THE KING’ S BUSINESS
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punished so many o f his subjects,, even without trial; to 1 Siberia,. an4 has himself been banished toJthat land? Has not the story of the Belgian atrocities, in which the hands o f little children were cut off, some thing to say by way o f reminding us that once, not long ago, Belgium herself cut off the. hands ' o| boys and girls orf the Congo because they did not bring their full quota of rubber? The mills of , God grind slowly, but thej^ grind'exceedingly small.. There are. two ways .to treat a - text: First, as a gate on which to swing back and forth; and second, as. a gate to a field in which one desires to enter and there find what it may have to offer and which . may he used for the service of man.
Retribution . No man can sin with impunity. Be sure your sin will find you out. This is true of the, sin of individuals and of nations, also. Surely it cannot but be that the God above who looked down upon the uplifted face o f those babes, who from the cold, tempes tuous waves cried to Him to save, with out holding to account that nation which in its anger sank the Lusitania. There was a time when Gladstone had Turkey/ at his disposal and he could have done what he would with Turkey and for the good of the world, but for politicaltrea sons he did not interfere. Has this any thing to do with the massacre of the Brit ish in Turkish domains and the greater fatal massacre o f Mesopotamia? Is there no lesson in the Russian Czar who had
H i T
L IG H T ON PUZZLING PASSAGES a nd PROBLEMS By R. A. TORREY
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fact, but to interpret language where there is no sign o f figure or parable any other way than literally is equally wrong. Fur thermore, our Lord Jesus Himself has endorsed the literal historical accuracy of the story. He says in John 12:40, “Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish (or sea monster'),” and that settles it for anybody who believes in Jesus Christ. O f course, if any one, considers the concensus of German scholar ship above the authority o f Jesus Christ, and therefore proves he believes in the concensus o f German scholarship but does not believe in Jesus Christ, the fact that Christ says it was a literal fact will not settle it, but it will settle it for Christians. Furthermore, there is apparently no reason whatever for doubting the story. It has been said over and over again by skeptics, and infidels and destructive critics,'that it is. impossible that a whale could swallow
Is the statement concerning Jonah’s living in the whale’s belly to be accepted literally ? - The ¡Statement regarding Jonah being swallowed by a great fish and continuing in the belly o f the great fish three days and three nights is to be accepted literally. The Bible dpes not say that the great fish was a “whale.” In the account in Jonah 1:17 we are told that- Jehovah prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. It dqes not say that it was a whale. In the Author ized and Revised Versions of Matt. 12:40 we find the word “ whale,” but in, the mar gin of the Revised Version we are told that the Greek word means, not whale, but “ sea monster.”. The word does not mean whale. The reason why we should accept the statement literally is because there is no reason for believing that it was not a literal historic statement. It is wrong to interpret figurative language literally, or to interpret a parable as if it'were a literal
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