Originally Posted by
David Merrill
Perhaps I am too scientific in my approach. I see §§95 accommodating §411.
After three days alone on a 12K foot-high rock formation and after about ten gear changes in my thinking I found myself testing God Himself, throwing rocks at the heavens and in much more colorful language and in a total rage telling God he had better shut His ugly little pie-hole if He would not be coming through with His Covenants. - That He best be showing me He existed; after all I had been up there for three days and He had given me no clue except the evidence already plain to anybody. With the tears rolling down my face, screaming and shouting and throwing stones at God I did not notice how quickly the weather was changing!
Within minutes I was in a hail storm about the size of large marbles, almost ping-pong ball hail that pounded my tent and there was almost continuous thunder with flashing lightening all around me. I figured it was time to die because I had angered God so I stripped down and climbed into my sleeping bag for a nap. I thought the hail was going to rip the tent apart so I best have a little padding; but really, in that moment I was thinking about the charged air and what it was going to be like when God directed one of the bolts to my minuscule tent on the north side of Pikes Peak. I imagined what every neuron in my central nervous system would do as they all, millions of them exploded in tremendous voltage and current flow. You know that's gotta hurt!! So I chose to take a nap and die in my sleep.
However after a few minutes I noticed the tent was getting smaller because all the hail was sliding down and building up around the dome. So I got up and pulled on an army poncho and my hat to protect my head and unfolded my army shovel and stepped out into the storm. On the mountainside in front of me a bolt of lightening buzzed at the ground and must have grabbed on to some ice under the rocks because there was an explosion that sent some of the stones flying up into the air! I thought, Yep! You did it this time! You have been throwing rocks and God and this is what comes of it. I shoveled the hail away from my tent and climbed back into it and laid down again in my sleeping bag.
The storm let up. I got dressed and came out into the beautiful afternoon and there was about 8" of hail on the ground for about 1/4 mile all around me on the alpine slope and my tent was in the center of it.
Now you are probably thinking that I figured God was giving me a warning and showing me His mercy, sparing me His wrath. Right on! But I never actually felt that way in my heart. I read about Jesus controlling the weather in the Book of Mark and looked into it and what Jesus knew from his travels was that a typhoon on the inland sea would quickly dissipate due to conservation of energy. However, after telling the crew that there was nothing to worry about, knowing they were either going to be destroyed by the twister or it would kill itself off by siphoning up the water the crew, never having seen or even heard of typhoons was not to be dissuaded that Jesus had done it by miracle. But this knowledge had very little effect on my feelings about the hail storm.
I had affected the weather. This is the methodology with which Jesus healed too.
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