Pleasure & Profit in Bible StudyMoody, Dwight Lyman
Religion
Pleasure & Profit in Bible Study
Moody, Dwight Lyman
Bible -- Study and teaching
Men say, "Well, you don't believe in the story of Jonah and the whale,
do you?" I want to tell you I _do_ believe it. A few years ago there was
a man whom some one thought a little unsound, and they didn't want him
to speak on the Northfield platform. I said, "I will soon find out
whether or not he is sound." I asked him, "Do you believe the whale
swallowed Jonah?" "Yes," he said, "I do." I said "All right, then I want
you to come and speak." He came and gave a lecture on Jonah. In Matthew
they twice asked Jesus for a sign, and He said the only sign this
generation shall have shall be the sign of Jonah in the whale's belly.
He connected that with His resurrection, and I honestly believe that if
we overthrow the one, we must overthrow the other. As you get along in
life and have perhaps as many friends on the other side of the river as
you have on this side, you will get about as much comfort out of the
story of the resurrection as any other story in the Bible. Christ had no
doubt about the story. He said His resurrection would be a sign like
that given unto the Ninevites. It was the resurrected man Jonah who
walked through the streets of Nineveh. It must be supposed that the men
of Nineveh had heard of Jonah being thrown overboard and swallowed by a
great fish. I think it is a master-stroke of Satan to make us doubt the
resurrection. But these modern philosophers have made a discovery. They
say a whale's throat is no larger than a man's fist, and it is a
physical impossibility for a whale to swallow a man. The book of Jonah
says that _God prepared a great fish_ to swallow Jonah. Couldn't God
make a fish large enough to swallow Jonah? If God could create a world,
I think He could create a fish large enough to swallow a _million_ men.
As the old woman said, "Could He not, if He chose, prepare a man that
could swallow a whale?" A couple of these modern philosophers were going
to Europe some time ago, and a Scotch friend of mine was on board who
knew his Bible pretty well. They got to talking about the Bible, and one
of them said: "I am a scientific man, and I have made some investigation
of that Book, and I have taken up some of the statements in it, and I
have examined them, and I pronounce them untrue. There is a statement in
the Bible that Balaam's ass spoke. I have taken pains to examine the
mouth of an ass and it is so formed that it could not speak." My friend
stood it as long as he could and then said, "Eh, mon, you make the ass
and I will make him speak." The idea that God could not speak through
the mouth of an ass!
CLIPPING THE BIBLE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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