Jonah and the Whale by L. A. R.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 9, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 47.

Jonah and the Whale

By L. A. R.

SOME are troubled over the idea of Jonah being preserved in the whale, and of being thrown out upon the dry land, to go on his way to Nineveh to preach the gospel to that wicked city. Prof. Luther T. Townsend, LL.D., editor of the Bible Champion, offers the following argument in confirmation of the truth of the Bible miracle:

“The infinite and eternal Author of life must have interposed, or the earth as we see it never would have been, or having been, would have remained forever desolate; there would have been no first oak to cast upon the earth its shadow, and no first man to walk its surface. But if God could interpose, then the earth could bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind, and every tree after its kind, the fish and the bird after their kind, and lastly man after his kind.”

“Hence it follows that the destructive critic, who decided a moment ago to abandon Christianity because its logic required him to believe in miracles, must not only abandon Christianity, but, to be consistent, must abandon himself, that is, must deny his own existence, for the origin of the human race requires supernatural interposition as much as did the preservation of Jonah in the stomach of the sea-monster. But the moment such interposition is admitted, that moment riddles are solved and all Bible miracles accounted for.”

“By such interpositions Israel could pass unharmed through the midst of the sea; Daniel could remain for a night in safety among the lions; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could walk unhurt ‘in the midst of the burning, fiery furnace’; and Jonah could remain unharmed for three, or, for that matter, for thirty days in the stomach of a sea-monster.”

“We may condense this part of the argument into two sentences: If God could create Adam, He could save Jonah. He did create Adam; therefore He could save Jonah.”

“This, then, is the evangelical confession of faith: We believe the Bible narratives and miracles because on scientific grounds they are possible; because they are supported by circumstantial, monumental, and other indisputable proofs; and because there were purposes of sufficient magnitude to justify divine interposition.”

L. A. R.