(15) _Obadiah_ was the next one of the holy Prophets; and in the last verse of his short prophecy he says, “And saviors [it is in the plural and refers not only to Jesus the Head, but to the Church, the members of His Body] shall come up on Mount Zion [come up into the Heavenly phase of the Kingdom], and shall judge the mount of Esau” [judge the world]. “Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?”
(16) _Jonah_ was the next one of the holy Prophets; and in the fourth chapter we have an interesting picture of events now transpiring before our eyes. Jonah walked into the city of Nineveh and said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The prophecy was fulfilled in forty literal years. But when Jonah saw that things were not coming out as he expected, he was very angry and said to the Lord, “That is just what I might have expected; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and I said so before I left my own country.” Jonah went out, sat in the hot sun on the outside of the city, and began to sulk. The Lord took pity on him and caused a gourd to grow up over him, to shelter him from the hot rays of the sun. And Jonah was exceeding glad because of the gourd. Then the Lord prepared a worm to smite the gourd; and a strong east wind blew up and the gourd withered. Jonah’s shade was gone, and he was angrier than ever. The Lord said, “Doest thou well to be angry?” and he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, even unto death.” Then the Lord said, “Jonah, thou hast had pity on the gourd that sprung up in a night and perished in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?”
We live in a day when a class have been preaching that the world is to be destroyed; and, like Jonah, they have not properly understood their message. The kind of world that is to be destroyed is Satan’s world, Satan’s empire, arrangement, or order of things—not our literal earth. The word world does not always refer to our literal earth. For instance, when the Apostle James says, “The tongue is a world of iniquity,” he does not mean that we have inside our jaws a little planet that turns over every twenty‐four hours, that has spring, summer, fall, winter, snowstorms, rainstorms, and a moon revolving about it, with once in a while a comet and a shower of meteors thrown in for good measure. When they think about the Panama Canal, and the wonderful works of irrigation which are causing the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose, and all the other wonderful achievements of our day, these people are beginning to see that they have made a mistake and are now about where Jonah was when he said, “That is what I might have expected, for I know that Thou art a just God, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.” They are now outside the city, and the scorching light of Present Truth is pretty hot. Meantime the church trust is growing up to keep off the heat. We are not to have anything to do with this church federation. “Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy.” “Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught; speak the word and it shall not stand; for God is with us.” (Isa. 8:10, 12.) Pretty soon something will happen to the church trust, and their shade will be gone. Then the Lord will say to them, “Oh, you need not feel so badly! You are not the first people that ever made a mistake. You have made lots of them, to be sure. You have had pity on the church trust which grew up in one year and blew up in another year; and should not I spare the poor world, that as far as their knowledge of right and wrong is concerned do not know the difference between their right hand and their left hand?”