Jesus and Jonah
 

The story of Jonah and the whale, -- that's a hard one to 'swallow'. So says the skeptic.  As Bible believers, we have been forced to go on the defensive.  Many times we state that God did not say it was a whale that swallowed Jonah.  This lesson should resolve this issue once and for all.

Some have labored long and hard to prove that a whale really could swallow a man. You may have seen articles, which cited historical accounts of men who have experienced similar things. One such report is found in the April 4, 1896, edition of Literary Digest. It tells of one, James Bartley, who was swallowed by a whale and lived for a day and a half before being rescued.

While accounts such as this may be interesting, they really are unnecessary. We don't need them in order to believe what the Bible says about Jonah. What happened there was a miracle. The Scripture says, “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). Whether or not an ordinary whale/great fish could accomplish such a feat, and whether or not a man under normal circumstances could survive as Jonah did, does not matter. In this case, God was involved, and, if we believe in an all-powerful God, this should be no harder to accept than any other miracle taught in the Bible.