Cetus Constellation was the Sign of Jonah

[Witness2Truth]

In antiquity, this constellation was known as the "sea monster", after that it was know as the "whale constellation".

So, by my understanding, when the prophesy in Amos 8:7-10 was fulfilled beginning at noon, the sun would have quickly gone down at first, right down the throat of the sea monster and right into the belly. I took the atmosphere away so that you could clearly see the position of the constellation shortly after noon on that day. (Reference: stellarium 0.9.1 software, Date April 3, 33. Jerusalem; File too big to place here.) So, in other words, since the Savior's Birth was signaled by a sign from heaven (star of Bethlehem), by my understanding, the Savior's Death was signaled by two heavenly signs. The sign of Jonah (Matt. 12:40), and also the mid-afternoon sunset caused by the fulfillment of prophesy in Amos 8:7-10.

One reply I received from the above understanding:


The words "that day" are mentioned many times in the Bible, including in Amos 8:9, and they refer to the Second Coming of Christ, just as the context of Amos, chapter 8 does.

In addition, that chapter talks about a famine of - and a thirst for - the WORD of God, NOT physical famine and thirst. Therefore, it is highly likely that the "darkness" spoken of is also Spiritual darkness, NOT physical darkness.

Revelation also uses these same terms of "darkness" ("the sun will be darkened. . .") regarding the Second Coming of Chirst.



My response to this reply:

Thank you for your reply. I had three notes of interest regarding this.

1. In Amos 8:7 the Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob that He would never forget their works. These works in my opinion were not good works, for then why would the land tremble for good works, and why would everyone be mourning. So, I believe that these works were sinful in nature. My question to you is, if the Lord would never forget their works at this point in time, and your belief is that this prophesy is yet to be fullfilled until the Second Coming of Christ, how do you interpret the Lord's Words in Jeremiah 31:31-34? Specifically, His Words in verse 34 "...and their sin I will remember no more." Hebrews 10:15-18 also supports the Text in Jeremiah.

2. In Amos 8:10 the Lord states that He will make the mourning, like mourning for an only son ... This mourning is also spoken of in Zechariah 12:10 "... then they will look on Me whom they have pierced; they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son"...

3. In Matthew 12:39, Jesus said, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." In Mark 8:12, Jesus said, "Why does this generation seek a sign? Assuredly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation." Since Jesus cannot lie, how could He have given them a sign, yet not given them a sign? These two verses support my thesis. The sign of the prophet Jonah was given to them at that time just as Jesus had promised, and no sign was given to that generation. In other words, the Cetus constellation was there for them to see, but it was impossible for them to see it. Jesus never said that another generation wouldn't be able to understand the sign given to them on that day. Hence, with our technology and knowledge of the movement of the stars and planets, God has made this sign of Jonah known to this generation.
Glory be to God in the Highest.



In Christ's Service,

David Behrens

[UrbanMonk]

3. In Matthew 12:39, Jesus said, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." In Mark 8:12, Jesus said, "Why does this generation seek a sign? Assuredly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation." Since Jesus cannot lie, how could He have given them a sign, yet not given them a sign? These two verses support my thesis. The sign of the prophet Jonah was given to them at that time just as Jesus had promised, and no sign was given to that generation. In other words, the Cetus constellation was there for them to see, but it was impossible for them to see it. Jesus never said that another generation wouldn't be able to understand the sign given to them on that day. Hence, with our technology and knowledge of the movement of the stars and planets, God has made this sign of Jonah known to this generation.
Glory be to God in the Highest.

In Christ's Service,

David Behrens

I study A Course In Miracles. It does not address this concept directly. So one must approach it like Sherlock Holmes would look at clues. We can propose more than one thesis and compare them side by side to get a feel for which is the most probable. When clues are solved, there is often a feeling of clarity or obviousness.

The "sign" that Jesus is most famous for is that he somehow escaped from a tomb, alive, after having been given up for dead. The tomb could be likened to "the belly of the whale". In a larger context, the time Jesus spent in the tomb is a symbol for all of time. The implication is that time is a tomb is the proverbial "belly of the whale". Time and mass are interconnected. So we could propose that "the world" is inside the "belly of the whale". This is a likely interpretation because the world is something that Jesus said he had "overcome". Overcome could be synonymous with escape because Jesus also said that his Kingdom was not of this world. So not only did Jesus escape from a tomb, but he also escaped from the world. This is a "sign" given to that generation.

Regards,
Urban Monk




The escape may well be connected somehow with Jesus' willingness to tell the truth.

[Mountain Man]

Thread moved from Apologetics.

[Bernie]

My response to this reply:

Thank you for your reply. I had three notes of interest regarding this.

1. In Amos 8:7 the Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob that He would never forget their works. These works in my opinion were not good works, for then why would the land tremble for good works, and why would everyone be mourning.
I think you're right here. The works alluded to are evil, and the thirst and famine appear to be for a lack of spiritual understanding, not a thirst for God's word.

The NASB's rendering in Amos 8 is more clear on this point than the AV:
7 The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob, "Indeed, I will never forget any of their deeds.
8 "Because of this will not the land quake And everyone who dwells in it mourn? Indeed, all of it will rise up like the Nile, And it will be tossed about, And subside like the Nile of Egypt.

I have no idea about the constellation representing Jonah, though. A question that's stuck with me a long time is, how many different understandings of a single passage or set of passages might the Lord give any number of different people? Most debate about metaphorical meaning tries to place the meaning of any passage in an "either/or" category....it must mean either this or that. I think this stifles a lot of forward progress in the discussion of meaning in Scripture. There are obvious instances of pure antithesis and contradiction in some discussion, and in these cases it takes careful study to determine the offensive interpretation. On the other hand, some apparent contradiction, once studied out, can be shown to be no contradiction at all. But I'd like to see more discussion of such things with less "my interpretation is right and yours is wrong" mindset. [...not implying that's taking place here, btw....just rambling whilst on the subject.....]

I think it entirely possible that the Lord could grant an understanding of the nature you speak to above, perhaps for your own clarification on some related topic. But elaboration of this sort seems to have little if any meaning for a general readership unless it ties in with some greater concept of benefit to the body of Christ.

In your opinion, is there some sort of tie-in to higher doctrine?

[popaface]

Nice thoughts,

I think that they're wrong. I see ancient prophets talking about the stars falling from heaven and the "Day of the Lord" imagery as the judgement felt by Israel with the destruction of the Temple.

Ancient Israelite mythology understood that the Temple represented the universe in a microchasm. Although it is well known that this temple mythology crops up in one or two post-Biblical Jewish texts most scholarship, particularly that devoted to the New Testament, has not appreciated its foundational role within Jewish practice and belief. That temples are cosmic centres and the epitmome of the world, a concentrated form of its essence, a miniature of the cosmos. It is an axiomatic element within the religious lingua franca of the ancient Near East, as important to Mesopotamian as it is to Egyptian religion. Previous generations, with a particular hermeneutical agenda, have claimed this mythology was disregarded by the pure religion of Israel. But as many recent studies have shown it is everywhere in the Old Testament and in inter-testamental and rabbinic traditions.

The idea is already expressed in the architecture of the Solomonic Temple, and the connection between the building or dedication of the Tabernacle/Temple with the New Year - either Tishri or Nisan - assumes that the erection of the cult marks the creation of the world (see 1 Kings 8:2; 12:32-33; Ezra 3:1-6; Exodus 40:2, 17). The simplest Biblical statement of the Temple's microcosmic proportions is Psalms 78:69: "He built his sanctuary like the high heavens, like the earth, which he has founded forever." Yet, I would also read the creation myths of Genesis 1 as the establishment of the cult as the liturgical and sacramental centre of worship for Israel.

The fullest and most systematic exploration of the Temple as microcosm theme is worked out in the intratextuality between the seven days of creation in Genesis 1 and God's instructions to Moses for the building of the Tabernacle in Exodus 25-31. The seven days of creation of Genesis 1 are recapitulated in the seven speeches to Moses detailing the instructios for the Tabernacle construction and its personnel (Exodus 25:1-30; 10; 30:11-16, 17-21, 22-33, 34-38; 31:1-11, 31:12-17), with the contents of each speech corresponding quite specifically to each of the seven days of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2:4). In the seventh speech Moses is told to impress upon the Israelites the importance of the Sabbath, just as God himself rested on the seventh day of Creation. The third speech stipulates the setting up of the bronze laver - that which in the Solomonic Temple is called the sea - corresponding, of course, to the separation of sea and land on the third day of Creation. In the first speech there is described Aaron's investiture and ordination. Generically, his garments (Exodus 28) are those of teh creator God himself, and it is thus not surprising that in this speech his principal duty is the tending of the menorah, the lampstand, and the offering of the Tamid sacrifices (Exodus 27:20-21; 29:38-30:8): that is, Aaron prolices the boundary between day and night, through the offering of the evening and morning sacrifices - the first boundary God establishes in Genesis 1:3-5.

It is no surprise then that in a pre-apocalyptic text such as the book of Jeremiah we find the view that the destruction of the Temple and its city means that creation is undone. In the midst of a description of the coming judgment upon Jerusalem, the king, the officials, the priest and prophets, and the whole land of Judah, Jeremiah says (4:23): I looked on the earth, behold waste and void (tohu wabohu) and to the heavens, they had no light.

The language clearly evokes that used in the priestly account of creation: with the coming destruction of Israel's institutions creation will return to the tohuwabohu and the darkness of Genesis 1:2. Did the author, and Jewish readers in antiquity, think that between the destruction of the Temple and its restoration in the sixth century creation had literally returned to the waste and void? Given the absence of a modern, scientific, historical consciousness it is possible that some in later postexilic centuries bleieved that this is what happened. But it seems more likely that most would have read this as the same kind of metaphor used by most scholars to explain the collapse of the heavenly bodies in Mark 13:24-25.

The issue here though is not that the early Christians did not interpret Jesus as the Temple incarnate, I believe that they did, and I believe that Jesus had a High-Priestly/Kingly Messianic consciousness which made it possible for people (and probably himself) to think this of him. The issue though is that no prophet in the Old Testament wrote prophecies about Jesus, and that's not to say that they weren't retroactively interpreted as such by early Christians (indeed, the canon of the Old Testament is structured in the way that gives great plausibility to these interpretations, unlike the Tanakh canon which I would argue is a different Bible). The issue is of literalizing these symbols and literary devices. The Israelites read stars and symbols, however, their greatest star and symbol was their Temple, it represented the entire universe for them. They really really felt that with the destruction of the Temple/Jerusalem the entire universe was destroyed, that the stars would fall from heavens and that the sun and moon would stop shining; creation would be undone. To read simplistic contemporary astrology into these documents in order to make them say something different is, I think, quite insulting.

Allan

[Witness2Truth]

I think it entirely possible that the Lord could grant an understanding of the nature you speak to above, perhaps for your own clarification on some related topic. But elaboration of this sort seems to have little if any meaning for a general readership unless it ties in with some greater concept of benefit to the body of Christ.

In your opinion, is there some sort of tie-in to higher doctrine?

Thanks Bernie,

Sorry for the delay in answering. I am currently on a business trip in Maine.

There is a tie-in to higher doctrine. If you look at some of the other posts that I have submitted you will gain a better understanding of how it all ties in. Jesus made reference to discerning the face of the sky when dicussing the Pharisees' request for a sign from heaven. Also, with this understanding additional prophesies are fulfilled by Jesus, namely in Psalm 22:2, and Luke 2:34.

I have an understanding that includes a mid-afternoon sunset on the day of Jesus' Crucifixion, Thursday, Nisan 14. This understanding then explains the Pharisaic traditions that came about because of this mid-afternoon sunset. Namely, leaven becoming symbolic of sin, two first days of Unleavened Bread, removal of leaven on the night before the feast of unleavened bread, etc. Also, other traditions are more clearly explained from this perspective. There is an ancient Coptic tradition of a forty hour "day" fast, which is also explained from my perspective. Another doctrinal area that is clarified is the Sabboth Day issue. I explain what Jesus meant when He said that He was Lord of the Sabboth. From my understanding, it was not the Christian church who moved the Lord's Sabboth to Sunday (Constantine), it was God who moved the first day of the week (Sunday) into the Lord's Sabboth time slot, the time of Christ's Ressurection.

The three critical errors that I write about in another post apply to the current understanding of the chronology of Holy Week held by the Body of Christ. These three critical errors do not apply to my chronology of events that happened in that Holy Week.

With the sun going down fast at first, because that is when the momentum of the earth was at its greatest, it could be taken symbolically as the Son of God nearing death and being consumed by the sea monster and settling into the belly of the whale. For just 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. This understanding shows how Jesus was buried during the three hour period of darkness, before sunset, and was in the heart of the earth first during a period of darkness (night).

If you can show where your current understanding of the chronology of Holy Week does not make any of the three critical errors of interpretation detailed in my other post, I would be most appreciative of that information. If your understanding does make any one of the three critical errors, is there any reason not to be appreciative of an understanding that does not make these critical errors, or any other error based on the standard of God's Holy Word?

As I see it, this understanding will edify the Body of Christ before His Second Coming. All denominations and faiths within the Body of Christ will need to adjust there traditional views a little bit, and see the errors each have made. The major error made by all faiths is their interpretation of the Hebrew word in Exodus 12:6 for twilight, "between the two evenings". A single word that both Christian scholars and Jewish scholars cannot agree upon its meaning. My interpretation of this one word brings about this entire new understanding of the chronology of Holy Week in a way that will bring the Body of Christ together.

In Christ's Service,

David

[Witness2Truth]

To read simplistic contemporary astrology into these documents in order to make them say something different is, I think, quite insulting.

Allan

Thank you Allan,

How can you think that they are nice thoughts, and also think that they are insulting? That seems like a contradiction.

What I think is insulting is that the Body of Christ believes that God is a liar. Jesus Christ was sinless, and without blemish. We have God's Word on that. Yet, all within the Body of Christ who accept and believe in the current understanding of the chronology of Holy Week, make God's Word in this matter null and void. Any interpretation or belief held by a Christian that makes Jesus into a sinner is unrighteous. God's Word then declares that all unrighteousness is sin. To continue walking in this sin, knowing the Truth, is insulting before God. God will be your judge, and not me.

In Christ's Service,

David

[popaface]

I'm sorry, but error of any kind does not constitute "sin" to me. If you think that people are going to be judged for being incorrect then good for you... God however created humankind in God's image as inconsistent people with imaginations, who like to write mythology and who like to imagine God in various ways.

Other than that, I'm not really sure what exactly you're saying here...

Allan

[Witness2Truth]

I'm sorry, but error of any kind does not constitute "sin" to me. If you think that people are going to be judged for being incorrect then good for you... God however created humankind in God's image as inconsistent people with imaginations, who like to write mythology and who like to imagine God in various ways.

Other than that, I'm not really sure what exactly you're saying here...

Allan


Thank you Allan,

It is also written, "Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. (NKJV James 5:19-20)

According to God's Word in James 5, "truth" and "error" are both used in the discussion of a sinner and the multitude of sins committed by a sinner. A person on a path of error (away from the path of truth) will lead to the death of their soul. However, if that person repents, turns away from their sin or error, and walks in truth, then their soul will be saved.

[popaface]

Thanks Witness2Truth,

The words "truth" and "error" stand synonymously with "saved" and "sinner" in specific contexts. However, and I'm sure that you'll agree, it was not a sin for people to believe that the world is flat just as it was not a sin for Jesus to believe so (as he probably did). What is sinful however is for people to believe something and then persecute other people for not believing it. Wouldn't you agree?

Allan

[Witness2Truth]

Thanks Witness2Truth,

The words "truth" and "error" stand synonymously with "saved" and "sinner" in specific contexts. However, and I'm sure that you'll agree, it was not a sin for people to believe that the world is flat just as it was not a sin for Jesus to believe so (as he probably did). What is sinful however is for people to believe something and then persecute other people for not believing it. Wouldn't you agree?

Allan

Yes, I agree that to persecute someone based solely on their beliefs or their unbelief is a sin. I also believe that God is the only one to judge. I also agree that it was not a sin for believing that the world was flat.

[popaface]

Yes, I agree that to persecute someone based solely on their beliefs or their unbelief is a sin. I also believe that God is the only one to judge. I also agree that it was not a sin for believing that the world was flat.

Very well then. Being wrong about something does not mean that one is wrong about everything. The same is true of course of the Bible and the Gospels. These are narratives which each should be read and understood as narrative in their own right primarily, not intrinsically dependant upon one another for a possible meaning. And reading them in light of one another should not be done in order to read a harmoneous narrative free from self-contradiction, read the Diatesseron to get a clearer understanding of how these texts were read as one continuous narrative, this is one possible way of reading the text.

Allan