The Meaning of the Fast

👉🏾👉🏾👉🏾The Fast of #Nineveh Who Is #Nineveh? (Part 3) Dear followers of the Orthodox teachings on John's Repentance website .we greet you with the peace of the Lord.Today , based on the topic mentioned above, we present to you the following important lesson.We encourage everyone to read it carefully and learn from it. ✍🏾 Cruelty, Robbery, and Bloodshed The people of Nineveh, especially their rulers and powerful officials, were known for their cruelty. Holy Scripture likens them to a lion, the king of beasts, symbolizing their savage and violent nature. 👉🏾 “The lion tears enough for his cubs and kills for his lionesses; he fills his caves with prey and his dens with flesh.” (Nahum 2:12–13) ✍🏾The Assyrians, whose capital city was Nineveh, were infamous for their brutality. Their kings took pleasure in cruel punishments inflicted upon conquered nations. It was their policy to deport entire populations and to destroy peoples they feared, committing acts of mass killing and terror. ✍🏾The leaders of conquered cities were tortured, mutilated, and publicly humiliated before being killed. Although the people of Nineveh repented at the preaching of the prophet Jonah, they did not persevere in repentance. Their wickedness once covered them completely. Although they repented for a time, they later returned to their former evil ways. Because they did not persevere in repentance, their city was ultimately overthrown. ✍🏾 The man of God, the prophet Nahum, speaks plainly about Nineveh, saying: 👉🏾 “Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery; its victims never depart… Your injury has no healing, your wound is severe. All who hear news of you will clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not your wickedness passed continually?” (Nahum 3:1, 19) 👉🏾 In these verses, the prophet reveals the sins of Nineveh: bloodshed, deception, plunder, and unceasing injustice. He also declares that their punishment would be unavoidable, because their wickedness had become habitual and unrepented. ✍🏾 The Assyrian kings of Nineveh gloried in cruelty and violence, even boasting of piling human heads at the gates of their city as signs of victory. Such pride and bloodshed rose as a cry before God. Because they abandoned repentance and returned to wickedness, Nineveh was finally overthrown and destroyed in 612 BC, exactly as foretold by the holy prophets Jonah and Nahum. ✍🏾Prostitution and Witchcraft ✍🏾Without going further into detail, let us consider the burden pronounced against Nineveh in the book of the prophet Nahum, 👉🏾 “Because of the multitude of the harlotries of the seductive harlot, who sells nations through her harlotries, and families through her sorceries.” (Nahum 3:4) ✍🏾This verse reminds us that in the city of Nineveh, the so-called goddess of love was worshipped, and through this false worship the city was defiled by prostitution and witchcraft. ✍🏾The sins of Nineveh were not limited to these alone. The prophecy of Nahum also condemns fraud, deceit, and plundering in trade and daily dealings. Which of the sins of Nineveh mentioned above is not practiced in our own time, in homes, cities, nations, and even in places of authority? 👉🏾 Have betrayal, bloodshed, hidden cruelty, rebellion against God, adultery, witchcraft, slander, and dishonesty in business not risen up to heaven? Such abominations, if they are not removed through repentance, 👉🏾 and if they are not replaced by fasting and prayer, love and peace, understanding, true faith, and righteous conduct, 👉🏾 then poverty and persecution, war and judgment, bloodshed and destruction, disease and calamity will not be far from the earth.This means that God has entrusted life and death to our own actions. May the name of the Holy God be praised forever and ever in every tongue that He has created, today and always. May the blessings of God's mother, the virgin, and the cross be upon us. Amen. © John's Repentance Reach out to us on our social media platforms and share it with your friends:https://linktr.ee/johnsrepentance