'MIRACLES ARE MIRACULOUS' BY PASTOR GREG ELKAN.

Many of the miracles we have read in the Bible – some since children Sunday School times – are not as simple as they may first appear. In fact, upon closer inspection, some of them are so astoundingly extraordinary, that we may actually begin to doubt that they actually occurred. 

Take the classic _‘Sun-Stands-Still-For-Joshua’_ miracle, for example. Jos 10:12-14 tells us that Joshua prayed for the Sun to stand still and _“the Sun stood still, and the Moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.”_ Well, we know now that it’s the Earth, not the Sun, that rotates each day; so for the Sun to stop ‘moving’ for Joshua meant the Earth stopped rotating. Think about the implication of that for a moment: the Earth rotates at a speed of 472 metres per second, that’s about four times faster than the fastest car in the world! Hitting the brakes at that speed will send everything on Earth flying eastward at the speed of an atomic blast. Titanic tidal waves would sweep more than 27Km inland and all the oceans would merge into two super oceans at the poles leaving only one massive supercontinent along the equator!

Or what about Jesus’s miracle of turning water into wine (Jn 2:1-11).  Water is made up of 2 elements – hydrogen and oxygen, wine, on the other hand contains several dozen elements combined to form over 500 compounds – elements not found in water, even very dirty water! So, it seems Jesus split the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen in the water down to their constituent elementary particles and rearranged the particles to form the required elements – _before_ proceeding to make the wine. 😲

The amount of astronomic and chemical processes that God performed for the above two miracles (respectively) are so mind-bogglingly complex that it takes scientists with PhDs to truly appreciate them. So, did these miracles really occur? Of course they did. Doubting whether they happened _now_ that you understand the implications means you miss the whole point of miracles. Miracles are, by definition, miraculous. They don’t have to make sense and you don’t have to understand the process! 

Don’t let the difficulty (from your perspective) of your current situation limit your faith. And don’t try to understand _how_ it will happen. Your job is to ask, and it’s God’s glory to do it…

“For with God nothing shall be impossible.”* – Lk 1:37  

AMEN

GREG ELKAN.