WEBVTT 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:12.000 Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W. 00:00:12.240 --> 00:00:14.800 Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Duana, Florida. 00:00:14.960 --> 00:00:25.039 Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior. 00:00:25.199 --> 00:00:27.359 Now here's your host, Pastor James W. 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:28.160 Knox. 00:00:38.399 --> 00:00:40.159 All right, good day to each and every one of you. 00:00:40.240 --> 00:00:40.880 I'm Brother James. 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:48.399 I greet you once again in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. 00:00:48.479 --> 00:00:54.640 And I welcome you to the preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast, Ministry of the Bible Baptist Church of the Land of Florida. 00:00:54.880 --> 00:01:04.319 You know, we tell you sometimes, you you hear us say, uh heard on this station and around the world by the grace of God, and that's not just some um exaggeration. 00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:09.040 That's not just some uh preacher statement that we try and uh make to puff ourselves up. 00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:11.599 The truth of the matter is, uh, God's been mighty good to us. 00:01:11.680 --> 00:01:35.439 Just just this past week, just this past week, we have had letters come in the mail requesting uh cassette recorded materials of uh what we preach at our local church and what we broadcast on this radio station from India, Iran, incredible as it may seem, we actually have materials uh going into Iran. 00:01:35.599 --> 00:01:38.560 Missionaries can't go there, but we can send our cassette materials in there. 00:01:38.799 --> 00:02:03.040 India, Iran, Scotland, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Canada, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Benin, Ivory Coast, Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, and two or three others I can't even call to mind right now. 00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:05.519 Now you know something, folks, that's remarkable. 00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:12.560 It's incredible to think Russia, I didn't mention Russia, had a letter came from Odessa in Russia, had a letter came from the Ukraine. 00:02:12.879 --> 00:02:14.719 What a marvelous thing it is. 00:02:14.960 --> 00:02:17.120 To see God's word go forth. 00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:22.159 Uh a little group of people who pray and ask God to provide the funds and the financing. 00:02:22.479 --> 00:02:35.840 We begin to broadcast, we begin to proclaim the truth of God's word, and we we don't solicit funds, we don't play music, we don't try and entertain you, we just simply preach the word of God and ask God to bless his word as it goes forth, and he does so. 00:02:35.919 --> 00:02:47.360 And it's wonderful, it's it's a marvelous thing, it's a joy to our hearts to see how God's word is not bound and how it reaches all those men and women around this world that want to hear it. 00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:52.879 If you've got a desire to know God, if you've got a hunger to know the truth, have no fear, God will get the truth to you. 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:54.639 And it's just a joy for us. 00:02:54.719 --> 00:02:58.080 It's a joy for those of us at our little church, it's a joy, should be a joy. 00:02:58.159 --> 00:03:11.840 I hope it's a joy to those of you who pray for us and pray with us to know that God is using uh this little uh ministry, God is using this one little preacher to get his word out all around the world, and we certainly rejoice in that. 00:03:12.159 --> 00:03:34.159 We are in the middle of a series of uh studies entitled The Bible as Science, and we are showing to you, we are proving conclusively that the Word of God is true, and that we don't have to apologize to science, falsely so-called, for our faith and our belief in the Word of God. 00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:40.800 We have shown over and over and over again that the Bible is more scientific than science. 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:55.039 When the Bible speaks about scientific matters, it does so with a greater accuracy than modern science, because modern science of today differs from the modern science of a hundred years ago, which differs from the modern science of a hundred years before that. 00:03:55.199 --> 00:04:04.879 In other words, the outstanding great wonderful truths proclaimed by science today, many of them will be forgotten tomorrow. 00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:11.439 They will sweep them under the rug, they will hide the books in the back of the library because it will be proven they were absolutely wrong. 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:34.800 There are six miles of shelf space given to scientific books in the Louvre, the National Library in France, containing books of science which have no validity whatsoever today, except for Christians to go and laugh at, because all the material in them has been proven false. 00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:41.680 That has never happened one time, one place, with one verse of Scripture in the Word of God. 00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:51.759 Science may laugh at a statement in the Bible today, and then 50 years later they will come to find out the real truth, and it will match the Bible every time. 00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:55.839 We've showed you that over and over again in this series of studies. 00:04:56.000 --> 00:05:10.959 Now, we've been talking about one of the greatest arguments raised by scientists, raised by infidels against the Word of God, and that is the story of Jonah being swallowed by the great fish, Jonah, Jonah being swallowed by the whale, Jesus Christ in Matthew. 00:05:11.439 --> 00:05:24.480 And we have given you on the last broadcast, we gave you three or four examples of men six feet tall being swallowed whole by great fish and great monsters of the deep. 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:34.240 One man we read to you about on the last broadcast from a newspaper account in England was swallowed alive in the English Channel. 00:05:34.560 --> 00:05:50.240 The creature that swallowed him was then captured, cut open, and the man was found to be alive, in shock, but suffering no other detrimental effects from his strange journey. 00:05:50.399 --> 00:05:52.319 Now I want to give you some more of these. 00:06:19.439 --> 00:06:41.519 Now, some baleen whales, and if you recall from our last study, those are the kind that don't have teeth, but they have rather a bony structure in the back of the throat that forms a type of a sieve, and they rush through the water with their mouth open, taking everything they possibly can, then force the water out, and swallow down whatever remains. 00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:55.680 Some baleen whales are up to 100 feet long, forty feet around, and weigh up to 300,000 pounds. 00:06:56.319 --> 00:06:58.800 Up to 300,000 pounds. 00:06:59.279 --> 00:07:06.480 A Mediterranean fish, caught and exhibited in Beirut, had a head that weighed six tons. 00:07:07.439 --> 00:07:10.160 Just the head weighed six tons. 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:17.439 A man standing on the lower jaw could not reach the upper jaw. 00:07:17.759 --> 00:07:22.560 I'm not talking about standing there, I'm talking about standing there with his arms outstretched. 00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:25.759 He couldn't reach from lower jaw to upper jaw. 00:07:26.319 --> 00:07:34.560 The April 4, 1896 Literary Digest gave a story of a Mediterranean whale that demolished a harpoon boat. 00:07:34.879 --> 00:07:36.399 Two men were lost. 00:07:36.639 --> 00:07:46.639 One, James Bartley, was found alive in the whale's belly a day and one half after it was killed. 00:07:46.879 --> 00:07:49.439 I don't mean a day and a half after he was swallowed. 00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:52.399 I mean a day and a half after the whale was killed. 00:07:52.639 --> 00:08:01.600 They were working on the thing, cutting it up and, you know, making use of the parts of the byproducts and so forth, and found this guy in there a day and a half later and he was still alive. 00:08:03.439 --> 00:08:10.000 He lived with no after effects, save that his skin was tanned by the gastric juices. 00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:14.399 Then there was a pure fish caught off the Florida coast. 00:08:14.639 --> 00:08:28.639 It weighed 30,000 pounds, it was 45 feet long, it was eight feet thick, and in its belly was a large octopus and a fifteen hundred pound fish. 00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:31.120 Now let me tell you something, folks. 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:40.240 If a great fish off Florida could swallow another fish that weighed 1,500 pounds, it wouldn't have much trouble with a 180-pound man. 00:08:40.639 --> 00:08:42.639 You can rest assured of that. 00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:56.960 Now probably the most extensive and the most detailed record of these kinds that we have available to us is the record of a man that can truly be called a modern Jonah. 00:08:58.879 --> 00:09:05.039 Is it possible for a man to be swallowed by a whale and live to tell the story? 00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:08.720 The scientific answer is no. 00:09:09.440 --> 00:09:13.120 But the correct answer is yes. 00:09:14.320 --> 00:09:30.559 The official records of the British Admiralty provide documentary evidence for the astounding account of James Bartley that we've mentioned, a British seaman who was swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it. 00:09:31.279 --> 00:09:37.360 James was making his first and only trip as a sailor aboard the whaling ship Star of the East. 00:09:37.679 --> 00:09:46.879 In February of eighteen ninety one, she was pounding along before a fair wind a few hundred miles east of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. 00:09:47.120 --> 00:09:56.639 Suddenly the lookout gave his electrifying cry of there she blows, for he had sighted a huge sperm whale half a mile off the port bow. 00:09:56.879 --> 00:10:05.440 The Star of the East slackened her sails, and the whaling crews scrambled into their three small boats off to harpoon the mighty mammal if possible. 00:10:05.759 --> 00:10:11.360 I don't know about you, but I have considered all kinds of occupations. 00:10:11.759 --> 00:10:15.519 I have considered all types of jobs in my life and thought about them. 00:10:15.759 --> 00:10:37.360 I suppose probably the worst job that I've ever seen, the worst job that I can imagine, is the poor man on the highway crew in Florida in the summer, with a shovel in his hand, following that machine that lays out the hot asphalt, and scraping up any that may go over the designated line. 00:10:37.679 --> 00:10:38.639 You ever watch that man? 00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:39.679 Have you ever thought about that? 00:10:39.840 --> 00:10:50.159 Smelling that stuff all day, the heat rising up off the highway, the heat beating down from the sun, and just having to stand there on your feet with a shovel following that machine all day long, that's gotta be a terrible job. 00:10:50.320 --> 00:10:53.840 That's got to be the worst job I can imagine. 00:10:54.399 --> 00:10:56.720 There are all kinds of difficult jobs. 00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:01.759 There are all kinds of jobs that are very demanding, both both intellectually and physically. 00:11:02.399 --> 00:11:09.279 But for the life of me, I cannot understand what type of man it takes. 00:11:09.519 --> 00:11:16.399 I cannot understand either the courage or the absence of understanding. 00:11:16.639 --> 00:11:34.799 I can't understand what kind of man would get into a little wooden rowboat and go out in the middle of the ocean with a rope and a harpoon and try and capture the mightiest creature that God has placed on planet Earth, these great whales. 00:11:34.879 --> 00:11:37.919 I just I marvel, it's incredible to me. 00:11:38.159 --> 00:11:56.799 I remember as a boy seeing pictures of men in one of these little boats and and having the tail of one of these great uh fish to smash that boat and knock it up into the air and see the men flying out of the craft, and and uh I just I couldn't believe it that that men would actually do that. 00:11:57.279 --> 00:12:00.639 Now I think it's got to be awfully difficult to be involved in any type of fishing work. 00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:03.200 We used to have a man in the church who was a commercial fisherman. 00:12:03.279 --> 00:12:07.519 He talked about how long and how hard and how difficult the job was, and I believe him. 00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:08.480 I believe him. 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:21.759 I think it would be even worse up in the in the North Sea, where you're not only uh doing this terribly difficult work, but doing so in such incredibly difficult conditions because of the cold and the uh that's added to the water and to the wind that's blowing you. 00:12:21.840 --> 00:12:24.240 You just I don't see how those men don't freeze to death. 00:12:24.559 --> 00:12:34.399 But still, I'd rather do that than get in a little rowboat and plunge a harpoon into a whale and then hang on for dear life. 00:12:34.559 --> 00:12:44.399 I can't imagine the type of of man, I can't imagine the type of mentality or the type of courage that this must require. 00:12:45.360 --> 00:12:47.279 I I'm dead set against drinking. 00:12:47.440 --> 00:12:51.279 I'm dead set against one drop of liquor ever being produced and made. 00:12:51.360 --> 00:12:58.080 I'm dead set against one ounce, one drop, one thimble full of alcohol ever passing in a man's lips. 00:12:59.200 --> 00:13:12.000 But I can understand, I can understand why a fella going out in a little rowboat in the middle of the ocean to take on a whale might want to down a little something to kind of numb his senses a bit, if you know what I mean. 00:13:12.240 --> 00:13:14.799 I didn't say it was right, I can understand it. 00:13:15.759 --> 00:13:22.559 Anyway, young James Bartley was in the first longboat to reach the side of the whale. 00:13:22.879 --> 00:13:34.559 Pulling slowly on their oars, the sailors drove their frail cockle shell behind the unsuspecting creature, so near that the harpooner could lean over and drive his huge spear deep into the whale's vitals. 00:13:34.799 --> 00:13:46.159 Bartley and his fellow seamen backed frantically to get out of the reach of those massive tail flukes which threshed the water to foam as the stricken beast fought to free itself of the barbed harpoon. 00:13:46.720 --> 00:13:50.159 For a moment, all seemed to be well with the sailors. 00:13:50.320 --> 00:13:58.000 The whale plunged deep into the ocean, and eight hundred feet of heavy line streaked out of the tub before the creature ceased to dive. 00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:01.360 Then there was an ominous slackening of the line. 00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:04.000 The great brute was coming up, but where? 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:10.320 In such cases this was a matter of life and death, and the sailors did not have long to wait for the answer. 00:14:10.559 --> 00:14:15.360 They hunched over their oars, ready to pull for their lives once they knew which way to pull. 00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:18.159 Without warning, the sea boiled up around them. 00:14:18.320 --> 00:14:22.399 There was a splintering crash as their frail boat spun into the air. 00:14:22.559 --> 00:14:30.080 The mortally wounded whale threshed about madly in his agony, beating the water to a bloody froth before he sounded into the depths again. 00:14:30.240 --> 00:14:32.559 He had come up directly under the boat. 00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:39.840 He had smashed it to bits, he had thrown the planks in the wood and the oars scattered it about. 00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:44.559 The men were tossed into the air, came crashing down into the sea. 00:14:44.879 --> 00:14:49.519 A nearby longboat picked up the survivors, but two men were missing. 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:54.320 One of them, the apprentice sailor, James Bartley. 00:14:55.200 --> 00:15:05.440 The wind which had borne the star of the East to the scene of this tragedy, now deserted her, and she wallowed in the long swells, her sails flapping. 00:15:05.679 --> 00:15:14.080 Shortly before sunset on that same fateful day, the dying whale floated to the surface about four hundred yards from the vessel. 00:15:14.559 --> 00:15:21.360 The crew hastily fastened a line to the whale, and the winch brought it slowly to the ship. 00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:24.960 Hot weather made it imperative that it be cut up at once. 00:15:25.600 --> 00:15:32.960 The meat would spoil, the whale uh would go to the bat rather rapidly, and so they set right to work upon it. 00:15:33.679 --> 00:15:46.320 Since they had no means of raising the hundred ton mammal to the deck, the men took flencing spades and peeled off the thick blubber as they slipped and slid along the creature's back. 00:15:47.039 --> 00:15:49.679 Dirty work and dangerous. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:16:00.320 You see, the the blood that was pouring from this whale and had been since it was first harpooned, had of course attracted a great host and great company of sharks. 00:16:01.200 --> 00:16:04.080 Again, I say not the best of jobs. 00:16:04.799 --> 00:16:07.919 The water was full of sharks, maddened by the taste of the blood. 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:20.000 Shortly before eleven that night, working by lantern light, the tired crewman removed the stomach and the huge liver and hoisted them aboard ship for processing. 00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:32.879 There on deck they were startled to notice movement inside the giant paunch, a slow, rhythmic movement that looked like something breathing. 00:16:33.360 --> 00:16:39.600 The captain hurriedly called the ship's doctor, and a great incision was made in the tough flesh of the whale's belly. 00:16:39.919 --> 00:16:43.919 A human foot became visible, shoe and all. 00:16:44.559 --> 00:16:47.679 A moment later they had pulled out one of the missing sailors. 00:16:47.840 --> 00:16:54.639 It was James Bartley, doubled up, unconscious, but alive. 00:16:55.519 --> 00:17:01.360 Perhaps for want of anything better, the excited doctor ordered Bartley drenched with buckets of seawater. 00:17:01.600 --> 00:17:04.559 This treatment soon restored consciousness, but not reason. 00:17:04.799 --> 00:17:10.640 Bartley was babbling incoherently as he threshed about in his delirium. 00:17:10.799 --> 00:17:17.920 Someone on the deck shouted he's got the gift of tongues, but others knew that he was just in a state of madness because of his extreme condition. 00:17:18.640 --> 00:17:24.160 For almost two weeks he lingered between I just threw that in extra, nobody on the deck was foolish enough to say that. 00:17:24.640 --> 00:17:33.839 Bartley was for two weeks, lingering between life and death, strapped to the bunk in the captain's cabin. 00:17:34.160 --> 00:17:42.000 Gradually, so the ship's doctor wrote in the record, which was signed by all on board gradually, Bartley recovered his senses. 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:45.519 But it was a month before he was able to tell what had happened. 00:17:45.599 --> 00:17:51.920 Now, folks, this isn't listen, this is not some fairy tale story a preacher made up to try and prove his point. 00:17:52.640 --> 00:18:02.640 This is a signed, documented record by a medical doctor as sea captain, and the entire crew of that whaling vessel, save the one man who was never found. 00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:13.920 When Bartley, nearly a month later, was finally able to regain his senses and to discuss what happened to him. 00:18:14.559 --> 00:18:19.200 He said he remembered being flung into the air when the whale crushed their longboat. 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:24.480 And as he fell back into the sea, he saw the tremendous mouth open over him. 00:18:25.839 --> 00:18:29.440 Could not Jonah tell the same tale? 00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:32.960 Could not Jonah make the same statement? 00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:38.799 He screamed as he was engulfed. 00:18:39.279 --> 00:18:45.759 There were sharp, stabbing pains as he swept across the rows of tiny sharp teeth. 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:49.440 Then he found himself sliding down a slimy tube. 00:18:49.680 --> 00:19:00.000 He could recall fighting for his breath, kicking about in panic and terror, and then blissful oblivion. 00:19:01.119 --> 00:19:08.400 And he could remember nothing until he regained consciousness a month later in the captain's cabin. 00:19:09.039 --> 00:19:15.599 He had been inside the whale's stomach for fifteen hours, and as a result he lost all the hair on his body. 00:19:15.839 --> 00:19:29.359 His skin was bleached to an unnatural whiteness, and as he was almost blind for the rest of his life, he spent his days, his remaining days, as a shoe cobbler in his native Gloucester. 00:19:30.240 --> 00:19:36.480 Numerous medical men from many lands came to examine him and to discuss his incredible experience. 00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:43.920 He lived for eighteen years after his adventure, and on his tombstone is a brief account of his experience. 00:19:44.319 --> 00:19:53.200 The footnote which says James Bartley, 1870 to 1909, a modern Jonah. 00:19:54.880 --> 00:20:04.319 Ladies and gentlemen, there is no question the Bible is true and accurate as it is written. 00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:33.440 If science wishes to call it into question, science and scientists and those who trust science must beware that historical fact, present-day fact, and future fact will disprove everyone and everything that sets himself, herself, or itself against the truth of the Word of God. 00:20:35.440 --> 00:20:47.119 Now my friends, you need to understand those that criticize the Bible and say it's not scientific, number one, have not read it. 00:20:48.079 --> 00:20:57.200 Number two, if they have read it, they have read it selectively and judged it in light of their preconceived ideas and prejudices. 00:20:57.519 --> 00:21:09.680 Or number three, they are deliberately lying to you because they do not want you to read and study the Bible for yourself. 00:21:11.039 --> 00:21:25.680 I mentioned to you on the last broadcast a man who was found unconscious but alive, and exhibited at the London Museum, called the Joan of the Twentieth Century, a man that was swallowed in the English Channel. 00:21:27.039 --> 00:21:36.880 Shortly after this, the man was interviewed by a scientist who was a Christian. 00:21:37.279 --> 00:21:44.880 He said, and this is very similar to what was said about Bartley, he said that the man had an odd physical appearance. 00:21:45.119 --> 00:21:47.359 His entire body was devoid of hair. 00:21:47.680 --> 00:21:51.039 Odd patches of a yellowish-brown color covered his entire skin. 00:21:51.279 --> 00:22:08.880 Now, many have reasoned from these testimonies that one of the reasons why the people repented when Jonah came to Nineveh was his odd, his unusual appearance, his strange and remarkable look that he had about him. 00:22:09.519 --> 00:22:10.799 This is possible. 00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:47.839 But it's also possible that as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, and this matching Jesus Christ three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and as Jonah came forth alive afterward, and so did the Lord Jesus Christ, it's quite possible that Jonah came out looking every bit as good or better as he did when he went in, scarred perhaps, as Jesus was, in his hands and feet, and yet not disfigured horribly and dreadfully by his experience, because neither was the Lord Jesus Christ. 00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:58.640 Anyway, for two days and two nights this man in England had lived in a monster of the deep, and this without any special providential care expressly stated or even implied. 00:22:59.039 --> 00:23:12.400 Does it seem reasonable to concede that if a man in the ordinary course of nature can exist for two days and nights inside a marine monster, that a prophet of God under God's direct care and protection could stand the experience a day and a night longer? 00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:14.160 Certainly does. 00:23:14.480 --> 00:23:16.160 So what's the summary? 00:23:16.799 --> 00:23:27.039 There are creatures which swim in the seas today, which could, in the very course of their nature, be hosts to a man like Jonah. 00:23:27.359 --> 00:23:36.000 The heart of the matter, however, is this statement from the book that God had prepared a great fish. 00:23:36.240 --> 00:23:42.720 Now it's impossible to state whether God prepared this fish in the natural order of generation and birth, or whether this was a special creature. 00:23:43.039 --> 00:23:48.559 But the purpose of our demonstration is to show the account in the Bible is reasonable. 00:23:48.799 --> 00:24:00.000 It could have happened, as the intelligent thinker suggested, if it could have happened, and the scripture says it did happen upon the authority of Jesus Christ and the weight of attested reason. 00:24:00.160 --> 00:24:02.720 Let us acknowledge the truth of this account. 00:24:03.039 --> 00:24:05.200 It did happen. 00:24:05.599 --> 00:24:06.960 It did happen. 00:24:07.279 --> 00:24:28.640 And so once again, science, true science, which studies, examines, compiles, and evaluates the facts, once again, true science proves the Bible to be just what it claims to be: the truth. 00:24:29.759 --> 00:24:32.640 And thereby the Word of God. 00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:37.039 Thanks for tuning in today. 00:24:37.200 --> 00:24:41.680 Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. 00:24:41.920 --> 00:24:47.519 For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W. 00:24:47.680 --> 00:24:54.799 Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist Land, or our website, Bible BaptistLand.com. 00:24:54.960 --> 00:24:59.599 Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.