"Many unbelievers have been warned and entreated times without number and yet they remain impenitent. But:
*Nineveh enjoyed no privileges: it was in heathen darkness.
*Nineveh heard but one prophet; and he was none of the greatest, or most affectionate.
*Nineveh heard that prophet only once; and that was an open-air sermon, very short and very monotonous.
*Nineveh had heard no word of good tidings; she heard the thunder of the law, but nothing else.
Yet the obedience to the warning was immediate, universal, practical, and acceptable, so the city was spared." (From Spurgeon's Sermon Notes on 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.'"
Recommended reading:
The Forgotten Spurgeon, by Iain Murray
A Defense of Calvinism - by Charles Spurgeon
