Did God really create everything in six days? Did He really destroy the world with a flood as is recorded in Genesis 6? Was Jesus really born of a virgin? (See Is. 7:14; Mt. 1:23.) Did Jesus really give sight to a man who had never seen? (See Jn. 9.) Did Jesus really rise from the grave? (See Mt. 28:1-10.)
Are the incredible stories of the Bible really true? More and more, many are coming to believe these stories are not really true events that occurred in history, but allegories that represent some sort of truth.
What about the story of Jonah? A real event, an allegory, or even a fairy tale? Take a moment and read Jonah 1.
Did those events really happen? Was Jonah really swallowed by a big fish and spend three days within the belly of the fish? Was he really vomited out of the fish onto dry land? For our time, consider just three things.
- Just three years ago a man by the name of Michael Packard claimed to be swallowed by a whale and spent about thirty seconds inside the whale before being spit out. Previous to this incident there was another man who was photographed mostly inside the mouth of a whale. That man survived, and he is a believer in Michael Packard’s story. There have been many other stories, and there is little doubt that some are fabrications. But really, we sell the Bible story short if we merely seek to find physical proof that such is possible. Jonah 1:17 says that “the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah.” My thinking is that this was a miraculous situation, especially in Jonah being able to survive within the whale for three days. We are not at the mercy of finding proof that such is possible in our world today.
- A second point that we should make is that the reading of this incident, as well as many others, is as if it is a real event. It seems as if the story is real. The Bible certainly uses many different types of literature. Jesus used parables. David used poetry. John wrote using apocalyptic literature. But we have clear reasons for believing those are not literal. Not only is this “allegorical” form of interpreting the Scripture, like Jonah, wrong; if it were right, no one would be able to understand it, and that’s not right! (See Jn. 8:32.)
- Concerning Jonah, our Lord actually gave endorsement to this story. Listen to what Jesus says in Mathew 12:40: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Now here is a monumental problem. If the story of Jonah is not true, we are forced to conclude that the story of Jesus is not true either. They stand or fall together! But we have reason to believe in Jesus, and we have reason to believe that what He appealed to is also real.
The same God who created everything from nothing, had no problem accomplishing the other things we read about in Scripture. Believe the Bible!
Daren Schroeder
