Jonah and the Big Fish

How can a person trust God for salvation if a person can't trust what He says in His Word about creation?

If creation is false, then maybe salvation isn't real either.

The proverbial painting ones self into a corner routine.

It's gotta be all or nuthin.

 

Nonsense! I don't believe Genesis 1 was written to be a factual historical account. I steadfastly put God's word ahead of human mind.

I DO trust what it says about creation. The message of Gen1 is that God created. No one here, regardless of the side of the fence, denies that.

Creation isn't false. Creation is true. But the account of a literal six day creation was not written to be fact.

Not at all. No opinions will be changed in this discussion. It's of no value.

Christians don't adhere to "all or nothing" in the Bible. As a rule, we don't eat kosher food, we don't rest on the Sabbath, we don't practice polygamy, and we don't avoid chairs that menstruating women have sat in.

 

Nonsense! I don't believe Genesis 1 was written to be a factual historical account. I steadfastly put God's word ahead of human mind.</font>[/QUOTE]In that case you are obviously putting what 'you believe' ahead of what God's Word plainly states, your denial to the contrary aside. Genesis 1 is part of God's Word, you know...

I DO trust what it says about creation. The message of Gen1 is that God created. No one here, regardless of the side of the fence, denies that.</font>[/QUOTE]Admitting the generality and denying the stated specifics means nothing, actually. Some very clear specifics are stated which you deny because you don't 'believe' them. You are pitting your incredibly limited human understanding against God's clear revelation. Not wise, I don't think...

Creation isn't false. Creation is true. But the account of a literal six day creation was not written to be fact. </font>[/QUOTE]On what authority do you state that? It is treated as fact in the Ten Commandments. Or are they allegorical, too? What authority do you have apart from your own human mind, to say that Genesis does not mean what it says?

Not at all. No opinions will be changed in this discussion. It's of no value.</font>[/QUOTE]I have seen some surprising evidence to the contrary in private emails. It is worth standing up for God's Word in a clear and logical and calm way. I have been surprised how many people it has helped. We will continue to do so, whether you, in particular, choose to change what you think or not.

Christians don't adhere to "all or nothing" in the Bible. As a rule, we don't eat kosher food, we don't rest on the Sabbath, we don't practice polygamy, and we don't avoid chairs that menstruating women have sat in. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE][/quote]

What a mish mash of examples! That is bizarre! Kosher food was for the Israelite theocracy. So were the rules of cleanliness. Polygamy was a cultural thing the Bible mentions but does not promote or suggest; as a matter of fact there are references in both Testaments to the contrary. And perhaps you should rest on the Sabbath. Your body and the Lord might both appreciate it.

SheEagle was not talking about legalities, but about trusting what God caused to be written, by the way. Your avoidance of that, and effort to squirm around it with those silly 'examples' really does nothing but show the poverty of the position you are trying to defend.

 

Funny, isn’t that what Wesctcott said to, then he published a Bible. Are you going to publish a bible Johnv to support your views?

Excuse me, but you just did in the above quote.

So you deny God’s word. Thanks, this explains a lot.

 

The existing Bible supports my view just fine.

No, I disagree with your interpretation. That's not a denial of God's word.

 

The existing Bible supports my view just fine.

No, I disagree with your interpretation. That's not a denial of God's word. </font>[/QUOTE]I don't understand. If the Bible says God created everything in six days, and you don't believe it, then your problem is not with me or my interpretation, but your problem is with God and his word.

 

According to the Baptist Distinctive of autonomy, I'm allowed that right. Take it up with the DIstinctives if you have a problem with it.

Not at all. I could easily argue that insisting non a 6000 year old earth with a six day 24 hour day creation is also limiting on God's power. But I don't believe that. Nothing is impossible with God. God could have easily and effortlessly created the earth in six says or six million years. To say anything else would be limiting God.

That would be the Spiritual Gift of Discernment that I have been blessed with.

I, too, have had several private emails from people who were once YEC and are now OEC, but are fearful for discussing their views on this forum, for fear of retatilation. You must admit that there are many on this board (on both sides of the fence) who are more concerned with convincing the other on the issue, rather than simply engage in healthy and open discussion. BTW, I place you in the latter, because while you and I don't see eye to eye on the subject, you've never questioned my salvation.

Not really. Kosher food is healthier, even today, than non-kosher food. While I don't adhere to a strict kosher diet, I do look for kosher food when I shop whenever possible, out of care for my body. Alas, it's a bit more expensive, though.

I agree with you here. Because of advancements today, much of the cleanliness concern is a non-issue today. But recently there was a whole thread on the circumcision of infants in which many people, including Christians, still adhere to it as being God-ordained. But the importance is not that we keep the rules of cleanliness as laid out in the OT, but understand WHY those rules were ordained. Same with the purpose of Genesis. It's not important that we know how many days it took God to create, it's important to understand WHY God created.

Solomon was a polygamist, and kept concubines. He was never curced for the practice. However, Jesus and Paul makes it clear in the NT that we should be one to another.

Actually, I do. I NEVER do work on the Sabbath (which I observe on Sunday). My reasoning is that, God created this body to require rest, both physically and mentally, a minimum of once a week. While my salvation is not dependant on observing the Sabbath, my physical and mental health is. I highly recommend that everyone do this out of respect and obedience.

Not at all. It's interesting how many well-meaning Christians will cast aside those things (especially in the OT) that they choose not to adhere to, and label it a legality. The Sabbath keeping is a good example.

 

Matthew, Mark and Luke all have Jesus crucifixion on the day after Passover, while John has Jesus being crucified BEFORE passover (on the same say that the passover lambs were slaughtered).

Elsewhere, Jesus says Jonah was swallowed by a whale, while the OT says Jonah was swallowed by a fish, not a whale. Both Hebrew and Greek had different words for fish and whale, and they knew the difference.

None of the Gospels have the text on the cross over Jesus' head reading exactly the same way.

In reality, does it really matter what day Jesus was crucified? Does it really matter if Jonah was swallowed by a fish or a whale? Does it really matter what the exact wording over Jesus' head was? Does it really matter how many days it took God to create?

We're so worried over what swallowed Jonah, that we don't even know why Jonah was swallowed. We're so worried about the day of the week Jesus was crucified, we sometimes almost forget why he was crucified. We're so worried over what it said over Jesus' head, we forget why it was posted. We are so worried about how God created that we forget why God created.

 

Nail hit squarely on the head by the Hammer. Thank you JohnV

 

Hey, I'm brand new here so I may be overstepping my bounds when I jump right in... but, this helped me a lot when I was first struggling with the question. (How can God be wrong about a fish) Check out the WhaleShark. It's a real animal, ancient, and the size of a football field. It could swallow a person whole, and if it did it would most likely regurgitate them as its a filter feeder (likes small shrimp and "boneless" seafood. Please take some time and look at pics on the web of this gigantic animal. My Sunday school teacher taught us about it one day and it has helped me and others in my class immensly.

 

I think that's debatable. Rather, what is' debatable is how much supernaturalism we need to believe in the word of God. Some need none, some need a lot.

For example, what if we could go back in time and witness all of Jesus' miracles, and discover a logical scientific explanation for each and every one. Would that mean that they're not miracles? Some Christians will insist that ever miracle MUST be supernatural in nature. But others will say that a miracle is a miracle regardless of whether or not it can be scientifically explained. I would side with the latter. After all, I don't believe in Jesus the great magician, I believe in Jesus the great physician. I can support that by the fact that I see God's miracles and handiwork every day, and don't have to go far to look for them, and they all have scientific explanations.

 

But you still need a miracle to have him be able to breath and live inside this fish for 3 days, he should have been digested or drowned. So as long a miracles are being handed out like candy here, why not believe it was a short lived species like a cross between a fish and a whale. Hey, there would have to be a miracle anyway you cut it.

A fish-whale (we'll call it Fisale for short) could have swallowed him if a miracle was involved, so again, why are we hung up on details. It seems silly to be trying to find one area of this story where no miracle occurred like the type of creature it was. Who are we to say this magical creature didn't exist?

When I eat something bad, I vomit within hours, not 3 days later. So there is another miracle.

There must have been at least 4 or 5 miracles at a minimum for just that part of the story to have happened. So let's add another one and say it was a Fisale that only existed for a short time, if donkeys can talk, then whales can be fish.

Or it could have been a fishing ship called the "Whale".


PS... Welcome to the board Peo !!!

 

Hey, Peo! Welcome. I haven't posted here much since the creation vs. evolution board dissapeared myself, so I'm almost like new. Best advice for any board posting: don't take things personally (even if they were meant to be taken that way). Some boards can get pretty nasty and mean-spirited. This board is far better than most.

About the whale-shark, the term "fish" applied to all creatures which swam (the Hebrews did not have Linnaeus’s classification system back then). One of the ways the Hebrews and other cultures at that time classified animals was by their means of locomotion. If it flew, it was a bird (whether it was actually bird or a mammal like a bat - they didn't even have the word or concept of "mammal" then). So the "fish" that swallowed Jonah could have been a giant fish that is either known or unknown to us today, or it could have been a shark (which is not a true "fish" as it does not have a true backbone), or a whale... we just don't know. It really isn't important to identify exactly what animal it was that swallowed Jonah. The point of this part of the story was that it was a miracle - the great fish was specially prepared by God to swallow Jonah and take him to the nearest coast of Ninevah. Jonah was alive after the ordeal to preach to the Ninevites - another miracle (so don't try to figure out if it is possible if a person could live for three days inside the belly of whatever creature this was). In fact, if you read Jonah carefully you will note that he went down to the true depths of the sea, that his head was covered with seaweed, that his soul cried out from sheol (the place of the dead)... leads one to question whether or not Jonah actually did drown, eh?

If Jonah did drown and was swallowed by the creature, then the words of Jesus become even more meaningful:
Mat. 12:38-40 (NIV) 38 Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you."
39 He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

Luke 11:30 "For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation." If Jonah was dead and was a "sign to the Ninevites", is Jesus then speaking of the power of God to resurrect a dead body in three days? I believe so. It is also interresting that one of the chief pagan gods of Nineveh was Dagon, the half-man half-fish god (see picture at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/images.jsp?artid=9&letter=D&imgid=701 ). Just as God used the symbols of the Egyptian false gods to bring the plagues to Egypt, He used a great fish (associated with Dagon in the minds of the Ninevites) to vomit a should-be-dead prophet onto their shores to preach judgement against them... and they repented.


I guess the liberals here just think Jesus was waxing poetic but the verse certainly seems to indicate that Jesus thought both Jonah and the incident were real and historical.

 

I have never understood the difficulty that liberals (or anyone else for that matter) have with the story of Jonah. Does anyone have any idea why this particular story seems to generate such a disporportionate amount of discussion?

 

Originally posted by Artimaeus:
Originally posted by Watchman:
By the way, Jesus, in Matthew 12: 39-40 said it was a whale. Actually Jesus said it was a "ketos" (a huge fish), our frinds of the King James English provided us with the word "whale".

__________________________________________________

You are right my friend, even the TR has it as a "Great" fish. I will go with the Greek anytime. At any rate, it is still possible that God was merely speaking in a way that men, at that time, could understand i.e., the Sunrise-Sunset silliness on another thread.

 

Actually, ketos means whale in Greek. The Greek word for fish was ichthus. In Hebrew, too, dag and dagah mean "fish" while tanniyn means "whale" (or, in a different context, "sea serpent").

So, in both Hebrew and Greek, they had different words for fish and whales. They differentiated between fish and non-fish marine life. It's no secret that the story of Jonah says "fish" (dag), while Jesus says "whale" (ketos). If taken hyperliterally, then Jesus incorrectly identified the animal that swallowed Jonah. But speaking metaphorically, it's clear that the classification of the animal, at least to Jesus, is of no importance to the story, and what is important was WHY Jonah was swallowed, not WHAT swalowed him (even though we spend countless hours debating WHAT swallowed him, and next to no time with what the whole story is about). In other words, Jesus was speaking to the people in a manner in which they identified with.

 

John, I agree, it is why Jonah was put in that predicament and the lesson learned there that is important. I am not a Greek expert, I went by what a translator said it was at olivetree.com.
Thanks for responding.

 

How about this? Jonah was right. Jesus was right. It is to be taken regularliterally. You are wrong. Yeah, that works for me.

Jonah 2:10 And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

Matt 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly...

The omniscient Lord said it was a "dag"
Jesus said it was a "ketos".
These two terms CANNOT be mutually exclusive. Don't modify what God said to fit your dictionary, modify your dictionary to fit what God said. HE is the standard not a lexicographer.

 

Uhhh, I think that's the point I was making, wasn't it? That the story SHOULD NOT be taken hyperliterally.