Miracles

Albert Einstein. When you say that name, that's one of the most recognized names in the world, especially in the scientific community, but even outside the scientific community. Everybody in the scientific community knows him, but Albert Einstein, one of the most brilliant physicists ever said this. Quote, either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle. That bears repeating. Either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle. Now, in the compact Oxford English Dictionary for the definition of miracle, here's one definition, an extraordinary and welcome event believed to be the work of God.

An extraordinary and welcome event believed to be the work of God. Now, in light of Einstein's statement and this definition in the compact Oxford English Dictionary, all creation is a living miracle. All creation is a series of miracles. All creation is full of miracles. Life itself is a miracle. Life itself is sustained through an unending series of miracles. My subject title, All, can be summed up in one word, miracles. Because that's what I'm talking about today, miracles. Miracles always get people's attention, don't they? Einstein, a brilliant physicist. Either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle.

A physicist, one who studied and he was supremely expert in the laws of physics. Take the creation. Now, here we are today. You're sitting and I'm standing. You feel like you're sitting still and I feel like I'm standing still. I'm moving a little bit, you know, but we're basically still, aren't we? Or at least it feels like we are.

But it's an illusion because we're not sitting still. We are in one sense, but in another sense we're not because the Earth that we live on at the equator is spinning, traveling, spinning at 1,000 miles per hour. That's a lot of speed. We're spinning at 1,000 miles per hour. And you think, hmm, well that's an interesting fact. Well, it is, but it's more than just an interesting fact because the creation, which is made by the Creator, was put together to where life itself is a series of miracles. Now, why not 900 miles per hour?

Why not 1,500 miles per hour? Why 1,000? Because, see, if the Earth spins too slow, then the surface gets exposed on any particular place you, you know, basically you want to pick, especially around the equator and north. You get up to the North Pole and the South Pole, you get a little bit of variance, obviously there's a difference there. But the Earth as a planet, if it spins too slow, it absorbs too much of the sun and it scorches.

Burns it up. Couldn't have any life here. Gets too hot. It's in the sun too long, so to speak. If it goes too fast, the land is not exposed to the sun long enough to absorb enough heat and it's too cold. It's interesting, with day and night, the Earth is exposed to the sun just the right amount of time to, during the day, absorb the right amount of heat for life and during the night to lose enough to be properly cool. But it's just the right amount of exposure for both heat absorption and loss. And if you were to speed the planet up, it would get too hot.

If you were to slow it down, it would get too cold. But then there's another aspect of it not sitting still. Even as the Earth is spinning, the Earth as a planet is traveling through space in an expanding universe. We're able to measure that the universe is expanding. So even in that sense, too, as a side note, the Earth is not still. And we're not still. Okay. The Earth is spinning.

We're moving basically at a thousand miles per hour. Things that spin generate centrifugal force. We all know about centrifugal force. When I was in Fairview University, which was grade 1 through 9, that's how some of the folks back there referred to it, tongue in cheek. When I was on the playground, we had a merry-go-round. It was a pretty big, heavy-duty merry-go-round. But one of the games that the boys liked to play is have somebody on the merry-go-round, and it had the outer ring, and, you know, all these spaces for kids to stand and spin.

But so many boys would get around it, and they would hang on, but they'd be on the ground, and they'd start running to get the merry-go-round going. And the person up there on it, you know, they had to get a tighter and tighter grip because the centrifugal force you spin, the merry-go-round, and it wants to pull you off. The centrifugal force wants to take you off.

But that wasn't nearly the challenge as what we call the strides, S-T-R-I-D-E-S, the strides. I guess it's more like a Maypole. There was a center pole metal, and at the top of it there was this big ring attached, and hanging off of that ring all the way around were chains with a handle. And the idea was three or four, five kids would step up next to the pole on the little concrete circle that was on, and they would grab the pole with their left hand, and they would grab the stride chain with their right, and they'd start walking around and get to moving faster and faster.

And you'd have one kid that had both hands on a stride chain, and you're going to lift him off of the pad. As you got around and you built up centrifugal force, his feet would come off of the pad, and he would stretch out a little bit. And it was fun, as long as that was the full measure of it. I got one small kid on there, and kids can be cruel.

I got one small kid on there, and they lifted him off the pad, and they put him out almost parallel to the ground.

And, of course, he couldn't hang on with the centrifugal force that was trying to pull him off, and he started screaming for him to let him down, and they just laughed more and more. And all of a sudden, his grip broke because he couldn't hang on, and he went flying feet first, parallel to the ground, and quickly connected, though, with the ground, and it was gravel.

No broken bones, not seriously hurt, lost some skin, but I don't think they were ever able to get him back on the strides again. So we're familiar with centrifugal force, and there happens to be a little thing called gravity. Here's the spinning earth, and things that spin generate centrifugal force. You have to have something that even scientists cannot fully explain what gravity is. We know it works. You jump off of anything, you're not going up, you're going down. But gravity holds us to the planet.

It's an interesting thing. But how could you have life without it? Now, on Friday nights, that is the one time that as a regular habit, it's become a tradition, we get to talk with our son, Lauren, down in Australia. Of course, it's so much better than just putting a phone to the ear. You have Skype, you have these video chats, you're able to see the person and they can see you. And I have kidded Lauren about, okay, Lauren, as we're talking, Lauren, your head's pointed the other way from mine. We're pointed in opposite directions. If the earth weren't between us, the soles of our feet would touch each other because he is exactly opposite to me. And yet we're both standing on the earth, neither one of us is falling off. People refer to Australia as down under, but, you know, he's just as much planted and glued to the earth by gravity as I am. Where would we be without it? Take light. Take photosynthesis. Life on this planet is based on...life is based on light and photosynthesis.

Plants grow, and you'll notice a lot of times plants will even grow or lean towards the light many times. But life on our planet is based on photosynthesis, which is based on light from the sun. You block that, you block the ability to keep life going on this planet. Now, I grew up in the shadow of the bomb. I grew up at a time when the Cold War was going on and the fear of all-out nuclear war. And if those of you who grew up during that time also, you know the concerns weren't just what would happen with the direct nuclear explosions and all. That itself would be enough. But even for those, quote, nations that survived nuclear war, their days were numbered because all-out nuclear war would so darken the skies with debris and junk and all that the light from the sun couldn't get through. And so the plants that are dependent for light would die, and our whole food chain is based on plants and light and photosynthesis. We would have what was called nuclear winter. And so the planet would die, whoever did survive, would die off during that time. You know, when it says in Matthew, I'm not going to turn there. I'll turn to some scriptures in a little bit. But in Matthew 24, verses 21 and 22, when it talks about a time coming that except those days be cut short, there'd be no life saved.

We will have a nuclear situation someday and allowed to run its full course. There'd be no life on this planet. None left. But Christ will cut those days short by returning. But let's go back to light. You know, in light, you step out into the sunlight, and light just looks clear. And it is, but at the same time, that light has all the colors in it. And all you have to do is have a prism that breaks down, separates the wavelengths of light, and you get all the colors. What do we think a rainbow is? It's not that, you know, somehow, all of a sudden, there's color put into the sky to paint the rainbow. The rainbow is simply a natural way with the moisture to take the colors that make up clear light, separate those wavelengths, and show up those colors. But here's something interesting about color. The hottest color is blue. Where do you see the most blue? It's the sky. It's diffused in the atmosphere. The next hottest color is green. What's the most common color of vegetation? Plants, trees, and all. It's green. The next hottest color is diffused in the grass and the trees and such. Now, we're also, as life beings that God's created, biologically, you and I, we, life is based on water. You know, your body, my body, is about two-thirds water. And, you know, somebody says you're all wet. Well, they might be accurate. But take water. Water, well, let me go back to heat and cold. What happens when things get hot? They expand. What happens when things get cold? They shrink. I shrink in the wintertime. My ring gets loose. But I go on the scales and say, I can't tell that I've shrunk. But my ring gets loose. My watch gets loose on my wrist. Well, I know my blood's going deeper in the body and I don't have as much surface blood. I understand that. That's why I can feel warm, but my hands be cold or feel cold.

So, what you find in physics is that when things get hot, they expand. When they get cold, they contract. That's true with everything except water. When water gets cold, when water freezes, it expands. It doesn't shrink. Now, that's interesting. Well, why would that be the exception? Okay, you've got a lake. That lake has fish in it. It's got marine life. So, the water starts freezing and it's going to freeze at the top. Right. I mean, that's the exposure. It's going to freeze. And let's say it does the normal thing that normal things do. It shrinks. It gets a little smaller. It contracts. Well, it's going to then sink. Water's going to come above it. It's going to freeze. It's going to shrink. It's going to keep settling until the lake is a solid block of ice and kills the life in it. But, water doesn't do that. It doesn't follow the regular laws of physics on that.

It expands. So, as the surface freezes, it reaches out and expands and holds the shoreline, the bank, and it forms a cover. I have seen pictures of the Tennessee River at Huntsville, Alabama, back in the, maybe the 40s, 30s or 40s, where the river froze over so solid, people drove cars out onto the river. So, we've had some cold times in the South. But, of course, that's unusual, obviously. But, anyhow, God planned that in order to preserve life in the ponds, in the lakes, in the rivers, etc. But it doesn't fit the norm. It's outside the norm. It's kind of extraordinary. Well, take this planet that we're on. This globe, on its axis, is not straight up and down. It has a 23.5 degree tilt to it. Now, I'm going to present this from the perspective of the Northern Hemisphere. This is the hemisphere we live in, the northern part of the planet, the northern hemisphere, the northern half. Okay. 23.5 degree tilt of the Earth on its axis. Now, keep in mind, it spins at a certain speed. Not only that, and it's the right speed, but it has this tilt. That's how we get the seasons. The tilt is what gives us the seasons. Down here in Georgia, we might say, during a hot summer, boy, it is hot! I'll be glad when cooler weather comes. Well, in the summertime, when we get the hottest, this Earth we're on is the furthest away from the sun. The Earth moves in its orbit around the sun. It takes one year. In the summer, when it's hot here, the Earth is the furthest away. In mid-summer, it's the furthest away from the sun in its orbit. But because the 23.5 degree tilt, the Northern Hemisphere is pointed at the sun. We're pointed at the sun. Now, in the wintertime, which we're in right now, we are actually the closest to the sun. But here in the Northern Hemisphere, we're pointed away from the sun. These simple things, these simple calculations that no human did are necessary in order to have life on this planet. Either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle. Okay, the immensity of the universe. I have to exercise self-control when somebody says, Oh, we're going to explore space. I have to make sure that I keep control and don't laugh at them. We're going to explore space. Do they not have any comprehension of the immensity of the universe? You and I, we live in the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy, and I'm only going to deal with the Milky Way galaxy. It is a little galaxy. It's basically like an oval. The Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years long, and it's about 10,000 light years across. So 100,000 light years long, 10,000 light years across. Now, what is a light year? A light year is a full year. It's a full year, but it's the distance that light can travel in that year. So today is January 22nd. A light year would be how far light can travel from today till January 22nd, 2023. That's what a light year is. A light... Here's the speed of light. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second.

186,000 miles per second. Light can circle the earth several times in one second. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi. That alone is almost beyond comprehension that for each second that's in a whole year, light's traveling at 186,000 miles. Now, let's just start in the very center of the galaxy. And by being in the very center of the galaxy, we're going to exit it just on the narrow side. If I'm in the center of that 10,000 light years wide heart, I can go 5,000 light years that way, or I can go 5,000 light years this way and be out of the galaxy.

If you could create a spaceship that could move at the speed of light, which there's no such thing, but if you could, if you could create a spaceship that could move at the speed of light, you could put an astronaut on that spaceship. He would only have to live, he would only have to be or live 5,000 years, reaching all the way back to before the new Asian flood. See, if light, light crossing from the center out, light that would have started, let's say, in the days of Enoch, it would take all the way up to now and probably a little beyond just to get out of our Milky Way.

This is why it's such a joke. Mortal Man, Mortal Man, Mortal Man has no way to explore space other than whatever it means he can with telescopes. And the closest star is Alpha Centauri, and if you were to go out to our closest star and point, let's say, our most powerful telescope back towards Earth from our closest star, Earth would just be a speck of dust against the backdrop of space.

God's handiwork is present all around us, and it's a fact that you can't get away from miracles. Romans 1.20 His handiworks are present all around us, you can't get away from miracles. Romans 1.20 And this is why Paul wrote, he said, Even his eternal power and Godhead, the tremendous magnitude beyond our ability to fully grasp of his power to create all this and sustain it so that they're without excuse. They're without excuse for saying, there's no God. One of our members over in Gaston, when he sends out emails, when he emails me, he tags this onto it. I don't know if he wrote it or it's from someone else. I don't know the source of it.

But he tags onto his emails this saying, Someone sent me a cartoon titled, Atheist Logic. It shows this atheist standing in front of this tremendously beautiful architectural wonder of a building. He says, This building is a marvel of architectural design. And then the next frame shows him in a museum, and looks like it's Mona Lisa. This painting shows a mastery of technique. And then the next frame shows him under the hood of a car, looking at the engine, and he says, This engine is a real piece of sophisticated engineering.

And then the final frame shows him out in God's creation. There's geese, wild geese flying over. There's clouds, there's a waterfall, there's all this greenery, there's all this life, there's all this beauty. And he says, Clearly, no one made any of this. Idiot. See, you can't get away from miracles. A little boy was sitting on a park bench with his hand, one hand resting on an open Bible, and he was loudly exclaiming his praise to God. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great! He yelled, without worrying whether anybody heard him or not. Well, shortly after, along came a man who had recently completed some studies at a local university.

And, feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy. Hey, asked the boy with the right smile, don't you have any idea what God is able to do?

I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle. Well, the enlightened man, he laughed lightly and sat down next to the boy and began to try to open his eyes to the realities of the miracles of the Bible.

He said, that can all be easily explained. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red Sea in that area was only ten inches deep at the time. Why, it was no problem for the Israelites to wade across.

The boy was stomped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible, laying open in his lap. The man, content that he had enlightened this poor, naive young person to the finer points, a scientific insight, got up and turned to go. Scarcely had he taken two steps before the boy began to rejoice and praise God louder than ever, the man turned back to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation. Wow! exclaimed the boy happily. God is greater than I thought. Not only did he lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, he topped it off by drowning the whole Egyptian army in ten inches of water.

Kind of says it all, doesn't it? One day, and you might have heard about this one, one day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell God that they were done with him. The scientist walked up to God and said, God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go and get lost? God listened very patiently to the man, and after the scientist was done talking, God said, very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making contest. The scientist replied, okay, great. But God added, now we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam. The scientist said, well, sure, no problem. And the scientist bent down and grabbed a handful of dirt. God looked at him and said, no, you get your own dirt.

That, too, is a creation of God. Either everything is a miracle or nothing is. Life itself is a miracle. Notice with me Acts 17 and Acts 17. Mars Hill, the Acropolis, all the philosophers, Paul showing up there and springboarding off of their altar to the unknown God. Acts 17. And verse 28. In this discourse, this message, and in kind of a type of sermon to them, Paul says in Acts 17 and verse 28, he says, for in him we live and we move and we have our being. Now, I want you to think about what he is saying here. In him, in his power, his maintenance, his sustaining, his miraculous wonders, in him, in God. And we'll explore this just a little bit further in a moment. In him, we live. We have our living. Yet we have an earth that spins at the right speed. It's tilted the right way. Life can be sustained on the planet. We have food that's plant-based, that is dependent on light from the sun, photosynthesis and all. And we move. You ever see them on, in what we call space, beyond the envelope of the earth out there so far, space shuttles and others, where they're floating around in the vehicle? How would you move without gravity? How would you have control over movements without gravity? What is gravity? We know it works. We know how it works. We just don't know fully exactly what it is, but obviously we're very thankful for it. Somehow, some way, it's a form of energy, and a certain way to make life possible.

We live. In him we live and move and have our being, our existence. And then verse 25, he tells him, "...neither is worship with men's hands as though he needed anything, seeing he," God, gives to all life. We're all called and uncalled, converted in carnal. We're all dependent for life on the life-sustaining systems. He gives to all life and breath and all things. I'm not going to go back to Daniel, but in talking to the king back there where Daniel told him, speaking of God, he said, "...and the God in whose hand your breath is." Now, I'm going to reference these. I'm not going to turn to these. Colossians 1.16. Colossians 1.16, in talking about Christ, who was the Word, the Word who became Christ, the preexistent, ever-existing One, it says, "...by him were all things created." By him was everything created, the planet, the arrangement, everything. It was created by him. And it says in verse 17 of that chapter that he is before all things, and by him all things consist or they exist. Now, over in the book of Hebrews, and again, I'm just going to reference these, Hebrews 1.3, in Hebrews 1.3, you find this reference, upholding all things, upholding, underpinning it, being the support of it, the sustaining of it, upholding all things by the Word of His power. And then Hebrews 11, the faith chapter, Hebrews 11, the faith chapter, verse 3, you would find this statement, "...so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." They were made from something, but they weren't made from something that appears to us. In other words, even the things that we see are made from the invisible, they're made from energy. God knows how to create in a way to contain energy and matter. It's for a temporary time.

But the things that are made came from God, His Creator. He can use energy in a material realm or a spirit realm. But it just simply says, "...so that things which are seen, which we see, were not made of things which do appear." Again, the miracle of life itself, from conception through the whole process to birth. Go with me to Psalm 139, verses 13 through 16. I'm reading it in the King James.

Regardless as to how fully David may have understood this or not, it is scientifically accurate what he states. And it's inspired by God. The miracle of life itself, from conception through the whole process to birth. In Psalm 139, beginning in verse 13, David said, He said, For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows right well. My substance, and the word substance there could be rendered, my strength, or it can be rendered, my body. My substance, or my body, was not hid from you.

When he's in his mother's womb, when I was made in secret, get out of sight, hidden from everybody else, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth, or in one sense maybe a reference to what we're made of, the sixteen elements of the earth, your eyes... notice he says, your eyes, God, your eyes did see my substance or body, yet being unperfect, or that is incomplete, hadn't all been formed. And in your book, who designed how life starts with the tiniest of cells, the male life cell, and the female life cell? Who designed those and designed how they would come together, and who blue printed all of that and set that to work the way it does?

In your book, all my members were written, all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. When those two life cells come together and conception takes place, at that instant, all you have is the tiniest little, tiniest, tiniest, tiniest little clump. The female life cell, the ovum, is about the size of a period right at the end of the sentence. And the male life cell is the smallest of the cells. When those two cells come together, and there have been some studies that have shown that there's even a little spark of light when conception takes place, but at that exact instant, it's determined whether you're male or female, your skin color, whether you're blonde, brunette, redhead, whether you've got curly hair, straight hair, whatever.

The blueprint of you as a human being is instantaneously established right at that instant. There are no fingers, there are no arms, there are no legs, there are no eyes, but the blueprint for your fingers, your skeleton, your muscular structure, all of that is set right then, your sex and everything. Can you scientifically read that blueprint? We don't have the ability yet to truly read that, although it's amazing what we can read, and there are certain things with technology we can read, yes.

But God can look at the blueprint at that instant, and He knows exactly what a nine-month term healthy baby is going to be nine months later. Now, are there some things that could modify or affect some of those things as far as diet and injury and all? Sure. But at that instant, all my members in your book, the DNA, the blueprint, where God can say, it's going to be a male, or it's going to be a female.

Or He could cause the two life cells to come together in the kind of way to make it be a male, or to make it be a female.

It's like Jeremiah. When Jeremiah's parents got pregnant, if God wanted to, He could cause the right chromosomes and genes to come together in a way that Jeremiah, as a human being, would have what God wanted him to have to serve as a prophet to the nations. But it's actually talking about what process goes on. Of course, as time goes on in continuance, the flippers, then the arms, the legs, all of that, the heart forms in just, you know, what, 21 days or so.

It's amazing. It's a miracle. And that's what that is speaking of there. In Job 30, I might probe that a little bit more at a future time, but in Job 33, verse 4, he says, Now, it's not Job here. I'm sorry. I think this is Elijah, if I remember correctly. But he says, And if we looked over at chapter 34, verses 14 and 15, it says, See, when you say the word miracles to people, what people many times think of as miracles are interventions beyond the natural laws, or in spite of the natural laws.

That's the classic idea of miracles. But the natural laws themselves are miracles, underpinned or sustained, maintained by God's power, His Spirit. Miracles, in the classic sense, involve any supernatural intervention by God. Well, they're the most obvious. They're just simply the most obvious, such as the Red Sea parting. You walk down on dry land that God has dried with towering walls of water way up above you on either side, and you walk through that so many miles, and you get out the other side and those towering walls of water. You know, that's supernatural intervention.

That's the most obvious. Or Joshua was saying, son, stand still. And because we know the sun's not moving, it's the earth. But from the human perspective, the sun moves. But when he said, son, stand still, the only reason the sun could stay in the same position in the sky from their perspective was God stopped the earth from spinning for a time. Pretty amazing. And if you remember, even the moon was stopped in its orbit for a time. I find it interesting that with Hezekiah, when he was asked...

He voiced when he was told he was going to die, and then God said, okay, I'll give you 15 more years. Hezekiah basically asked, well, what's the sign or proof or is there a sign that that's really going to happen? And so he was presented with the option...you'd find this in 2 Kings 20. I'm not going to go back there, but 2 Kings 20, verses 9 and 10. Verse 9 and 10. He was given the option, well, shall the sun go forward 10 degrees on the sundial, or shall it go backwards?

And he basically said, well, you know, it's not that big a deal for it to go forward. Why not? Because we take the things as they are that are miraculous as normal. Because the sun rises in the east...I may be pointing the wrong way here, but it rises in the east, it sets in the west. And it moved across the sky that way from our perspective. Well, that's not a miracle. It wouldn't do that if it weren't for God underpinning it.

But to make it go back the other way, whatever position it is towards the west, for it to now move back towards the east 10 degrees. And that's what Hezekiah wanted to see happen. And that's what God did. But, you know, those may seem long ago and far away. Of course, there are many closer at hand, but the power that was behind them is still there. And it's interesting, in Psalm 33 and verse 5, that Psalm, in Psalm 33 verse 5, it says, The earth is full of the goodness, and in the margin it can mean mercy. The earth is full of the goodness or the mercy of the Lord. Here's what I set myself to practice many years ago, to look for the miracles, to look for the interventions of God. So be focused on, as we would say, to have my antenna up, to see and not overlook, and to focus on the miracles of God and the interventions of God, because they're there. In little ways, in big ways, sometimes in very big ways. But let's just talk about miracles for a little bit as far as some actual accounts. How about miracles of healing?

Years ago, I knew a man who was a Korean war veteran.

In the war, he was injured, and he was a paraplegic. He could not use his legs. His spinal cord was severed. And he spent a lot of time in the paraplegic-ward, and, of course, obviously was put on full disability. I met him when he was standing on his two feet, because God called him to the truth, and he found out about healing, about anointing and healing.

He asked to be anointed for healing. He was healed. Within a day after that, he was taking steps, and I know within three days, he was fully walking. He walked into the disability office, the VA, and wanted him to stop his check.

They couldn't believe he was walking. They couldn't understand it, because they had all the medical records, his spinal cord is severed, and all. He said, I don't need it. I'm not paralyzed anymore. Well, sir, we can't stop the check. Well, look at me. I'm here on my own two feet. I don't need the check. They said, look, it'd take an act of Congress to stop your check. So I don't know, and I don't know if he's still alive. He's probably not still alive. He was several years older than me. But to the day he died, if he is dead, he probably got a check. Miraculous. I remember a member in the Memphis Tennessee congregation broke his leg. The bone got infected, and he wound up in his broken leg where the bone ends were about six inches apart, because all the bone had been destroyed, eaten away by infection. He had no bone for six inches. You can't keep your leg like that. They were going to amputate his leg. Some friends or family got him out of the hospital. He was anointed. Later, a certain time later on, he had an x-ray taken of that leg again. Between those two bone ends, there was a pencil-led, thin bone. Just the tiny is stretching from one end to the other, and as time went on, it thickened more and more until it filled in between those two points.

My nephew, as just a little fella at the Feast of Tabernacles in St. Pete years ago, he broke his arm on the last great day between services. He broke his arm. The break was verified there at first aid, as we had it set up in those years. He was anointed, and he was verified by a nurse and others that the arm was broken. He was screaming in pain. He broke out in a red rash all over his body. He was in such pain. And, of course, my brother and his wife brushed him to the hospital. The doctor verified the break. He said, but I need to take an x-ray so that I'll know what to do, whether surgery would be needed or just putting it in place and putting a cast on it. And just before they shot the picture, my nephew went totally quiet, and the red rash disappeared. And when the doctor came out later with the x-ray, he was just shaking his head. There was no break anywhere. And, of course, I grew up with a grandmother on my mother's side who was mentally ill for about 26 years. And she had to spend time in and out of an asylum down near Jackson, Mississippi. And I remember the day I was somewhere around 11, playing with my brothers outside in the yards, and Papa, as we called him, pulled up in our driveway. And we said, who's he got with him?

We ran over to the car, ran over to the passenger's side, and it was my grandmother. She rolled the window down, and she talked with us just like I'm talking with you right now. Healed, just like that, after 26 years. And she lived to be 97.

Tremendous miracles of healings, classic ones. And about miracles of provision. Provision. Where you're provided for. You know, the miracle of...and the miracles, plural, of Israel in the wilderness for 40 years. You had 600,000 men, 20 and above. You had at least 600,000 women. That's 1.2 million. And you'd have to at least double that number to allow for all the kids. So you're looking at 2 and a half. You're looking...you've got to be looking minimum at 2 to 3 million people. That is a lot of people. And in the wilderness area, of course, we know the miracle of manna, how God provided manna. But we also know from that...you know, if you go to the Scripture like Deuteronomy 8, verses 3 and 4, where Moses acknowledged, you know, you've been in this wilderness 40 years, your feet haven't swelled, your clothing hasn't worn out. And as I like the kid, I'd understand their clothing not wearing out if it was polyester. But they didn't have polyester back then. But 40 years in a wilderness area, and their clothing didn't wear out. Have you ever stopped to think about if you've got 2 to 3 million people or more, and all the livestock they had? Livestock have to have grass, they've got to have fodder, and just fires and cooking. You know how much wood it takes? It was a miracle. The wood, the water, the...just to provide for them in such a wilderness area. And what about miracles of protection?

When I was in Alabama with Montgomery and Geneva as the associate pastor years ago, and the Geneva congregation, South Alabama, we had a member that, when he left services, as you left Geneva, and there's a river bottom there, when you would leave town, out near the edge of town, there was a long straight. And you probably weren't out of city limits, but it was just a long straight through a low bottom area, but a long straight, and he liked to drive fast. By the time he got to the end of that strip, he could be doing 80 miles an hour. And he was known for just getting with it and getting going, you know, when he was going to go someplace on a two-lane road. Well, this particular Sabbath, after services, all of a sudden he just got sick. He wasn't up to driving himself home. So one of the other members said, well, look, I'll drive him home, so-and-so follow, you know, to pick me up, and I'll drive him home. And this was like in a 35-mile zone where, maybe 40 miles, but he would have been doing more like 70 or 80. And this other member was driving the speed limit. He was doing maybe 35 when the tie rod fell off. Anybody who knows anything about cars knows that if your tie rod falls off, you have no control over the steering wheel, where the car goes. Now, if your tie rod is going to fall off, you want it to do it when you're doing about 35, not when you're doing 85. God protected him, saved him. In Amarillo, Texas, in liberal Kansas, is a 400-mile Sabbath circuit, 930 in liberal, 330 in Amarillo, and a challenge to stay on time. And on those high plains where you could see halfway to forever, you just had to open it up and really cruise. Well, one of our elders went up to liberal to speak on a particular Sabbath, and he was obviously driving at a higher rate of speed, whether that was 70 or 80, whatever. But drove all the way up there and spoke in services up there, drove all the way back to Amarillo, and when he turned off his street into his driveway, his tie rod fell off. An angel rode with him all the way, holding that together up there and back until he was creeping into his driveway, and it fell off. Years and years ago, I remember something that happened in the church. I don't know the names, I don't know the specific location, but I remember when it happened that one of our members was working at a smelter, you know, molten metals, and in this case, molten copper. And where there's big ladles, some molten stuff that swing this way and swing that way and dump, one of them malfunctioned, and he was like in the center of the floor, and this big ladle malfunctioned and dipped, dumped right over him. When they asked people, they were standing at different positions of work, he was seen from every angle, the incident was seen from every angle, he disappeared from sight under all that molten metal from every angle. They saw it shower down, and he was hidden inside that shower of molten metal. And when it hit the ground, cascaded and all, and he walked out of there, he walked out. He wasn't melted, he wasn't vaporized. He walked out, not even the smell of smoke or singed hair on him. God umbrella over him within that and protected him.

We have a member, a blind man, many of you would know him, Brent Reynolds in Atlanta, and when he was attending the Tallahassee congregation, he and his Seeing Eye Dog, Enki, were on the way to services. They were right across the street from the hall. And when it's time to go across, his Seeing Eye Dog, laid him across, and somebody wasn't paying attention, and they hit him in their vehicle, their car. They hit him, and the dog sent the dog rolling, and Brent himself told me, he said, I was under the car. He was under the car, on his back, in the undercarriage of the car. He could feel it. He crawled out from under there, brushed himself off, came on to services. And I found out about it when I got there for services, what had happened. Miraculous protection. No broken bones, no stitches needed. Maybe it was sore the next day, or whatever. In Amarillo, Texas, when my youngest son, Lauren, was just a little fella, we had a Hines 57 mutt, and he was a darling little dog, but he began to snap at the children. And one day, he snapped Lauren. And when I got a hold of Lauren, and I wound up having to have the dog put down later, because I couldn't give it away to somebody else, and risk it snapping their children. But I got to Lauren. He had a fang mark on his forehead, and he had a fang mark on his cheek. Now, it wasn't deep enough to have stitches. It was a scrape, but it brought blood. He had a fang mark right here that brought blood, and right here. And I had him close his eyes. When he closed his eyes, he had a fang mark on his eyelid that had brought blood. If the fang had been just a little fraction, in further, it would have either punctured his eyeball or ripped it out. That was protection. I left Gadsden Hall on the Sabbath of the 8th, two weeks ago. I usually kept closed the hall, so it's getting late. Of course, it's long since been dark. Well, within a mile of the hall, I've always heard, and I'm not superstitious, but I've always heard that it's bad luck for a black cat to run across in front of you. Well, I do believe it's bad luck for that cat. I tried to miss it, but I'm not going to wreck missing an animal.

He did like a squirrel, like, which tire do I want to get run over by? But he darted out, and I straddled him, tried to miss him, and he was like, boom-boom! And what came to mind was, well, I know the superstitions that, yeah, that's bad luck. I don't believe in that, but I do believe there are spirits out there. I know there are. And I know that they like to promote these things and try to set you up to believe these things. Well, I got to Gaston, went through Gaston, got to this side of Gaston, and all of a sudden, and I'm doing about 50 or 55 on a four-lane, just come through an intersection, a traffic light intersection, and all of a sudden, there is a man in front of my car in my lane. He's just stepped into my lane from the center area, I guess. I couldn't even see his face. I just saw his chest down. All I had time to do was just yank left and yank right. Couldn't lose control. But I yanked to the left and right back to the right, and I just zig-zagged around him. Took that to miss him, just barely missed him. Now, if I had hit him, crippled him, killed him, would it have been my fault? No. I would have been totally on the right. But with that, I've eaten on me and bothered me to have some guy on my hood and coming through my windshield and be ruined for life, be killed. I don't want that on my conscience, even when I know I'm totally on the right. God spared me. He protected me from having something that I would have to deal with and have nightmares about. And then last Sabbath, as I was leaving Rome to go up to Chattanooga, I had a person turn right in front of me, and I had to ride my brakes. You know, miracles of protection.

How many times has God intervened for us, known and unknown?

And we do know that miracles build faith. We understand that, that they help. Now, we live in the midst of miracles. We really do. But I want to just close out with notating the greatest miracle of all. And this is the greatest of all, because God can create planets. He can put the right spin. He can do all kinds of things like that, and it's the easiest thing for Him to do and to sustain them. He can protect you. He can heal you. But the greatest miracle of all is the miracle of the converted mind. That is absolutely, hands down, the greatest miracle there is, the miracle of the converted mind. You know, you think about it, the opening of the mind... Parting the Red Sea was a miracle. Well, opening the mind is even greater. To become like God in our thinking and doing, that's the greatest and most important miracle of all. And you think about it, the miracle of growth, the miracle of change, the miracle of overcoming, the miracle of conversion, the miracle of victory. That's the greatest miracle God is working in our life. No, life is full of miracles. They're all around us. And life itself is a miracle, composed of a series of miracles. And train yourself. Learn to recognize and appreciate such fact. You're richer for it. But never forget that the greatest miracle of all that God is granting us is the working of conversion in our mind and our being through the power of His Holy Spirit.