Todd Michael - The Twelve Conditions of a Miracle: The Miracle Workers Handbook

The

TWELVE

CONDITIONS

of a

MIRACLE

The Miracle Workers Handbook

TODD MICHAEL

JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First trade paperback edition 2008

First Jeremy P. Tarcher edition 2004

Originally published by Abundance Media, 2001.

Copyright 2001 by R. Todd Michael

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights.
Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Greek text adapted from The Interlinear Bible, second edition, Jay P. Green, Sr., General Editor and Translator, Henrickson Publishers, 1986. Used with the permission of the copyright holder. Copyright 1976, the Trinitarian Bible Society, London.

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The Library of Congress catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Michael, R. Todd.

The twelve conditions of a miracle : the miracle workers handbook / by R. Todd Michael.

p. cm.

Rev. ed. of : The twelve conditions of a miracle / Michael Abrams. 2001.

ISBN: 978-1-4406-3851-0

1. Feeding of the five thousand (Miracle). 2. Miracles. I. Abrams, Michael. Twelve

conditions of a miracle. II. Title.

BT367.F4M53 2004 2004048012

226.706dc22

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

IN MEMORY OF CLAYTON B. PILCHER

You taught me everything I needed to know,

in your garden,

while yet a child.

AND FOR JULIAN

who teaches me now.

AND EVEN GREATER

WORKS THAN THESE

YOU WILL DO

JOHN 14:12

A brief explanation is in order to decode the text that precedes each chapter of the book. Here is a sample of this text for discussion purposes.

Throughout the book, the first line of these characters represents the original Greek for the passage found in Matthew 14:1320. The second line is a transliteration of Greek into Roman characters. Finally, the third line represents the orthodox translation of each word.

The entire passage follows in this format.

Beyond the gate,

The garden gate

Fixed among the creepers

Vesseling the back stone wall,

Beyond, through tangled weeds and saplings,

Through beds of nettles and opaque thickets

Lining the periphery...

Just beyond the threshold

Of that you now call home

That which you have walked and rewalked,

Pruned and proliferated

In the back,

Deep in the haze,

Behind the rows and spaces,

Where the growth presses in

Upon the lattice of the gate,

The inflection point...

Toward this we grow

Blessed heliotropes,

Distant in the drone of leaves,

Far-faced children,

With deep miasma eyes

And endless sighs,

Who work so hard, so long,

Our voices echoing

Like the vast engines of night trains

Hurtling through unchecked space,

Never knowing yet one blink,

A nudge of the latch,

And we are through

There I will be.

You know me.

I am a world

Of unspeakable peace and security,

Indescribable beauty,

Pleasure that passeth understanding.

I am a world where worries over

Work, money, conflict

Are but a distant dream,

Things seldom recalled.

I am a world where all lost loves are found,

Where the heart settles in,

Where we gather all at last,

Together, laughing,

Feasting at the banquet of the great reunion

The great wedding,

On the first warm afternoon of spring,

Perpetual.

You think you almost see me now

Sometimes,

Never realizing

There I am,

Always clear before you

In the twilight

Of the brilliant here and now.

T hey say the sky is bigger in Colorado. Its true. The mountains produce this effect. They provide the otherwise featureless infinity of the sky with a scale, a sense of dimension not found on the flatlands.

As my eyes followed the chain of massive peaks north along the Front Range, the mountains became invisible in the glare. I sighed. It was a gorgeous summer solstice in Colorado. The winds were soft, the skies clear as glass, and there were no signs of an incoming front. After a long winters wait, finally, conditions were perfect to camp high in the mountains.

I loaded the car with backpacking equipment and three enthusiastic golden retrievers. Threading my way along the dizzying gravel switchbacks that wound up the back side of the mountain, I arrived at the pass at 11,200 feet. Parking several hundred feet below the ridge, I hiked a steep trail through flowering alpine tundra to the very top of the divide and pitched the tent.

The view was spectacular in the summer dusk. To the west, an array of mountain ranges receded blue into blue until the eye lost track, the mind unable to interpret the distances, the impossible perspective arrayed before it. To the east lay the cities of Boulder and Denver, their billion points of light gleaming in microscopic splendor, a vast sea of prairie rolling away behind them in the haze for hundreds of miles.