Episode Transcript
Speaker A
00:00:01 - 00:07:23
Too often it is said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge that idea with my story of the Dam Dozer. Welcome to Miracles in the 21st Century. I'm Mark Pearce. So this story that I'm going to tell you about today happened in 1981, the period that I remember very well. My father owned a Caterpillar D7E bulldozer, which my memory tells me weighed 25 tonnes, and it's important to remember that weight for the story that I'm going to tell you. I, at the time that this story happened, was looking after a property where we had cattle on adjustment. On the banks of the Flinders River northwest of Hughenden in northwestern Queensland. My father was working with his bulldozer cleaning out a dam that had gone dry on a property southwest of where I was located. The dam had gone dry and so my dad had his bulldozer and he was in the bottom of the dam cleaning it out. And this was in January of that year. And for those of you who know Australia, you know that January, you can expect it to get wet in Northern Australia and in Northwestern Queensland. So my father was cleaning out this dam for the property owner, and the rains were threatening. The skies were gray. And something happened to the bulldozer in the bottom of the dam. What happened was there were some teeth on a cog that drove the, the tracks on which the dozer moved that sheared off. And what that meant was that the dozer Would not move. Only one track would move, which would only take it round in a circle. That's all. So because these things had sheared off, there was nothing to hold the track so that the dozer would move. Dad called the company that serviced the. The dozer that made the repairs necessary. And there had been some issues prior to it with the dozer. And they said to him— and this, bear in mind, was a Friday afternoon. The dozer broke down on a Friday. And for those who understand Seventh-day Adventists, that means the Sabbath was coming on. And it seems almost like sometimes if things are going to go wrong, they're going to go wrong on a Friday afternoon. And so Dad called the company and they said, whatever you do, get that dozer out of the bottom of the dam. It looks like it could rain. Get it out of the dam. Now the property owner brought his grader, which is a machine that that moves dirt underneath it, on the blade that runs underneath it. And they hooked it up to the dozer. Now, anyone who knows anything about heavy machinery knows that a grader is much lighter than a bulldozer. And how is that ever going to move a bulldozer? And they hooked it up to try and get it out of this dam. Now, understand that the dozer is in the bottom of the dam. And to get it out, it needs to move and needs to go up over the dam wall and down the other side and then move away from where the water level would be if the— if it was to fill. So they've hooked it up. They tried to move. Nothing happens. The grader is unable to move the dozer. My dad was a man of faith. And so he prayed. And he prayed, Lord, we've got to get this dozer out of here. It could rain. It's almost certainly going to rain. We can see that from the sky. We can feel the humidity. We've got to get this dozer out, Lord. And he tried. They tried 2 times. They tried 3 times. And he prayed again, Lord, help us get this thing out of here. And as he tried again, he opened the throttle. On the dozer, let the pedal back that was to release the gears to engage, because the motor's running, to engage the tracks so that the dozer would move, and suddenly it begins to move. And my father just kept opening the throttle and it kept moving, and he had to pull the gear to turn the dozer. pull the lever to turn the dozer so he didn't hit the grader in front of him. And the dozer just kept picking up speed and traction, and it went up over the dam wall, down the other side, through the fence that was around the dam. He took the fence with him on the way, and then he took it up so that it was above the watermark. where the water would be if it rained. And my father was so grateful and thankful to God that he had gotten that dozer out of the bottom of the dam. And he knew it was only because God did something. Because from a human perspective, it should not have moved. It should have stayed exactly where it was. Sunday afternoon, 2 days later, That dam was full of water. And that would have meant that the dozer would have been underwater in that dam if it had stayed there. My dad was exceedingly grateful to God because that was part of his livelihood, that that dam did not contain the dozer. The dozer came out of the dam. And that shows that God still answers prayer. We can come to God. We may not get miraculous signs all the time, but we can come to God knowing that God still answers prayer in small ways and sometimes in big ways. But if we don't have faith to ask, then we can be sure we're not going to get an answer. And like Jesus said, you don't have because you don't ask. So let's ask, leaving the outcomes in God's hands, because he is a God that hears prayers and that answers them. And I know that he will answer yours as well.
