{"id":111,"date":"2011-06-03T12:41:12","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T16:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/isittheendoftheworld\/?p=111"},"modified":"2011-06-03T12:41:12","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T16:41:12","slug":"something-fishy-in-jaffa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/isittheendoftheworld\/2011\/06\/something-fishy-in-jaffa.html","title":{"rendered":"Something fishy in Jaffa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, my son and I went to the old port city of Jaffa, just south of Israel&#8217;s modern city of Tel Aviv. The place, of course, is famous for a lot of things, including visits by Alexander the Great and Napolean.<\/p>\n<p>It is however most famous as the location for a famous Bible story: Jonah and the &#8220;great fish.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Standing on the dock, I watched Israeli boaters head out to sea and I was reminded of the critics and the scoffers who allege that Jonah was not a real person; after all, the whole thing about a whale swallowing the reluctant preacher is too fantastic to believe, right?<\/p>\n<p>Yet we believe in alien life, of which there isn&#8217;t a shred of evidence. So many want to believe it, fervently hope it is true. But miracles in the Bible are tamped-down and\/or ridiculed.<\/p>\n<p>There are marvelous reasons for believing that the Bible is exactly what it claims to be and that the historical records hold up to scrutiny. We&#8217;ll talk about those in the days and weeks and months to come.<\/p>\n<p>For now, I am glad I was able to visit old Jaffa, the city of Jonah.<\/p>\n<p>I believe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, my son and I went to the old port city of Jaffa, just south of Israel&#8217;s modern city of Tel Aviv. The place, of course, is famous for a lot of things, including visits by Alexander the Great and Napolean. It is however most famous as the location for a famous Bible story: Jonah&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Something fishy in Jaffa - Is it the End of the World?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/isittheendoftheworld\/2011\/06\/something-fishy-in-jaffa.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Something fishy in Jaffa - Is it the End of the World?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today, my son and I went to the old port city of Jaffa, just south of Israel&#8217;s modern city of Tel Aviv. 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