SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/27/2025 10:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Jonah’s Detainment”
Bible Reading and Meditation Reference: Jonah 1:17
Message of the verse: “And Yahweh appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.”
John MacArthur writes “Because this account of the great fish is so incredible, skeptics have been critical of this miracle. Some have proposed that Jonah was simply thrown overboard, landed on the top of a dead whale, and floated along for a few days. Others have claimed that Jonah’s ship actually found a port where the sailors removed Jonah from the ship and put him in an inn called ‘The Whale.’ Still others have proposed that the ship had a small dinghy tethered to it, which was named ‘The Great Fish.” Explanations like these attempt to stript the event of its supernatural character and, quite clearly, are in no way supported by the text.
“Rather, God chose a creature He had created—a great fish—to miraculously detain and deliver His servant. Fish in Hebrew is generic and can include a whale; and great indicates, in this case, that it was large enough to swallow a man whole. The Lord not only sent this colossal creature to ingest His prophet, but He also preserved Jonah’s life inside the fish for three days and three nights. In some way, the Lord miraculously enabled Jonah to breathe while also protecting him from being digested by the fish.
“The fish was not the only great object delineated in Jonah 1. There was a great city (1:2), a great storm (1:4), and now a great fish (1:17), all of which demonstrated both Yahweh’s great power and His great mercy. Jonah had no right to begrudge God’s compassion toward the Ninevites in a great city nor toward the sailors in a great storm if he himself was delivered by God through a great fish.”
It is my belief that what Jonah was swallowed by was indeed a great fish, and not a whale, and the reason that I believe this is because when I looked up the word fish from this verse in my online Bible dictionary it had one word and that word was fish. Now for a moment let us go back to the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis and think about how many of the animals that God made then are around today and how many are now extent. I realize that this would be a very difficult thing to do, but it is my belief that when God created the world that it was tropical and all of the land was in one place, not like it is today. What changed it? Well the flood changed all of this and one of the results of the flood was that the earth was no longer tropical, and also that there was new land masses like we have today. Now many of those tropical animals are not around today because of the aftermath of the flood, and it is my belief that many of these animals that survived the flood have become extinct today. My point is that there were different fish around when Jonah was alive than there are now. I looked at a TV show that men caught a dead fish which was the size of their large boat and because of the smell they let the body of the fish go back into the ocean. My point is that there are things still become extinct like dinosaurs, for they survived after the flood, but are not around today. Bottom line is that it is my belief that Jonah was swallowed by a very large fish that is probably extinct today.
It really bothers me when people have a problem with miracles that are found in the Bible and try to explain them away. Think about this: God created everything that is on this earth in six days, and if He had wanted to do it He could have done it in six seconds. God can do anything He desires to do when He wants to do it. Now one more miracle I want to touch on and that is the miracle of the new birth that happened to me on the 26th of January, 1972 when the Holy Spirit of God came into my life and change me from a terrible sinful man who could not say a sentence without using a swear word and change me into a man who loves the Lord and desires to serve Him all the day of my life, and that is the greatest miracle that I have ever experienced.
Spiritual Meaning for My Life Today: I desire to believe what the Bible has to say, every Word of it and not be dismayed by those who want to tear the meaning of the Word of God apart.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I am trusting the Lord to show my wife where He has plans for her to receive treatment for her cancer.
9/27/2025 11:05 AM
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