p. 3 | JONAH AND THE WHALE by G. B. Thompson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 21, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 25.

JONAH AND THE WHALE.

By G. B. Thompson

THE Lord has forewarned us that the time would come when professed Bible expositors would arise, having itching ears, and who would turn away from the truth unto fables. 2 Tim. 4:1-5. That this time foreshadowed by the inspired penman has come there can be no doubt. Infidelity has always stalked the earth, boasting how great things it could do, yet the light of truth has gone on spreading, until the most remote corners of the globe, festooned with cobwebs of error, are being enlightened.

A nineteenth century high priest of infidelity has for years been lecturing on the "Mistakes of Moses" for a handsome nightly stipend. Yet his eloquence has not in any way retarded the work of the printing press, which has gone on multiplying annually millions of copies of these "mistakes" to be scattered to the ends of the earth.

But now we are having in this hue and cry against the Scriptures a multitude of other voices. "Higher critics," gathered from the ranks of the clergy, are subjecting the statements of the Deity to human scrutiny, and from the bar of human reason they give, as their verdict, that it contains inaccuracies, and that it is not all the inspired word of the Lord. One of the specimen bricks which they hand us from their babylon of research is that the story of Jonah and the whale is wholly traditionary, and that it never happened. They reason and philosophize regarding the dimensions of the throat of a whale. From their researches in ichthyology they claim to have discovered that a whale can not swallow a man.

Perhaps this is true of some whales, but that does not prove that God could not make a whale with a throat sufficiently large to swallow a man, should He think it best to do so. Let us look at the record a moment. "Now the Lord had PREPARED a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Jonah 1:17. And what is there about all that which is so impossible? Could not the God who made all the whales and fishes which people all the oceans, lakes and rivers of the earth, prepare another to deliver His servant? This is what the Word says was done.

Again, we note that the Saviour, when on earth, while conversing with the carping Pharisees, the "higher critics" of His day, set the seal of the authenticity to the record concerning Jonah's experience. "But He answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeking after a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Matt. 12:39, 40. The Saviour says that Jonah was in the belly of the whale, and there for three days, as the book of Jonah declares. Of course the books of Jonah and Matthew, being written by the same Holy Spirit, must agree. And the Saviour uses the fact of Jonah being in the belly of the fish as an illustration of His being in the earth. Hence, if Jonah was not in the belly of the whale, as our modern critics declare, then the Saviour never was in the earth, never died, never was buried or rose again. It is, therefore, clear that no man who doubts in the authenticity of Jonah's experience can have any faith in the words of Jesus Christ, can never believe that He hung on the cross, died, rose again, and ascended to heaven.

Reader, the Bible is the Word of Him who can not lie. It does not simply contain the truth; many other books do this, but it is the truth. It will stand forever. When the world is shivering to pieces, when islands with all their living freight are disappearing, and the mountain can not be found, the Word of the Lord will endure this wreck of matter, and those who are found standing upon it, will be safe. It points to a land undimmed by sin, where the footprints of the deceiver will never come; where funeral corteges will never go by; where no sculptor will ever be seen chiseling in stone the epitaph of a loved one; where tears, pain and sorrow will be unknown.

Having set our face toward that Heavenly Canaan, we do not propose to turn round and go back, because we chance, like Christian, in Pilgrim's Progress, to meet a man who is going the other way, declaring that the chart is not correct. The chart is the revelation of Him who is the "way, the truth, and the life." G. B. THOMPSON.