Beside the Sea of Galilee, Jesus called working fishermen into a new kind of catch—and the invitation still sounds like “Come, follow me.”
One simple fact
According to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee when He saw two brothers, Simon (called Peter) and Andrew, casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. He invited them to follow Him and become “fishers of men.” They left their nets at once. A little farther on He called James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were in a boat with their father mending nets; they too left the boat and their father and followed Him. Read the full scene in the NIV on Bible Gateway.
Jesus' own words
“Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Today’s Words of Jesus quote: Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Historical backdrop
First-century Galilee was a working lake culture. In 1986, during a drought that exposed the lakebed near Kibbutz Ginosar, brothers Yuval and Moshe Lopen found a wooden fishing boat about eight meters long. Archaeologists dated it to roughly the time of Jesus; it is displayed at the Yigal Allon Center as the only surviving vessel of its kind from that shore. The museum notes it comes from the Magdala–Ginosar area where fishermen lived and worked in the Gospels. See the Center’s page on the Ancient Boat. Nearby Magdala (Taricheae) was a major salted-fish hub: excavations have uncovered a long harbor with mooring stones, hundreds of fishing weights, and dozens of pools—evidence that commercial fishing shaped daily life on that shore. Overview from the Biblical Archaeology Society: The Fishy Secret to Ancient Magdala’s Economic Growth.
Against that real world of nets, boats, and salted fish, Jesus’ call to make “fishers of men” was not abstract poetry—it was a vocational image His hearers already knew with their hands.
A firsthand encounter
Cherie M. reports that in 2000 she was shot point-blank in the right temple with a .22 handgun. She could hear but was paralyzed and blind; then she describes being drawn through a dark tunnel toward light. At the light, she says, there was Jesus—“It wasn’t visual but there was no disputing who it was.” He took her by the hand. They walked hand in hand for what felt like a time without time; the peace, she writes, was beyond conception. She did not want to return. Jesus told her that only He has to choose, and it was not her time. She came back into pain on the couch, later underwent two craniotomies, and was walking within thirty days. She says she has been on a spiritual quest since, and that meeting Jesus—not only praying to God in the abstract—became the most meaningful part of the experience. Reported on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation: Cherie M NDE 3931.
Jesus told fishermen to leave their nets and follow Him. Cherie’s account, told in her own words, is another kind of call answered: a hand taken, a walk with Him, and a life sent back with purpose.