Others of the critical school hold to the historical verity of Christ's burial and resurrection, but assert that he made use of the assumed legend concerning Jonah, as we might illustrate any fact in history by a familiar statement from fiction. To such an assumption we reply that our Lord was dealing with tremendous realities, such as could not be belittled by turning for support or illustration to a fictitious story. He quoted from Old Testament history to illustrate and enforce New Testament truth. On another occasion he said: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life." Shall we hand over to legendary literature the great historical fact of the twenty-first chapter of Numbers—God's deliverance of the people from the fiery serpents—by one look at the uplifted brazen serpent by the hand of Moses? We may as well reduce one passage to fiction as the other. "As Jonah ... three days and nights, so the Son of man. As the serpent was lifted up, so the Son of man shall be lifted up." This comparison has a definite meaning. The apostle uses it in his Epistle to the Romans, fifth chapter and twelfth verse. "As by one man sin entered into the world, ... so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned." As certainly as sin entered into the world by one man, so certainly it resulted that death passed upon all men. As Christ's remaining in the grave three days was not a fiction, so Jonah's three days and nights in the great fish that God had prepared was not a fiction.
Our Lord further certifies to the historicity of the book of Jonah by his reference to the great prophet's preaching. The critic's objection is thus stated: "Can we conceive of a heathen city being converted by an obscure foreign prophet?"
Of course, the objection to the record of that mighty moral movement comes from those who have counted God out of Jonah's preaching. If they can eliminate the divine power from that event, they can easily hand the whole record over to what they are pleased to call the "folk lore of the Bible." Here, as ever, the critic must rid the Scriptures of the supernatural.
But our Savior knew that "power belongeth unto God" (Psa. lxii. 11), and he put on record the repentance of the Ninevites, saying, "The men of Nineveh shall rise up in judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah." (Matt. xii. 41.) But if the book is not history, our Lord's statement is false, for he says the Ninevites did repent.
There is no rational possibility of denying our Lord's positive statement without impeaching his veracity.
His words authorize the following conclusions:
I. There was a prophet whose name was Jonah, as is stated in 2 Kings xiv. 25. He was not a myth or figment, but a prophet whose personality is authenticated by Christ himself.
2. There was a city of Nineveh. The skepticism of other days denied the existence of Nineveh. So completely was the prophecy concerning the destruction of Nineveh fulfilled that the enemies of God's Word refused to believe that the city had ever existed, until the excavations of the last century revealed the hidden ruins. But the word of God was true, and in God's time Nineveh was revealed.
3. God sent this same prophet Jonah to Nineveh to preach. Christ tells us what took place under "the preaching of Jonah." It terminated in a great awakening and reformation for:
4. "The men of Nineveh ... repented at the preaching of Jonah."