A commercial lobster diver was swallowed by a whale off the Massachusetts coast on June 11 and expelled with only minor injuries. Michael Packard, 56, was released hours later from a Cape Cod hospital. Packard said, “All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black. I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth. I was completely inside; it was completely black. I thought to myself, ‘there’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead. I saw light, and he started throwing his head side to side, and the next thing I knew I was outside (in the water)” (“I was completely inside,” Cape Cod Times, June 11, 2021). The prophet Jonah was in a whale’s belly for three days and three nights, but it wasn’t a natural event. God supernaturally prepared the fish and accomplished the event as a sign of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).
(Friday Church News Notes, June 18, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org , 866-295-4143)