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John 21:11 Simon Peter Got Back Into The Boat ...
Contributed by Denn Guptill on Oct 31, 2000 (message contributor)
John 21:11 Simon Peter got back into the boat and dragged the net to shore. In it were one hundred fifty-three large fish, but still the net did not rip. If you’ve ever read this passage did you ever wonder about the significance of the 153 fish. No, well others have. Cyril of Alexandria said that the 100 represented the fullness of the gentiles, the 50 symbolized the remnant of Israel and the three of course was there for the Trinity.
Augustine’s theory was that there are 10 commandments and 7 is the perfect number of grace and that’s 17 right? Now if you add all the numbers from 1 to 17 together, you know 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 all the way up to 17 you’ll get 153. And not only that but if you were to arrange them like this with 17 fish in the first row, and 16 in the next row, and 15 in the next row you get a perfect triangle which of course symbolizes the Trinity.
Jerome, suggested that there were 153 different types of fish in the sea and it was symbolic of the church reaching all the people in the world. Personally I have my own theory, want to hear it? I think that it’s mentioned because there were 153 fish in the net.
I have a reason, they had to divide them somehow, and so Peter being the Skipper he got 21% or 32 fish, and John being mate got 16% that’s 25 fish, and the other five got 10.5 % each or 16 fish. You see we can get so caught up in really trivial stuff and miss the fact that we need to be obedient to Christ, today. When Peter saw Jesus he was willing to come back to the present and to leave the past behind him. We need to recognize that Jesus is here today, November 21st 1999. Not yesterday, or last month or last year but here today. GET IT???????
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