BY REX EDWARDS

TANDING ON A HOUSETOP IN JOPPA, I remember that the prophet Jonah embarked for Spain from this town. He revolted because of the disagreeable message he'd been called to deliver at Nineveh. So he came to Joppa and took ship. But, alas, a disastrous voyage! (Incidentally, Jonah paid full fare for the whole voyage, but the ship company did not fill their part of the contract, since the voyage was never completed. To this day they've not paid back that passage money.)

Why people doubt the story of Jonah and the big fish is more of a mystery than the Bible event itself. After all, Pliny, the historian, records that the skeleton of a whale 40 feet long, and with a hide a foot and a half thick, was brought from Joppa to Rome. The Lord always has a "great fish" outside the harbor for any person who starts in the wrong direction.

Recreant Jonah! I do not wonder that even the fish was sick of him. This prophet was put in the Bible not as an example, but as a warning. The Bible story ends by showing the prophet in a fit of sulks. Angry that Nineveh was not destroyed, he went out to pout and sat down under a big leaf. When a worm disturbed it with a withering blow, and the sun smote the defector, he flew into a rage. "It is better for me to die than to live," he said.

A prophet in a rage because he had lost his umbrella! Beware of petulance.

s I write this, I'm still on the housetop in Joppa. This is the city where Dorcas, that queen of the needle, lived and died and was resurrected. They laid her out in a public room. The poor brought specimens of her needlework and said, "Dorcas made this," then wrung their hands and cried. They sent for Peter. God performed a miracle through him, bringing the good woman back to life. She resumed her benefactions.

A resurrection day for one woman! She was a model by which many women of our day have fashioned their lives; and at the first blast of the horn of a wintry tempest, the first word of a natural disaster, 10,000 Dorcases appear!

rom the same rooftop in Joppa I inhale the odors of the large tanneries around the city, the olfactory encounter reminding me that this was the town of Simon the Tanner, host of Peter the apostle. Perhaps Peter was not insulted by the odors, for the Bible says that he lodged "with one Simon, a tanner" (Acts 10:6). People who go out to do missionary work must not be too sensitive. Simon no doubt brought to his homestead every night the malodors of the calfskins and ox hides in his tannery; but Peter lodged in that home.

Perhaps the reason was that he'd not been invited to the homes of merchant princes, surrounded by redolent gardens. But perhaps a better reason was to teach all men and women engaged in trying to make the world better that they cannot be squeamish, fastidious, or overparticular when doing the work of God in the world. The church is dying of fastidiousness. We cry over the sufferings of the world in thousand-dollar Mercedes and then put a dollar into the poor fund at the close of a Communion service.

There are many willing to do Christian work among those who are clean, refined, elegant, educated. But these same people excuse themselves from taking a loaf of bread down a dirty alley, excuse themselves from teaching a mission school among the uncombed and unwashed, exempt themselves from touching the hand of one whose fingernails are in mourning for departed soap. Such religious precisionists can toil in atmospheres laden with honeysuckle and rosemary, but not in air floating up from malodorous vats. No way will they lodge with Simon the tanner!

n the housetop in Joppa I was taught the democracy of religion. It was the queerest thing that ever happened. It was up here that Peter had a fit of hunger while waiting for dinner at noontime, fainted away, and had a vision of a blanket let down from heaven, in which were sheep and goats and cattle and mules and buzzards and snakes and all manner of creatures that fly in the air or walk in the fields or crawl on the earth. When in the dream a voice commanded the hungry prophet to eat, he responded in disgust, "I cannot eat things unclean."

Three times the dream came to him, before an urgent knocking at the gate awoke him. "Is Peter here?" the three men asked.

While wondering what his dream might mean, Peter descended the stairs and met the strangers at the entrance. A good man named Cornelius, in the city of Caesarea, had also had a dream, they told him, and wanted Peter to preach to him. The two dreams met--Peter's dream on the housetop, and Cornelius's dream at Caesarea, and Peter obeyed the summons.

Yes, Cornelius may be in Caesarea and Peter in Joppa, but their dreams did meet. The meaning? Peter learned by it to reject no people. Heretofore, he'd believed that the covenanted mercies of God were restricted within the narrow bounds of the Hebrew race. Now the narrow reservoir of the Jewish people was to burst its embankment and flood the whole world with truth. A new democracy indeed, for God will receive the love, trust, and worship of "whosoever will." Now there is nothing common in God's sight. Every soul is priceless, bought with precious blood, the infinite sacrifice of the Son of God.

look out on the Mediterranean from that same rooftop perch in Joppa. What is that strange sight I see in my mind's eye? The waters are black, seemingly for miles. There seems to be a great multitude of logs fastened together, a vast raft of timbers. They are cedars of Lebanon that King Hiram of Tyre is furnishing King Solomon in exchange for 20,000 measures of wheat, 20,000 baths of oil, and 20,000 baths of wine. These trees have been cut down and trimmed in the Bekaa mountains by 70,000 axmen. Then, bound with great withes and iron bolts, they are floated down to Joppa, taken up and over 30 miles of mountain distances for Solomon's Temple, now being built in Jerusalem. These rough cedars will become carved pillars, beautiful altars, rounded bannisters, traceried panels, sublime ceilings, exquisite harps, and kingly chariots.

As the wagon train moves out from Joppa over the Plain of Sharon toward Jerusalem, I say to myself, "What vast numbers of people helped build that Temple of Solomon! And what a great multitude of people are now engaged in building the wider, higher, grander temple of righteousness rising in the earth!"

Our Christian ancestry toiled at it, amid sweat and tears--the Wileses in the New Hebrides, the Andrewses in Europe, the Stahls in South America, Carey in India, Livingstone in Africa, and hundreds of the generations of the good. And the long train of Christian workers still moves on. As in the construction of Solomon's Temple, some hewed with the ax in faraway Lebanon, some drove a wedge, some twisted a withe, some trod the slippery rafts in the sea, some yoked the ox, some pulled at the load, some shoved the plane, and some heaved up the rafters. But they all helped build the Temple, even though some of these never saw it.

oday, with two thirds of the world's population without the gospel, all of us must put our hands and hearts and shoulders to the work of building the temple of righteousness, which eventually is to fill the earth (Rev. 21:1-4). Some will bind a wound, some will wipe away a tear, and another will teach a class, speak an encouraging word, or proclaim the Word from pulpit, house, or street corner. All of us should be ready to pull, to lift, or in some way help the work along, until the millennial morn shall gild the pinnacle of the finished temple.

At its shining gates the workers will put their last burden down. And at its altar the last wanderer shall kneel. For a greater than Solomon will be there!

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Rex Edwards is associate vice president and director of religious studies for Griggs University in Silver Spring, Maryland.