Everyone has a choice: Do you believe Christ is the Son of God or just a religious teacher?  If you believe He is the Messiah and don’t accept Him as your Savior you are rejecting God.  Rejecting God is rejecting the possibility of Heaven.  If the only thing you look forward to is what can be gained today, your hope is based on material things and that gratification can be fleeing.  It cannot be taken with you when you pass on.

If you were taking a course in history and it shared that a man once lived who could control the weather and calmed storms by talking to them, would you believe history?  How many would have to witness these events before you would believe them?  If twelve people saw this happen and then told their families and friends, who believed them enough to accept it as actually happening, would you accept that as being an accurate part of history?  What if others could attest to being in a severe storm and suddenly it became calm, though they couldn’t explain it. Would that help you believe it happened?

About 2000 years ago a man wrote a book and he called it the Book of Mark.  In the fourth chapter he writes about a time when his friend Jesus and twelve of his friends were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee in Israel and a storm came up.  Let him tell you what happened in his own words.

“As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.’  So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats followed). But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water. Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up, shouting, ‘Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?’   When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Silence! Be still!’ Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm.  Then he asked them, ‘Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ The disciples were absolutely terrified. ‘Who is this man?’ they asked each other. ‘Even the wind and waves obey him!’

Those of us who have visited Israel know that the Sea of Galilee is surrounded by mountains and often sudden storms come up.  Down draft winds and a thunderstorm can cause waves as high as 20 feet.  The danger was real and it could easily swamp a fishing boat and especially those boats that were following in the boat Mark was in.  Mark writes that Jesus was asleep. He had to be exhausted.  Normally people don’t sleep through storms.  I was on a huge ship with 800 men and went through a typhoon on the Pacific Ocean and I don’t remember anyone sleeping.  That was the only time I have ever been seasick.

What a sight that must have been.  To see Jesus awake, standup and casually say: “Silence! Be still!”  All around them the sea became as calm as glass.  When I was in our typhoon and had someone stood up and said: “Ocean, be still!” If  I had seen that happen I too may have written a book.  But how could I convince people 2000 years later that it actually happened?  I guess there are just too many people who would say: “Unless I personally see it happen you will never convince me.”  I guess that is why millions will not accept what Mark and his friends witnessed that day.  Having just seen what Jesus did they too ask the question: “Who is this man?”  The majority of the world is still asking that same question.

Those who study history believe about anything history books tell them, unless it is about Jesus Christ.  That’s because His friends were “religious zealots” and they just made things up to promote their religious beliefs.  For those who question whether there is a God, they don’t believe He would have revealed His Son in such a way.  To them this is just a mystery story written to become a best seller and make the author money.  Besides, if they were to believe this story, they might have to change their beliefs and that would take all of the fun out of living.

Some day many of us who believe all that Mark and his friends wrote will be verified as true.  But it will be too late for those who had to actually see a supernatural event, so personal, that it convinced them Christ actually was the Son of God and the Messiah and He actually did as Mark described.  They then will become aware that calming the sea was just one of the hundreds of supernatural events that Jesus performed.  The greatest mystery was how He could come back to life and many seeing Him floating upward into the heavens above.  If they had personally witnessed that event would they still question or believe as His disciples did?