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. 5 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.
With some persons, loving-kindness does not work, and as we have seen with Mrs. Lot, even dragging failed to accomplish God’s work of saving her to the uttermost. Thus, after these two former methods have been thoroughly exhausted, then God issues a decisive threat or an ultimatum, to shake persons out of their comfort zone, if haply through fear they might repent.
God often reserves this method of salvation for the very last, for it is not His ideal will that persons turn to Him because of a threat. Yet, for all His delay in issuing them, there are times when threats do work and if that’s the only language persons will understand, then God will finally have to use it in a last-ditch effort to save us to the uttermost.
This is what took place with the men of Nineveh who were on the brink of closing their probation, because of sins and violence that were occurring in the city. God had spoken through His providence on numerous occasions previously, but entreaty and dragging did not work. Then in a final, desperate act to save them, God issued an ominous threat to the entire city, and believe it or not, it worked.
Matthew 12:41 The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonah.
May The Lord add His blessing to the study of His word. God bless!