"Miraculous sign-But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah"

²In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.

³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

⁵Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"

⁶Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (At this point in world history, If those words, "I am the way,.... the truth..... and the life" don't send a shiver up the back of our necks, and bring Holy Ghost "goose bumps" all over our bodies.....as well as cause tears of pure joy to well up in our eyes, then I don't know whatever will....!!!!)

John......Here is the story, below, that initially quickened my spirit about the verse in Matthew 12, where Jesus talked about the "sign of the prophet Jonah" and that, in turn, led me to connect the whale's "migration" article, that I just HAPPENED to see in the news, with the story of the 33 Chilean miners beginning to be rescued TONIGHT.....!!!! (migrate: to move from one country, place, or locality to another.......just like when His bride will abruptly change locations, from this earthly realm, to our heavenly home, to be with our King......kind of migration...wouldn't you say, John....???)

This whale reportedly traveled a little over 6,000 (interesting number, 6,000, again, wouldn't you say?) miles, from Brazil, to Madagascar before ending her "journey" to her NEW HOME. The question is, has His "bride" ended HER journey after roughly 6,000 years on this "earthly basin"..? Please read the article below about this whale's journey......in fact, here is the last paragraph of the story.....with some pretty amazing similarities/metaphors relating to our soon "journey" home, with some Scriptures that seem pretty appropriate, given this whale's amazing migration story.

"But the real reasons for the whale's impressive trek (journey) remain a "mystery." (⁵¹Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵²In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed) The female could have been following prey, exploring new breeding habitats, responding to distant calls, (¹After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking (calling) to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.") or simply wandering astray. "We generally think of humpback whales as very well studied, but then they surprise us with things like this," Palacios says. "Undoubtedly there are a lot of things we still don't know about whale migration."

Humpback whale breaks migration record

A humpback whale has set a distance record by migrating from Brazil to Madagascar.Brandon Cole/naturepl.com

A lone female humpback whale traveled more than 9,800 kilometers from breeding areas in Brazil to those in Madagascar, setting a record for the longest mammal migration ever documented.

Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are known to have some of the longest migration distances of all mammals (but see slideshow showing other notable migrations), and this huge trek is about 400 kilometers farther than the previous humpback record. The finding, by Peter Stevick, a biologist at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, and his colleagues, is published today in the journal Biology Letters¹.

The whale's journey was unusual not only for its length, but also because it spanned an ocean basin, multiple breeding zones and almost 90 degrees of longitude. Typically, humpbacks move between high-latitude feeding areas and low-latitude breeding grounds, without much variation in longitude â€” and the longest journeys recorded until now have been between breeding and feeding sites. What's more, those that travel the farthest are usually males, whereas females are generally very loyal to their breeding sites. "The main take-home message is that the movement patterns of these animals are messier and less constrained than we tend to think," says Stevick.

Whale tail

The whale in question was first spotted off the coast of Brazil, where researchers photographed its tail fluke, took skin-biopsy samples and used chromosome testing to determine the animal's sex. Two years later, in 2001, a tourist on a whale-watching boat snapped a photo of the humpback near Madagascar.

The whale's tail fluke was spotted off Madagascar.Freddy Johansen

To match the two sightings, Stevick's team relied on an extensive international catalogue of photographs of the undersides of flukes, which have distinctive markings. Researchers routinely compare the markings in each new photograph to those in the archive.

The scientists then estimated the animal's shortest possible route: an arc skirting the southern tip of South Africa and heading northeast towards Madagascar. The minimum distance is 9,800 kilometers, says Stevick, but this is likely to be an underestimate, because the whale probably took a detour to feed on krill in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica before reaching its destination.

No fluke

Most humpback-whale researchers focus their efforts on the Northern Hemisphere because the Antarctic is a hostile environment that is hard to get to, Constantine explains. But, for whales, oceans in the Southern Hemisphere are more expansive and amenable to unobstructed travel, says Rochelle Constantine, who studies the ecology of humpback whales at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Scientists will probably observe more long-distance migrations in the Southern Hemisphere as satellite tagging becomes increasingly common, she adds.

Daniel Palacios, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, says that the record-breaking journey could indicate that migration patterns are shifting as populations begin to recover from near-extinction. Behaviors often change as population densities grow; for instance, animals may disperse to avoid competition for food, he says.

But the real reasons for the whale's impressive trek remain a mystery. The female could have been following prey, exploring new breeding habitats, responding to distant calls, or simply wandering astray. "We generally think of humpback whales as very well studied, but then they surprise us with things like this," Palacios says. "Undoubtedly there are a lot of things we still don't know about whale migration."