About 40 years ago a professional dramatic production planned for a midwestern city had to be postponed because the producers could not find enough professional actors to perform the required roles. Religious practitioners have employed similar deceptions in our own day.
Perhaps these magicians were servants of the devil, using his power, but I think it more likely that they were simply skilled practitioners of magic tricks that they used to reinforce their position in Pharaoh’s court. You will remember that the magicians in Pharaoh’s court duplicated some of the miracles Moses produced through the power of God (see Ex. I call them miracles because I do not personally understand them and therefore cannot duplicate them at will.Īnother category of miracles, so-called, are the tricks that some magicians and religious practitioners stage in order to produce astonishing events in aid of their professions or ministries. But these wonders are explainable by physical laws understood by some mortals. We sometimes say that any happening we cannot explain is a “miracle.” To me, a computer is a miracle. The word miracle is used in different ways. Hunter declared, “To deny the reality of miracles on the ground that the results and manifestations must be fictitious simply because we cannot comprehend the means by which they have happened is arrogant on the face of it.” 3 Types of Miracles Some people reject the possibility of miracles because they have not experienced them or cannot understand them. He also prophesied that churches would be built up in which persons would teach with their learning, deny the power of God, and tell the people that if someone should “say there is a miracle wrought by the hand of the Lord, believe it not for this day he is not a God of miracles” ( 2 Ne. The prophet Nephi foretold that the Gentiles would “put down the power and miracles of God, and preach up unto themselves their own wisdom and their own learning, that they may get gain” ( 2 Ne. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles once called “the anti-miracle mind-set.” 2 This rejection of miracles in the last days was prophesied. All of us have known people who have what Elder Neal A. Many of you have witnessed miracles, perhaps more than you realize.Ī miracle has been defined as “a beneficial event brought about through divine power that mortals do not understand and of themselves cannot duplicate.” 1 The idea that events are brought about through divine power is rejected by most irreligious people and even by some who are religious.
In fact, many miracles happen every day in the work of our Church and in the lives of our members. Like Elder Cowley, I will seek to provide an answer to the prophet Mormon’s question “Has the day of miracles ceased?” ( Moro. That devotional message had a great impact on me, and I have felt to revisit its subject. India’s constellation of seven earth-observation satellites is the largest of its kind in the world, but its space programme lags behind its Asian rival China, which in 2003 became only the third nation after the United States and the former Soviet Union to launch a man into space aboard its own rocket.Ĭhina celebrated the completion of the country’s first spacewalk last month, hailed as a major victory by its leaders.When I was a college student, almost 50 years ago, Elder Matthew Cowley (1897–1953) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke to a BYU audience about miracles.
At least 16 Indian satellites currently orbit the earth, supporting telecommunications, TV broadcasting, earth observation, weather forecasting, remote education and healthcare. India’s space programme was launched as a scientific research effort, but has now begun to make money from commercial launches. As part of preparations for that, it launched four satellites on a single rocket for the first time in January 2007, including one that was brought back to earth. India plans to send an astronaut into space by 2014 and a manned mission to moon by 2020.