Episode Transcript
It's all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with the story of a bog car. Welcome to Miracles in the 21st Century. I'm Dr. John Ashton. Just today I was st— talking with, um, a friend, uh, who with her husband and family had been missionaries in New Guinea. Uh, and this story related to, uh, this lady. She had just returned to, uh, New Guinea after delivering her third child, um, and— or giving birth to a third child. And, uh, they were— lived in, um, a, a remote little village at Mount Diamond. And she had to go into Port Moresby um, to get some things. And on this particular time, the, the road— it was a wet time of the wet season, the roads were very boggy, there were a lot of bog patches where there's deep water and mud on the tracks. And she didn't have a four-wheel drive, she had a little Toyota Corona car. And as she set off on this journey, she was used to driving the road, and so She had a bit of an idea how to get through the different boggy sections, how you drove over to the side or around them, or where the bits were usually a bit, ah, shallower. And so she could get through with just a two-wheel drive car. And, ah, as she, ah, headed off down to, ah, Port Moresby, she had her 5-year-old daughter with her, her 3-year-old daughter, and her 2-week-old son. With her in the car. And, uh, she went through a number of the puddles, but then she came to a very, very large puddle. There'd been a lot of rain and she wasn't quite sure how to— what the best way to get through this one was. But as she remembered, there was a particular, uh, part on the side where if she went over near the side, it, it wasn't quite so deep. And she was quite worried, so she, uh, put the foot down on the accelerator and really charged in to try and get through. But as she went in and with the wheels spinning, she slipped sideways and slipped into a really soft area of mud. And, uh, so the car seemed well and truly stuck, or bogged as we say, uh, in Australia. And so she had a look and she could see that the, uh, the, the mud was already up above the— into the sort of hubcap area. So she hopped in and tried again, hopped out and could see, no, the car was getting low. Hopped in, revved the engine, the clutch out again, tried again, and she could see it was going down. And so she said to our chur— or the— I think she said that the 3-year-old little girl said, "We need to pray." And so she said, "Yes, let's all pray." And the 5-year-old girl said, "I don't want to pray." So anyway, the mother and the, uh, 3-year-old prayed that God would help them get out. And they revved the car again. And, um, uh, but again, each time they did it, they were just going deeper and deeper. And they'd got down till the water level was actually now level almost with the top of the wheel. The car was sinking so much. Um, and a lady came past— another lady came past in a four-wheel drive and said, "Well, I don't think I can pull you out. You're so deeply bogged. Um, I'll have to go on and maybe at the next village there'll be a tractor, uh, that can come back and pull you out." And so this other lady had continued driving on, and, uh, my friend was very worried because it was in an area where there were a lot of raskals. They were young men who robbed, uh, passersby, uh, people traveling along those roads. And so, oh, see, she was feeling really desperate. She didn't know how long it would be before this other lady would come back and whether they'd have a tractor And so she felt— she said to her girls, "We must pray again." And the oldest girl didn't want to pray. Um, she said, "I don't think God can get us out. I don't want to pray." And the mother said, "Well, maybe if we all pray. I think God wants us all to pray. If we all pray, we will get out." So the, the older girl then did pray that God would get them out. And the mother prayed and the 3-year-old girl prayed. And then she put the car into gear and she revved the engine. And she said it was amazing. She said, "It was a feeling like we were just being gently lifted out of the bog onto the land the other side." And she said, "That was such an experience that, that led to my oldest daughter—" never forgetting that experience and, and led to her belief and faith that there truly is a God that answers prayer. And she said that story has been so strong in our family because later they did meet the lady coming back with a tractor who could remember how badly the car was bogged. These— and there are many other stories that we hear the missionaries tell that we can read about in books that missionaries have written about their own experiences of how God has intervened in miraculous ways in their lives. And I encourage, uh, those listening to look for those books. Uh, the— there are many of them around that give these true life experiences of how miracles still occur today. I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
