p. 88 | THE SIGN OF JONAH by I. S. Kimball

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 11, 1893

“THE SIGN OF JONAH.”

By I. S. Kimball

BY ELDER I. S. KIMBALL.

No CHRISTIAN, indeed, seeks to evade or abate one jot from the record given of Jonah, because it is a part of the Scriptures, which he believes God has inspired, and put into his hand as a perfect instrument, to accomplish his salvation. But, further, he knows that Christ accepted the record, holding it as verity; consequently, if Christ were inspired, so is the book of Jonah inspiration.

But the deep significance of the book is seen in the fact that Christ speaks of his death as but a fulfillment of “the sign of the prophet Jonas,” which was already given to the Jewish people. If it were a sign in Christ’s day, so it was from the first, by the determinate wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

Let us turn back to the book and view the sign. There we see Jonas called to proclaim the destruction of the great city Nineveh, which is elsewhere in the Scripture made a type of the world, for she nearly or quite filled the world, even as Rome did later on. The Assyrian power was very great. Notice the prophecies of Isaiah and Nahum concerning it.

The decree of destruction went forth against her; God called Jonas, who “feared the Lord with great fear,” and knew him to be a “gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness,” to proclaim her downfall and ruin. The mysterious cup trembled in his hand; he would fain have himself excused. He fled from the presence of the Lord, passed out from the troubled waters, was delivered into the hands of men, and consigned to the grave for three days and nights, through the miraculous power of the Eternal One.

Now the similitude, as far as the imperfect man Jonah could be made to figure the perfect Man Christ, is seen in the last hours of Christ’s life, when his mind and desire were to be relieved of the terrible cup, when he was also delivered into the hands of men, and died almost in despair, feeling that God had “forsaken him.” Thus had Jonah felt when the fish swallowed him up.

But to Jonah was given a resurrection. And he mightily proclaimed the warning and convinced the city of sin in a way scarcely paralleled in all the world, for which cause there was repentance and turning unto God throughout all that great city. Even the king rose up from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. He decreed that neither man nor beast eat or drink, that all be covered with sackcloth, and mightily cry unto God, and that every man should turn from his evil way and the violence of his hand. Thus the city was spared. Such repentance was seen among the Gentiles after the resurrection of Christ, which has averted the doom and terrible judgment decreed against the world. But as Nineveh, later on, became altogether corrupt, the burden of her destruction was given to the prophets, and the vengeful day finally took her away from being a city, and gave her an eternal downfall. So the day of vengeance hastens to come upon this world, and the burden of the prophets to-day is her destruction.

Jonas wanted to see the end of Nineveh then and there, at the time when he gave the warning, for perhaps he thought the kingdom would be restored to Israel once and forever.

So the disciples wished for the restoration of the kingdom at the time of Christ’s resurrection, but the repentance of the Gentiles delays, for a little, the fulfillment of the cherished hope of Israel.

Jonah seems to have been as ardent and impulsive as Peter, working the mighty works of God according to his word, yet discerning but dimly the fullness of God’s plan. His work and life could not, in all respects, be made a type of the Redeemer’s.