Episode Transcript
It is all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with my story of the prayer for God to provide fuel. Welcome to miracles in the 21st century.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. I have a friend who is a very keen gold prospector and over the years he's found several kilogrammes of gold.
He works in Outback Australia and he has another friend, older friend, and these guys are in their 70s who goes with him and they're both very successful gold prospectors. Of course, finding gold these days in Outback Australia is getting more difficult because a lot of people have bought the new metal detectors and take it up as a hobby. So the challenge is to find some areas that really haven't been exported and that generally leads people or leads these guys to quite remote areas in fairly rugged country, using a four wheel drive vehicle for following very old abandoned tracks, these sort of things, and re exploring old gold workings to see if they, with using modern technology, can still find some gold there.
And so again, in one of the remote regions in central North Queensland, my friends were exploring what they felt were some pretty good leads to find a deposit following some old, very old maps or maps of very old roads, tracks that were used by some of the early workers in the area. And so they had been to the and found the gold area, had done some work there, but actually hadn't found any gold. And they noticed that the map showed a particular track going off that would seem to join up with a current road which would enable them from their current position to get back to their base more quickly than the torturous and very windy route that they'd initially taken.
And so they followed this new track along, hoping that they were on their way home and getting close to their base. But after a while they realised, hang on, the track didn't seem to be good that they were following, wasn't going the same way that was indicated on the map and they were actually getting further away from their base. The problem was that they had well and truly passed the point of no return in terms of their fuel.
They no longer had enough fuel to get back to their base using the way they had come, which they knew would be a way to get them out. And so at that point they decided to travel back and my friend decided that he would pray that God would somehow provide them with fuel to get back to base because they realised they were now almost empty and no way were they going to be able to get back. And they were a long way away in terms of walking distance, they're out of radio communication range.
It was pretty tricky for them. They were driving along and also it was getting close to sunset as well when they saw this bright reflection of sun just flashed in their eyes. And they looked up to where they saw and they saw that it was reflecting off some grass glass.
And so they drove up and there in the bush in quite rugged area was a small, old, very rusty bulldozer that had been left there, been there obviously for a very long time. And my friend said immediately, I wonder if there's some diesel still in the tank, because they're in a diesel four wheel drive. And sure enough, there was still some diesel in the tank.
And they were able to syphon out the remaining fuel out of the tank, put it in their vehicle and had just enough fuel to make it back to their base. So when I heard this story, I thought it's amazing how many ways, how many years before that old bulldozer either broke down or the owners decided to leave it there. Maybe they're going to come back later and do some more work.
But never did. I had been there all these years, but provided the fuel for my friends to be able to get back safely. I believe we have a really wonderful God that really can look after us when we turn to him and trust in him and praise him.
I'm Dr. John Ashton, have a great day.
