Luke 4:8 And Jesus answered and said to him, “Get behind Me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve”.
A police officer can only exercise authority because he has a badge that gives him that authority. As Christians, we have the authority of scripture to speak what it says rather than our own opinions and beliefs. Jesus tempted in the wilderness took the authority of the scripture, quoted it and stood by it. He told Satan, “It is written…”. The written word of God gives us the authority to speak it.
To question the truth of a story such as that of Jonah is to question Jesus who had no problem believing it because it was true, He quoted it, Mat 12:40 “For 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”. In as much as we have our own ideas and opinions, the Holy Scripture ought to be our final say and authority. We have no right to cherry pick what we want to believe and agree with. We cannot in similar fashion try to find loop holes in the bible to support what we want to justify. We are in no position to smash our ideas as to what we believe the author meant. If I’m looking at a painting, my opinion and interpretation of the painting has zero authority over what the painter intended for it to be when he painted it. We are therefore to speak and live in the light of His word because it is our badge of authority. Psa 119:89 “Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven.”