Christ’s Kingdom of God Fishing Net, Some Spiritual Analogies

In Matthew 3:1-17 is the account of John the Baptist’s ministry, which shed a great light in preparation for Jesus Christ’s ministry at his first coming, preparing the general population’s hearts and minds for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and their entry into the early New Testament Church of God right after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Matthew 3:3, “For this is he that was spoken of by Esaias [Isaiah], saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make his paths straight.” In fishing terms (and Jesus called mostly fishermen from Galilee as his apostles), the light John’s ministry shed attracted many spiritual fish into his fishing net, so to speak. “Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region around Jordan, and were baptized of him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.” (Matthew 3:5-6) As Jesus said in a Kingdom parable, and this applies to the net John just cast, drawing many fish to his baptismal net, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world [age]: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire…” (Matthew 13:47-50) As you can see, John’s ministry of light attracted many good fish, they were the ones getting baptized, allowing their hearts to be prepared, making their paths to God straight. But John noticed in his catch a bunch of fish that we’d have to classify as “bad fish,” dogfish (Sand Shark, Squalus acanthias), hagfish and scaleless eel, caught in his net too, which he immediately went about verbally to cast from his net. Notice how John does this, casting them out of his net verbally, he doesn’t mince words. “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” (Matthew 3:7-10) (In 70AD these discarded “bad fish” were destroyed, these bad fish John cast out, many burned alive in the raging fires the Roman soldiers set in Jerusalem.) Now let’s fast-forward to the present. If the present-day Body of Christ is to be an Elijah/John the Baptist work, preparing a people for the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ, it will also shed a great light and attract many good fish into God’s fishing net, but it will also attract its share of spiritual dogfish, Squalus acanthias, hagfish and inedible eel, which if they don’t bear good fruit, as time runs out, the angels as Jesus said, will sever the wicked from among the just in the fires of World War III.

Matthew Continues This Theme In Matthew 4

Following right along with this theme of fishing in darkness, at night, with lights, then in Matthew 4:12-25 Matthew related how Jesus shed a lot of light into the Galilee area when his ministry started, spiritual light via his teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Gospel everywhere, and healing countless people: “the people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region of the shadow of death light is sprung up.” and “healing all manner of disease among the people…and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils [demons, demonic possession], and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.” (Matthew 4:16, 23-24) Let’s see how Jesus defines “light,” the spiritual light he shone into the darkness in the Galilee region, and the light he said we are supposed to shine into this dark world, for it directly follows what he was doing here, and it wasn’t just through his preaching. Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” In this very account in Matthew 4:12-25, Jesus calls four fishermen from Galilee to be his disciples, and later apostles, Andrew, Peter, two brothers, and John and James, another two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, a father-son fishing family which sold its fish in Jerusalem, as archaeologists have discovered. He is showing them now how to shed light into the dark world humanity lives in, and how to fish those waters, with the light of good works, accompanied by the preaching of the Gospel. The two go hand-in-hand.