It was an incredible revival. The capital city, rich and poor, great and small, old men and children, repented. Led by the king, a nation turns to God and a city sees disaster averted.
So the recipe for revival is one part prophet, one part message, and one part hearer. Is this a dependable formula for revival? Not so fast. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.
What worked for the Ninevites did not work for the Jews. A "Greater than Jonah" came, preached judgment and repentance, but the Jews remained unmoved. In Revelation, the bowls of wrath are poured out, yet mankind refuses to repent of what had been done and glorify God(Rev. 16).
The heart is capable of great hardness. Ask Pharaoh, who sometimes hardened his heart and other times, according to scripture, found his heart hardened by God. Is there a line that the rebellious heart can cross that makes repentance impossible? Or, ultimately,is all repentance a supernatural work of God? "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh"(Ezek. 36:26).
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