn't know his ABC's hardly, in--in coming to know Christ, and cast him off to one side. But let me tell you something; you're mistaken, Jonah was a true genuine servant of God, following every move of the Holy Spirit. Why, when he was started down to Nineveh, God sent him to Nineveh. But he took, it seemingly, the road of least resistance; he went to Tarshish. That was not providential; that was God's way of doing something.

L-27 If a good man, that serves the Lord... And the Scriptures cannot be broken, "The footsteps of the righteous is ordered of the Lord," and nothing can turn them. "And all things work together for good to them that love Him." That ship was sent there by God just the same as the fish was prepared for him. Jonah out in the ocean, he was honest and just; but he'd not went where God told him to, but it was all in God's working. Watch how He did it.
He tied the... his hands behind him and throwed him out into the ocean. A fish prowls through the water till it finds its bait, prey, eats and goes down to the bottom, and rests its swimmers on the bottom of the water. You fisherman know that. You women know that from your goldfish. And this whale coming through the water, got a great big mouthful and swallowed this minister into his belly, went down into the bottom of the sea, and rested his swimmers.

L-28 I've often thought, you take people, maybe they--they got a tumor, or they deaf in one ear, or crippled, or something, they think their case is impossible. And they keep looking; they'd be prayed for one night... Oral Roberts will come through; they'll be prayed for, say, "Well, my hand never got any better." Brother Allen will come by, "My hand's no better." You're looking at the wrong place. Like as the old southern expression, when we used to coon hunt, "It's barking up the wrong tree."

L-29 Notice, Jonah never looked at those things. People look at their symptoms, but you should never look at symptoms; you should look at the promise.
Now, Jonah was in the belly of the whale, the vomit up knee deep, seaweeds all around his neck, if ever which a way he looked he see the whales belly. And he was in the bottom of the sea, on a stormy sea in the belly of a whale, hands and feet bound behind him, and everywhere he looked was the whales belly. There's not a person in here tonight in that kind of a condition, or half like that.
And you know what Jonah said about it? He said, "They are lying vanities I won't even look at it. But once more will I look towards Your holy temple, O Lord." And when he did, he believed.

L-30 When Solomon dedicated that temple and said, "Lord (in his prayer), if Thy people be in trouble anywhere, and will look towards this holy place, and pray, then hear from heaven." And that preacher believed that God would answer Solomon's prayer.
And if Jonah, under those conditions, could look towards a temple that was erected by man, and a prayer that was made by a man that later backslid, how much more ought we under these present conditions, look away from our symptoms to the throne of God where Jesus sets at the right-hand of God on a throne, by a temple that was made by God with His own Blood to make good anything that we confess. To pray for us, make intercessions upon our confession, at the right-hand of the Father...


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