Miracles

In Rychen's Sunday School lesson last week, he posed a simple question: Do miracles still happen today? He went on to conjecture that, although people say we don't have dramatic miracles such as parting the red sea, that these things do happen--if we were to compile the journals of the faithful saints in our ward, we would indeed have a modern book of miracles, akin to the Old and New Testaments.

This was a very brief portion of the lesson. I really wish we could have opened it up to experiences and testimonies. But it got me thinking.

We see the grand miracles in the Bible only because somebody witnessed it and wrote it down, and it was published for worldwide distribution. That doesn't mean miracles were unique to that time period; it only means they beat the odds and were publicized.

Are miracles publicized today? I doubt the media cares very much. They have already made it clear they don't care about God. When they do publicize miracles, they take liberties and change the story, or they dress it up like a Supernatural Phenomenon rather than a sacred experience with a personal, loving Father. Lately we have seen some nice stories on websites such as Upworthy, and I appreciate that.

Before you can publicize something, you have to witness it. Are miracles witnessed by a large audience? Or are they personal, private?

And before you witness a miracle, you have to recognize and admit that you did in fact see a miracle. How many of us give God credit when unexplainable things happen? When a spontaneous healing happens, the doctors usually call it just that - spontaneous - and will not acknowledge the Almighty in His handiwork.

Actually, forget unexplainable. Because that is precisely the problem now.  - Just because we have obtained the scholasticism to explain natural phenomena doesn't mean it's not God's work. There are INCREDIBLE things happening every second in this world, things that would absolutely ASTOUND someone living in Moses' time. What do you think their reaction would be, if you had a conversation with them and then the next day, replayed that exact conversation in the exact voices with identical intonation, for them to hear again, repeatedly? Or if you could pull up somebody from the other side of the world on a screen for them to have a conversation with? Or if you could put them in a metal vehicle which would then ascend up to 40,000 feet and fly at 500 miles per hour? 

Was walking on the Moon an act of God? Or just some really smart scientists?

It's naive to give man the credit for these modern miracles, and I will tell you why. If you look at the progression of history, let's call it the Evolution of man, it should follow an even, predictable rate of improvement. And yet it does not. For almost six thousand years (or many, many more if you are not a believer) Man barely evolved at all. Maybe he learned how to plant things and harvest, Big Whoop. And then suddenly something miraculous and unexpected, and indescribable happened in the 1500's and for the next 500 years, civilized world would never be the same again. Innovation and enlightenment has happened at phenomenal, exponential rates. At first, maybe every 50 years, a big new idea or discovery would come. Then every 30 years. Then in the 1900's it was every 5-10 years. And then in the 21st century, we see incredible inventions we couldn't have fathomed - new ones coming out almost every single day!!

I saw in a catalog a device you can hook up to yourself while you sleep, and it will record your dreams. Then when you wake up you can watch your dreams again.  That just blows me away. But forget about the most modern devices. I am still amazed with the tape recorder from 1970. It just blows my mind that something invisible - audio sound - can be captured and preserved to hear again and again. I will never get over that.

But if you're still hung up over Joshua and that wall, wanting to see God fighting our enemies on our behalf, protecting his people from physical danger, look no further than this week's news.

http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/08/hand-of-god-sent-missile-into-sea/

But in conclusion, the biggest miracle of all is not an invention, is not a tangible metal object. I was having a conversation about miracles with my friend and how miracles should not be necessary for a spiritual conversion. We are converted when we feel the Holy Ghost work on our hearts and give us a desire to be a new person. This unseen process can happen to anybody, in any culture, at any age, solicited or not. There are some amazing stories of criminals who have come to Christ. Who have laid down their previous carnal desires and addictions, and have risen to something clean, something with purpose and meaning, and have a new desire to choose good works and give their whole life to a cause greater than themselves. And that change of heart is precisely the biggest, grandest, most important miracle of all. If you witness no other miracle in your lifetime, let that be the one that you experience first hand.