Of Note in John 21:6

"And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes."

We see here an unnumbered "multitude" of fishes. This is the latter rain "multitude" which no man can number. True, the number 153 comes out once they get to shore, but that is only once they get to shore, which likely is a picture of heaven at the end of time, when the true exact number of believers will finally be revealed.

One other curious thing, though. The verse says "and *now* they were not able to draw". What does this mean? God does the drawing, does He not? After all, we read in John 6:44, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. "

So what does the "now" mean in John 21:6? Well, I do not think it implies that prior to that the discples were, in themselves, able to draw anyone to salvation. There are thus two possibilities I can think of. One, the word "now" draws our attention to the concept of *time*. Prophetically the passsage points to the Latter Rain era, which, of course is an era of time. Another possibility is that in the church age, given the churches' visible structure and given the fact that the visible and invible churches were then so intertwined, there was the *appearance* in the church age of believers doing the drawing. It could be that God is calling our attention to the fact that believers never were the ones doing the drawing despite the outward appearance of doing so that the church exhibited.

This latter possibility is given some weight when we consider the presence of Christ on the shore. He, after all, was the one who instructed the disciples to cast off the right side of the ship. And then, once Christ was explicitly recognized, His presence drew everyone to shore, as emphasized by Peter's jumping into the water.

Well, there are probably a good number of readers out there who know this passage a lot better than I do. As always, I welcome input and correction from the Bible.

John 21:1-6

For a long time I have found this passage curious. I have understood for some time now the reference to ploirarion (Strongs 4142) in verse 8 to refer to the believers outside the churches after the end of the church age.

But I have long puzzled about the reference to "the right side of the ship" back in verse 6. This is a slightly different greek work, ploion (Strongs #4143), in the Bible is used as a figure of the visible church in the church age. Yet, here in John 21:6 the disciples are commanded to cast their nets of the right side of the ploion (4143), and they ensnared a great number of fish.

How could it be that the visible church is somehow involved in a latter rain evangelistic haul?

The key is the phrase "right side", I believe. The word "right" has to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the "right side of the ship" means that the Bible is now focusing on the *invisible* church. This reference provides the transition between the end of the church age, or the "night" in which the disciples caught no fish from the visible church (ploion (4143)), and latter rain, pointed to by "the morning", in which the "little ship" (ploirarion (4142)) enabled the catch to be brought ashore.