“And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”-Jonah 1:17
The people of Massachusetts should probably repent in sackcloth and ashes (Jonah 3:6). That statement is always true. But after the events of the past week, I would not take any chances! A real-life Jonah and the whale story played out off the coast of Cape Cod and a man lived to tell the tale.
Michael Packard was diving for lobster when a humpback whale attempted to eat him for lunch1. Packard was 45-feet down when this happened, “all of a sudden I just felt this huge bump, and everything went dark,” Packard told WBZ-TV in Boston. “And I could sense that I was moving, and I was like…did I just get bit by a shark?” Luckily for him, it was not a shark. But he was still in danger. Packard realized, “I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to swallow me.”
Packard estimates he was in the whale’s mouth for 30-to-40 seconds. He was still wearing his scuba gear and had time to think, “if he does swallow me…(am I) going to breathe in this whale’s mouth until my air runs out?” The 40-year veteran diver began to accept he was going to die when the whale vomited him out, “All of a sudden he went up to the surface and just erupted and started shaking his head,” Packard said. “I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water and I was free and I just floated there.” His partner dragged Packard onto their boat, and he was taken to a hospital before being released. The whale’s jaws bruised him but otherwise left him with only minor scrapes and quite a story to tell.
Now, this story has little to do with the veracity of the biblical account of Jonah and the great fish. In the Bible story, it is unlikely to have been an actual whale that swallowed Jonah. The word “whale” used in Matthew 12:39 is better translated “great fish” or even “sea monster.” Plus, God is not telling us something normal happened. The Bible clearly says, “the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”-Jonah 1:17. Our God could have created a fish for this sole purpose. In the same book, God miraculously causes a plant to grow, a scorching wind to blow, and a worm to lay the plant low (Jonah 4:6-8). Is anything to difficult for our God?
Is Mr. Packard’s story true? Who knows? Is it possible? Certainly. A humpback whale can grow to be 50-feet long. It could easily have taken him in its mouth before spitting him back out. For Christians, it fires our imagination to have a modern-day story trace the outlines of a Bible account so closely. But our faith does not rest on what we can see, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?”-Romans 8:24. I have never seen a man crucified, buried for three days, and resurrected never to die again. But the laws of nature do not limit the Lord, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”-Hebrews 11:3.
My God created the world and the fish of the sea. It is a small thing for the Lord to swallow a prophet or grant life to the body of his crucified Son. I live in faith he will breathe the same life into me one day.
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