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By Ernest Baker
JONAH was a prophet of Israel some eight centuries before Christ. He
is the successor of Elisha at a distance of about eighty years. He is the
first of the prophets whose utterances and work have a separate book devoted
to them. Though occupying the tenth place in the prophetic Scriptures, the
chronological position of the Book of Jonah should be first, coming before
Isaiah.
My purpose is to deal with the revivals, and not with the question of
the historical truth of the record. But I am aware that one cannot well
enforce the lessons if the story itself is not believed to be true. So
I will indicate a few lines of thought and study for the consideration
of those who have their doubts.
First, the Book is endorsed by Christ. He refers to
its events as actual history, and finds in it a type of His resurrection.
He said: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign;
and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:
for as Jonas 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.” The Apostle Paul tells us that Christ “rose again
the third day according to the Scriptures.’’ The only Scripture
that seems clear on the point of the third day is the word quoted by Christ
concerning Jonah. It is replied that Christ only quoted Jonah as we would
quote the characters from the Pilgrim’s Progress. But Jonah is an
historic character. We read of him in the books of the Kings. And Jesus
refers to Jonah’s converts as still having an existence, for they
are to appear in the judgment. “The men of Nineveh shall rise in
judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; because they repented
at the preaching of Jonas, and behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”
Second, the message of the Book is an inspired one.
It is full of the mercy of the Lord. There is mercy to Jonah, to the sailors,
to the Ninevites, their children and their cattle. It is a record of God’s
love far beyond the bounds of Israel. Its message was one no Israelite
could have invented. Whether written 800 B.C. or 400 or 500 B.C., as we
are now asked to believe, the same statement applies. Not till after Pentecost
did Jewish thought rise to the actual preaching of God’s love to
the Gentiles, and even then the thought was of God. After the resurrection,
the Great Commission of Christ, and Pentecost itself, the Apostles did
not think of preaching to other than to Jews. A series of remarkable providential
events is recorded in the Book of the Acts as forcing the early church
to extend a welcome to Gentile converts. The book of Jonah is far ahead
of its time, and its message can only be accounted for by accepting it
as inspired; and if inspired it is impossible it would be enclosed in
a lie.
Third, the discoveries of Archaeology confirms its description
of Nineveh. Because Strabo, Diodorus and Ptolemy, historians who lived
before Christ, made no mention of the city, men argued that there could
not possibly have been such a place. Tom Paine said about 130 years ago:
“I don’t believe a word of this story of great Nineveh.”
But in 1841, after having been buried for over 2,500 years, it was re-discovered,
and the excavations in and around it show that it occupied the tremendous
area ascribed to it in the Book of Jonah. The reason why the historians
referred to make no mention of it was because it was destroyed 500 years
before either of them lived, and the memory of it had passed from men.
Fourth, the facts of natural history go a long way towards supporting
the story of Jonah being swallowed by a fish. The cachalot whale
and the white shark have been known in many instances to swallow men entire;
and, 24 hours after the cutting up of the fish has begun, men have been
found inside, unconscious, but alive. Men fully dressed, their clothing
untorn, horses, sea-calves as large as an ox, have been found in the stomach
of sharks, sea-dogs and sperm-whales. Ordinarily digestion would have
done its work on Jonah in three days; but over against that possibility
we have to set this fact: although the gastric juice is a remarkably powerful
solvent, capable of dissolving many solid substances, yet it has no power
whatever over living things. Jonah must die before digestion could even
begin. I have said the facts of natural history go a long way towards
supporting the story. I do not claim that these facts altogether verify
it. That would be to eliminate the miraculous. But with these facts before
us, plus God, the record becomes quite credible.
Coming now to the stories of revivals, we find a record of two, one amongst
the sailors in the boat, and the other amongst the inhabitants of Nineveh.
These stories are unique in the Old Testament. They are the only records
of revivals amongst the heathen. All the other revivals we have considered
have been Jewish. Jonah is the first foreign missionary in the Scriptures.
But these stories are unique in another way. This is the first and only
time in the Bible where the prophet’s heart was not in his work.
The rule is for God’s evangelistic work to be done through men whose
hearts echo His loving purposes of grace. But Jonah did not want his hearers
to be converted. Let us consider:
I. THE REVIVAL IN THE BOAT.
Jonah was running away from the Lord. He had been commanded to go to
Nineveh, and to cry against it. But Jonah went to Joppa and found a ship
going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof that he might go in it
from the presence of the Lord. When subsequently Nineveh was converted
he gives the reason for his flight. “I fled unto Tarshish for I
knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of
great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil.” He could not bear
the thought of the saved Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria;
and to the inspired Seers of Israel it was becoming apparent that Assyria
was to be God’s instrument in the chastisement of his people. The
overthrow of Nineveh, which without repentance was certain, meant a postponement
of Israel’s destruction. So Jonah’s patriotism triumphed over
his love for God’s will.
This anti-missionary spirit is not dead yet. For centuries ‘the
priests were afraid to let the people have the Bible lest they should
know as much as they. The spread of Scripture knowledge amongst the people
meant the numbering of the days of the priests. Governing classes have
opposed education lest the people should cease to be content to be serfs.
The same spirit animates much of the opposition to missionary work. The
conversion of the Kafirs makes it impossible to treat them as slaves.
Education and conversion spoil the labour market for the sweaters. A Christianised
Japan and China mean commercial rivalry for the white races.
But Jonah was not allowed to run away from his work. A storm pursued
him. This was of such an extraordinary character that the sailors were
sore afraid. They lightened the ship, and they prayed unto their gods,
but all to no effect. Then they cast lots to see for whose cause the evil
was upon them, and the lot fell upon Jonah. He told his story to them
and they were awed. Here was a man whom a god was pursuing. Their sympathies
were with him, and though he had told them to cast him into the sea, they
rowed hard to bring him to the land. But the storm was against them. At
last they felt that Jonah’s word must be obeyed. It was their only
chance. But they could not throw him overboard until they had prayed,
and until they had committed themselves into God’s hands. To Jehovah
they cried. They could see He was a just God. He was one to be obeyed.
His favourites had no dispensation to do as they pleased. But if He was
strict for obedience would He not also acquit? And so these heathen men
rose to the thought of the Lord’s justice being not of a vindictive
but of a justifying character. They prayed that they might not perish
for Jonah’s sake, and that innocent blood might not be laid upon
them. When the sea was calm again these men sacrificed unto the Lord and
paid their vows. Their conversion outlived the storm. The fear of the
Lord remained with them when the trouble was passed. Jesus said: “The
men of Nineveh shall rise in the judgment with this generation and shall
condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonas: and, behold
a greater than Jonas is here.” That same reasoning can be applied
from the conduct of the sailors. These sailors shall rise in the judgment
with this generation and shall condemn it because they believed when they
saw the disobedience of Jonah, whilst the men of this age scoff when they
witness the inconsistent conduct of Christians. They did not argue from
Jonah’s disobedience against God, but they found in it a reason
for faith. Here was a God whose commands were to be taken seriously. Disobedience
brought disaster to the disobedient one, and to all who happened to be
in the same boat with him. By the nature of things the storm could not
reach Jonah without involving his fellow passengers. We are members one
of another, and we cannot sin, and reap the penalty alone. If to-day some
prominent Christian man belies the trust reposed in him and comes to ruin
and brings others down with him, the event is the occasion for much scoffing
at the Christian faith. Such reasoning is superficial. The disaster is
confirmatory of God’s Word and ‘not against it. “God
is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
“The way of transgressors is hard,” whether the man be inside
or outside the visible Church.
II. THE REVIVAL IN NINEVEH.
The second time the word of the Lord came to Jonah he was not disobedient.
He went to Nineveh and proclaimed: “Forty days and Nineveh shall
be overthrown.” This was doubtless only his text. But the result
of his preaching was remarkable. The moral miracle is far beyond the physical
one recorded in this book. There is no other case in the Bible where the
preaching of one man turned a whole city, from the least to the greatest,
to the Lord in such a short space of time. But this was a figure of the
pouring out of the Spirit upon all flesh, and of nations being born in
a day, experiences that in the ages to come are to be common.
The revival was decidedly of the Lord. It was not born in any man’s
heart. But, though of God, he did not bring it to pass without preaching
and without a human agent. God would have mercy upon the city, but the
call to repent must be given through His appointed channel. He has given
to His people the work of proclaiming repentance and remission of sins.
If they do not do it it remains undone. The spirit bade Philip join himself
to the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch; and Philip, not the Spirit, opened
up to him the Scriptures. Jesus revealed Himself to Saul of Tarsus on
the way to Damascus; but in response to the question, “What wilt
thou have me to do? “ Saul was directed to the city where it would
be told him what he should do. And Ananias, not Christ, declared unto
him the way of pardon, and the condition for receiving the Holy Spirit.
The angel came to Cornelius to tell him that his prayer was heard. But
he must send for Peter who would tell him words whereby he might be saved,
he and his house. Neither the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, nor the angels,
take out of men’s hands the work of evangelising which has been
committed to them.
Our responsibility to the Great Commission of Christ is tremendous. The
work of preaching is committed to the whole body, and there are people
to-day in the same danger that Nineveh was in, in the days of Jonah’s
disobedience, because some of us are neither preaching the gospel ourselves,
nor making it possible for others to preach it.
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