p. 134 | Jonah and the Whale by Stemple White

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 10, 1914

Jonah and the Whale

By Stemple White

The Bible Story and an Uncovered Nineveh Tablet : : :

By STEMPLE WHITE

WHILE the pen is mightier than the sword, the spade is yet mightier than the pen, especially when that pen is used by the "higher (?) critic."

The following, clipped from a tract written by Thomas James McCrossan, B.A., B.D., of Minneapolis, shows how archeology confirms the simple, truthful story of Jonah and the whale:

"When Hilprecht uncovered Nineveh, he found what I consider to be the true reason why God saved Jonah by means of a fish. In the palace of the king, he found the history of Berosus. This history tells what the Ninevites believed concerning their great god Daggan, half fish and half man. It tells how Daggan came to earth and taught the Ninevites all they knew,—how to build their houses, till the soil, and sow their grain. He taught them, too, the principles of mathematics; in fact everything. At night he would sleep in the sea, for he was amphibious. Then, before he went away for good, he told the people that ages apart he would send messengers from heaven to teach them further, and that these messengers would all come up out of the sea. Hilprecht also found a tablet to one of these messengers who actually did come up out of the sea, and his name is 'Ioannes,' which he says can only be interpreted in that language as Jonah.

"Now God could have saved Jonah in ten thousand different ways; but He knew the people were looking for a messenger from Daggan, to come up out of the sea, so He saved him by this peculiar but convenient method. God would have witnesses near by to see him cast up. When he first entered Nineveh, no one seems to have paid much attention to him; but soon these witnesses tell their story to the king, and at once the word would go out that this man was Daggan's own messenger. Then all repented."

O that the critic would bear in mind that the harder he throws his boomerang, the swifter it returns on his own head! "The Scripture can not be broken." God's word is as inflexible as His throne is eternal.