The Power of Miracles (Full Episode) | The Story of God with Morgan Freeman

when i was 16 i got really sick i was run down working hard in school not eating properly and i got pneumonia and an abscess developed on my lung well one day the abscess burst and i emerged i needed blood pretty sure everybody thought i might die obviously i didn't but some say that god saved me believers think god communicates to us through miracles that miracles are proof of the divine now i'm going on a journey to discover the power of miracles you fell from up there down to here what did the doctor say you are a miracle to discover what's locked and what is fate in the chinese thought everything has a reason for why it occurred to see how belief in miracles can change history the miracles symbolize the beginning of the jewish people and how faith can change lives you are looking at a true miracle of god to achieve what appears to be impossible the real miracle is to transform the human mind that's the miracle we need [Music] most who believe in god believe god is watching over us every moment of every day guiding us saving us to me it has to be a miracle that he can look out for all seven billion of us so when i heard about alcides moreno i had to come to new york and hear his story well here we are eight years ago alcitis came to work as a window washer at this 47-story tower in manhattan tell me about it what happened when i wake up in the morning take my car and commute from new jersey and come to the building you take the elevator and go all the way to the top the top is forty seven eighty four stairs yes and climb to the platform alcidus had just begun to lower the platform when one of the two cables holding it snapped i just grabbed the scaffold and has hole up until another cable is not [Applause] the paramedics they found them right in the mirror the scaffold like that between the two buildings yeah we turned to it right it was try in the middle they picked me up from there alcitus fell 47 stories 500 feet he broke 10 bones his lungs collapsed he needed 43 pints of blood and plasma he spent three weeks in a coma do you remember the day you woke up from the coma i wake up december 24th right there on the bed and my wife was there a fall from just 10 stories is something hardly anyone survives doctors say alcitis's 47 story plunge was beyond belief i've seen it all or at least i think i have until uh something like this happens you fell from up there down to here yes [Music] and here here you are yes sir and look at him walking everything give me a name for that i mean the doctor told me you are a miracle man say you are a miracle what do you think i don't know still i don't know alcides has a hard time accepting this as a miracle because he was not alone when he fell his younger brother was on this platform with him he died the moment he hit the ground what was your brother's name erica edgar there we are yeah so faces thank you very nice my brothers are big loss to me were you close really really close that was a great man i'm sorry i'll see this it must be very painful yes i just bring it to work with me to help it out because he's younger oh yes that was younger than me that was a good man [Music] think god saved you die diesel yeah i believe that yes so that makes you the miracle but at the same time your brother is gone the one you do you worry about that do you do you try to reconcile that try to figure out why him hey not me not you why yes i asked him why why what happened why it was me i would wonder every day god gave me a second chance i mean through to keep going though to keep going on my life and i still looking forward to find out what exactly i have to do now see this is no longer a window washer he and his wife have a new life in arizona where they are raising their family he's still trying to understand whether god has a plan for him why me does god have a purpose for me arcedus wonders why did i survive when my beloved brother did not why i mean is there some entity that makes that choice or is uh do we live with randomness just pure mindless randomness for christians miracles are proof that life is not random they believe god intervenes in the world for a reason jews also believe in the power of miracles in fact their faith was built on a bedrock of divine intervention i've come to jerusalem to see how jews celebrate the miracles of their exodus from egypt on a night that's different from all other nights passover hi hello there how do you do i'm very well added this is for you thank you very much and i'm a fifa welcome to my home you do oh lord [Music] grab [Music] is the first israeli-born woman ever to become a rabbi yeah i've known a few rabbis never a lady i hope you enjoyed the seder and we'll do our utmost to make it uh food i'll be okay food food this is the um and you get to taste it and we're going to decide if it you got to make it feel it's got to make you feel as if you're getting drunk is it whiny enough he'll tell you the truth i think it's enough i think it's enough too okay guys let's get started say though starting come on everybody sit down one of the most important traditions in judaism and this has been ordered to us from our ancestors thou shall not speak on your cell phone during the seder so we have a cell phone basket here the monster we came out of egypt is called in hebrew nissan and his nissan comes from the word nisim which is miracles it's the month of the miracles which will symbolize the beginning of the jewish people as the people as an entity the way we go with the seder is that we we read through the haggadah so morgan as our guest we would welcome you to start with the bread of affliction this is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of egypt that all that are hungry enter and to eat and all who are in want come and celebrate the passover this year we are slaves next year we shall be free men [Music] the passover meal is a celebration of the bond jews feel with god and it's an occasion for children to understand the foundation of their faith [Music] the seder recounts how the jews escaped slavery thanks to god striking the egyptians for the series of ten plagues so rabbi yeah why passover what is the word itself referred to when god brought upon egypt the tense plague of killing the firstborn he told the israelites to put blood on the thresholds of their homes and the angel of death passed over the homes of the hebrews and only took the firstborn of the egyptians many jews believed god's sparing of their children was proof they were his chosen people but this was not the only divine sign the miracle of getting out of egypt was followed by the miracle of splitting of the sea god made two miracles one was splitting the sea before the hebrews and then closing it before the egyptians so god wants us to remember the egyptians are just his sons as we are so by putting drops of wine on our plates we're actually putting drops of sorrow that god had lost so many of his children while saving the others this acknowledgment that the exodus miracles didn't benefit everyone reminds me of alcitus moreno divine will is not easy to understand so what is your take on the whole idea of the series of miracles i don't think anybody's going to split the sea for us today i wish somebody would bring peace to us today but the bible is not a book of history the bible is a book of ideas the question is what can we learn from it what can we take into our own life it's the way of saying thank you you know it's a way of teaching the kids that every small thing is not granted that you need to say thank you it's nice to have parents it's lovely to have a roof above your head that's probably the biggest miracle of all of them at that jews are still here i want them to come out with the idea that miracles can happen that's the story the israelites saw these miracles as proof that god cared about them not all modern jews believe in the miracles of passover but these stories still define them as a people and that deep well of tradition and moral strength has sustained them been called on by them for thousands of years to get them through hard times around the world belief in miracles gives people strength in mexico city the basilica of our lady of guadalupe marks the spot where the virgin mary is said to have appeared to a peasant 500 years ago in hong kong buddhist pilgrims flock to the statue of guanyin who they hope will grant them medical cures a spouse or good grades and in rome miracles can turn ordinary people into saints i've come to the vatican to understand how the catholic church verifies miracles i think the first time i was at the vatican was about 1983. i'm meeting monsigno marcelo sanchez sorondo the head of the pontifical academy of sciences so let's talk just for a moment about miracles the americans really exist for instance jesus walking on water in the life of christ if you don't accept it the miracles it's impossible to understand each page of the gospel is a miracle of christ to consider person is hunt the church need a miracle in order to have saints you have to have miracles yes unless you are a martyr the only way to sainthood is to be deemed responsible for performing two miracles after you die pope john paul ii became a saint in 2014 after two women who prayed to him after his death claimed to be miraculously cured one of parkinson's disease another of a brain aneurysm the vatican spends years investigating these claims sometimes decades the church has a devil's advocate who goes and whenever anybody claims to have seen or experienced a miracle the church sends the advocate to investigate yes they have to advocate and have scientific people special doctors to to prove that this this is a special intervention of god so if i come and say i have experienced america with the church then say okay well we'll check that out exactly [Laughter] we're going to check does the hand of god really intervene not just in matters of life and death but also in the ups and downs of our daily lives or does everything that happens happen by chance [Music] what if anything governs the seemingly random moments that change our lives and send us into different directions like a poor boy from mississippi ending up in hollywood i always loved the movies always dreamed i would be in them i was a believer and i actually made it now was that a miracle [Music] most of us have a turning point in our lives a pivotal moment where you wondered how did this happen mine was 1989. i made three films lean on me driving miss daisy and glory did i make it happen was someone up there calling the shots or was i lucky to try to understand this i've arranged to meet a psychology professor who thinks we often mistake random chance for miracles danny oppenheimer it's nice to see you how are you today i'm good you i'm good good what are you doing i'm flipping coins why i'm looking for streaks streaks yeah if you flip a coin enough times you're gonna get a streak really that's a lot of tails well if i flip a coin twice and i get heads both time is that miraculous uh no you do it 50 times and you get 60. that's a miracle well yeah if you get more than you flip certainly but how rare does an event have to be before we would call it miraculous one in a million one in a billion i'll choose billion all right one in a billion but let's try something all right jack of diamonds six of spades king of spades two of hearts seven of diamonds and ace of spades is it miraculous to have gotten this sequence no i mean it's just just a random selection of cards off the deck well right but this particular sequence starting with the jack and then getting the six of spades and then king of spades it only happens one in about 14 billion times you draw six cards so it's pretty miraculous by your one and a billion standard so you're telling me that this is miraculous well no as you said before it's just a random set of cards what if it was first six digits of your social security number what if it were the last six digits of your social security number the first six digits of your phone number sometimes it's not actually miraculous sometimes it's just probability playing its uh tricks on you all right so how do we include the divine because there are people who really do think that there is divine intervention in these kinds of interplays absolutely and nothing i'm saying here rules out the possibility of the divine the fact that probability predicts certain things doesn't mean that there can't be divine intervention but miraculous things that are so unlikely that you think it can't happen by chance alone they do happen and they have to happen it would be odd if they didn't because with six billion people in the world there are so many opportunities for something really unusual to happen we would expect it to happen to some of them it's human nature to make a symphony out of the cacophony of events going on around us doesn't mean that divine providence doesn't exist in fact as i learned when i was in rome in the past chance and god coexisted the ancient romans had a different take on miracles before they became christians romans had many gods they believed the gods controlled their fate and everything that happened was decided by them archaeologist valerie higgins tells me the gods even determined the outcome of sporting events so we're here in the circus maximus this was the largest uh circus in rome in fact in the roman empire and this was where they did chariot racing we are actually standing on the track yeah the starting gates were down there and they would race through here up to the other end where they would turn around and then go back down that end and they would do that seven times at least a quarter of a million people could fit in here yeah right so this was a place that was full of life and full of action well it must have been uh quite a lot like uh modern day horse racing you know bedding and wagering and sure yes we know there was lots of betting and lots of gambling gambling particularly on dice games was frowned upon because you were betting on the will of the gods but widespread gambling began to change the way romans thought about fate and open the way for belief in miracles how did gambling fit with the idea that your fate was already set no matter what you did you were going to wind up the way you were going to wind up they did very much believe that their fate was uh set but you know it didn't make them passive they certainly did everything they could to get the gods behind their riders well i would ask like for instance of a day of the big race you know uh and the ancient romans were thinking well it's in the hands of the gods but we need to know what the gods want right right how would we figure that out how did they go about figuring out what the guards wanted what the gods wanted well you had to go to a priest who was specialized in this sort of thing just around the corner from the racetrack hidden in an alleyway and down in a basement valerie takes me to see the remains of the temple that dates back to the third century a place where romans may have tried to twist the will of the gods this is spectacular yes it is what we're coming into now is a mithraeum mythreon yeah that's right it's a special kind of ritual space for the cult of mithras he's the god he's killing the bull mithras was a god for men tough men soldiers powerful businessmen so we're here in this mithraium which is kind of like the original man cave we know they did a lot of feasting would there be any of the uh uh uh priests down here there would be priests down here yes i think for sure um who would be overseeing the feasting because it was quite essential that you did the ritual you know correctly to ensure that your team was going to be successful in the circus maximus so here we are down here and we're doing all of the rituals and so are we really trusting the fates to take care of what we want taken care of or do we do a little no that doesn't stop you giving fate a helping hand certainly we know there was a lot of cheating that went on uh in the circus maximum oh i'm afraid sir they did everything they could to make things work to make them successful and they certainly weren't above cheating the fact that you were allowing the gods to decide uh your fate didn't mean that you couldn't help them along if you could uh yeah yeah you know because their idea is that the god works for you and that's in every aspect of your life including of course your team racing in the circus maximus romans don't have faith they just follow the rituals they had fates quite right they had faith not faith that h makes a big difference the ancient romans believed that if you were good to the gods they would be good to you every single event from winning a chariot race to rolling of the dice could be the result of divine intervention a minor miracle i'm just trying to work out how a couple of millennia of catholicism might have changed the way the romans think do they still think god will intercede and reward their faith with a royal flush perhaps the idea that nothing in our lives happens by chance did not die with the culture of ancient rome it remains alive and well in the chinese philosophy and religion taoism taoism dates back nearly two millennia gods are not the focus of taoism the focus is the tao the ultimate creative energy of the universe to which we are all connected this interconnectedness means our fates are all set at birth so do daoists believe miracles are possible to find out i'm heading to the heart of the chinese community in los angeles to meet a fourth generation taoist fate calculator named ginny liu jimmy lou morgan freeman yes ma'am nice to meet you thank you for my name please thank you so did you do my life chart i did we have your hair as june 1st so 6 1 19 37 2 am is that correct your life map lets us know where over 120 stars are located at your time of birth these stars configure a certain energy field that impact the quality and success of your life so in chinese we don't call this astrology actually we call it fate calculation fate calculation covers your life in 10 year periods you can see from age 6 to 15 is 1 60 and 25 and so on so forth so what's now between seven to six and eighty-five right now you're in your friendship sector in your friendship sector the star that's there is called one time this star represents scholars learned it people these are the people that you wanna surround yourselves with so far so good so far so good and one of the reasons why maybe you have not come here yet until today is one of the stars in your personal sector is called lienzen and linzen is the adventurer somebody who likes to take things as they come so if my fate is already laid out does that leave room for like miracles absolutely we don't think of astrology chart as predestined that it's your only fate that's carved in stone we see a life map just like we say life is a journey and go on any journey you need to have a map there's going to be dead ends there's going to be multiple potholes if you know where they are you're still in charge of your own car this is just a navigation system you can learn if you understand how you're connected to everything around you that is the miracle waiting to happen so is this connected to feng shui feng shui this is based on the taoist thought everything around us is connected everything is made of energy we're all connected through this energy boom is wind sway is water it's an energy that we cannot destroy or create it's always there but we can divert it we can harness it in china we can ride it exactly i was going to say in chinese so say birds do not fly they are flown fish do not swim they are carrot they are carried they are swum by water they always think particularly in christianity that a miracle is a result of divine intervention in the chinese thought everything is connected everything has a reason for why it occurred thank you thank you fong sue wind water birds don't fly they ride the wind fish don't swim they're carried everything that happens to us is result of all the things that we are connected to what we call divine intervention is merely connections we weren't aware of makes me wonder if we shouldn't maybe stop trying so hard to control our lives and learn to ride the wave of life our lives are filled with unexpected twists and turns some believe there's nothing beyond randomness others say we're propelled by the will of god or the energy of the universe both those beliefs could make the difference between life and death because the human mind could have a hidden power to unleash a miracle i'm traveling the world trying to understand the power of miracles and i've come to cairo to find out if that power could come from our own minds i'm visiting one of the world's oldest hospitals a place that was famous for combining medical science with the healing power of belief so the writings around the building describe the founding of this hospital and of the entire complex harvard historian of islam and physician ahmed bhagat has brought me to the koller woon complex first opened its doors around 1285 a.d this would be the entrance through which patients would normally walk wow this is a dramatic change from outside this is actually by design when you walk into this corridor from the outside the sunny and the dirty streets and it's very noisy you walk in here it's a dark calm shaded corridor [Music] patients came here hoping to be cured by both cutting edge medicine and a miraculous intervention from god i want to show you something here oh okay oh my goodness the construction here is the most impressive thing ever that i think i've seen anywhere this is the shrine of sultan khalawun the founder of this hospital patients who have come in and offered a prayer of thanks for the sultan slowly khaloon himself becomes connected to the idea of healing it's like in this history we're looking at the making of a healing saying does that mean that there becomes a connection between faith and healing medicine as a whole was seen as the conduit of the will of god so at the end of the day we fall sick um in part this is something that god dwells and we would only be healed through medicine but only by the will of god exactly actually everything that happens is the will of god exactly [Music] centuries ago muslims believed faith and medicine worked hand in hand but can belief in divine intervention actually help medicine heal us today tom renfrow is familiar with the cliche the miracle of modern medicine because he's a practicing physician but he also believes in divine miracles and that one happened to him [Music] it was 18 years ago that i stood there to give thanks to god for healing me and what i told you at that time was you are looking at a true miracle a miracle of god the hunt for miracle stories has brought indiana university scholar candy gunter brown to norton virginia to meet tom she's studying whether faith and prayer can actually improve medical outcomes the question that i really interests me is what happens when people pray for healing candy it was in 1996 in the fall of that year that i found a nodule on the back of my neck later on that fall i found more nodules under my arm and i sought medical attention and the biopsy under my arm showed that i had an unusual form of lymphoma called mantle cell lymphoma the prognosis was very poor and they gave me months to live and basically told me enjoy what time you have left and the goal is to hopefully keep me alive through christmas i was a physician i knew the objective evidence that was there i was in multi-organ failure i had a disease that there was no medicine or cure for that would wipe this disease out instead of despair the lord wants us to remember i have brought you all this way i'm not going to leave you here by yourself did you have medical treatments uh no i did not have medical treatments not at that time the tumors continued to progress and as they progressed the people came together more and more intense with prayer our pastor organized a week in prayer to where people would come and pray perhaps even all night and it was a remarkable time by now the tumors were the size of apples on my neck my arms stuck out because of the massive adenopathy under my arms my abdomen was expanding i was dying the lord actually spoke to me and said now is the time to go to the hospital chemotherapy typically only delays the progress of metal cell lymphoma it's not a cure so they started an infusion and it was like the rock that that david threw at goliath before the infusion even completed there was something that changed in me physically the tumors they became like a nerf ball like a sponge and very soft and they started disappearing in front of your eyes and all this massive adenopathy just disappeared over the next 24-48 hours it was gone do you ever wonder did the chemotherapy just work better than the doctors expected it to work the chemotherapy it wasn't designed to cure no one expected the tumors to utterly start disappearing or melting i should have died multiple times during this illness from pulmonary embolisms from pneumonia from renal failure but i had faith i had people that poured their words into me to encourage me and i believe through that that god intervened and healed me and here we are 18 years later me talking to you to me that is a miracle that is a miracle that i'm here why did tom renpro survive when so many people who pray for healing don't make it tom believes the power of his faith and that of the people around him helped the chemotherapy achieve the impossible it strikes me that much of what we call miraculous starts right here in the mind we close our eyes in prayer don't we and i think that's because the goal is to focus the mind to transcend the distractions of everyday life to set our minds to achieve what at first we might fear is impossible i've come to india to explore a religion that believes we all have the mental power to perform miracles this is the mahabodhi temple in bodhgaya according to buddhist tradition 2 500 years ago a man named siddhartha gautama came to the realization that the human mind had immense untapped powers in doing so he founded an entirely new religion buddhism and tradition says he did it right here under this tree i want to understand what buddhists believe happened to siddhartha as he sat under the tree tibetan monk los angeles has promised to help me find out so that's winter i'm glad you could come oh me too so this is our holiest spot where the buddha attained awakening losing tells me he'll get me to understand the miracle of the buddha's enlightenment and he'll do it by challenging my mind to get me to see the light myself so what do you know about what do you know about what do they teach you in america i learned that he was of noble birth and uh he grew up very very sheltered and said that and then one day he wandered out of the compound that's right and began to see right because it really was yep why why why did he do that that's the question you're going to answer well how would you like it if your father had decided as soon as you were born that this baby of mine is going to be the king so i've got to keep him in this palace surrounded by beautiful sense objects flowers that never drew beautiful young ladies who never look old perfect isn't that perfect but this guy wasn't satisfied with that would have left the palace right yes and you know what he saw when he left the palace well as i understand it he saw suffering he saw real life at home well there were old people cripples and beggars people who had nothing people were hungry yeah it's like a it's like an eye opener it's like a wow he's so dead yeah his father his father didn't want him to see death it made him think so strongly he felt i've got to leave this place and find out what is the cause of this why do people suffer siddhartha roamed for six years seeking to understand the cause of suffering until he finally came to the shade of a ficus tree and decided that he would stay right on that spot focusing his mind until he discovered how to end human suffering after sitting motionless for an entire night siddhartha achieved a mental transformation buddhists say he became the buddha the enlightened one [Music] taught us he said you know what a good doctor would tell a patient man you're sick you're sick you're suffering you know you have a problem second i know the cause basically this craving attachment the buddha realized that by letting go of his desires and his attachment to the material world he could rid himself of suffering for the buddha and for generations of buddhists after him this freedom from attachment seems to allow a remarkable perhaps even miraculous mental and physical focus you know he was so grateful to this tree under which he sat and achieved this amazing realization he sat in this area for seven weeks and for one of those weeks just gazing unwinkingly they say unmoving and unblinking for seven days it's possible why not we haven't exercised our minds we're so busy with external things buying and selling and doing all the things we can do never actually seen a yogi in in action well in a sense it's an amazing thing but you and i can do it buddhist years of mental training and showing love and compassion to others can free them from suffering walking around this temple you feel like a miracle really could happen the miracle of people being content with their lives [Music] people getting along together do you want to just come and see how tibetan llama teaches western students how are you i am well how are you sir i'm very good i assure you i'm moving oh you did which one i don't know who else likes my movie shortcut we all need to care and love and respect each other that is the source of happiness whoever had that their journey is good whoever not keep this in a heart journey is not thank you from today you are my friend where [Music] okay i like you so a lot of religions are pretty much miracle-based i mean christianity judaism right really right uh you don't do miracles but what's a miracle i mean lying in the sky is that a miracle it but we normally think of miracles as some sort of divine thing something that okay that gives us proof of god or something you know okay so that we could ask where is god we ask the mystics or the yogis where's god they'll point here they won't point up there they'll say it's in here so then if you're being inspired by your inner god buddha christ you know krishna whatever you want to call it maybe then you can perform what's called a miracle what does this world need the most it needs healing right love it needs uh reconciliation i think that's a miracle and that's the miracle we need we don't need people levitating three inches off their butt you know while meditating that's stupid so let's stick to the real miracle which is to transform the human mind really all right you know what you just did what you solved the problem with miracles thank you good woke up you're all right in my book it's ironic that a man who wanted us to tap into the power that we all have within ourselves is thought of that some sort of divine being the point of buddhism as far as i can see is to teach us that we are all capable of much more than we might believe we are we just concentrate on it just put our minds to it i used to struggle to make sense of miracle stories how oceans could be parted how it was possible to walk on water but i think i was missing the point to believe in miracles is to believe there is more to life than meets the eye to accept there could be something that connects us unites us so many souls pass through this world and as our paths cross miraculous things can and do happen people get the breaks they always wanted people inspire one another people fall in love and whether these events are orchestrated by the hand of god the power of the mind or just a 100 million chance i believe we should believe in miracles because miracles however you define them help us to well they give us hope they drive us to create reality out of possibility [Music] you

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 4,110,220

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, morgan freeman, full episode, morgan freeman movies, morgan freeman documentary, national geographic documentary, Story of God, The Power of Miracles, God, Faith, Religion, Civilization, Miracles, the story of god, the story of god morgan freeman, The story of god with morgan freeman

Id: XEyV8o2dp7M

Length: 50min 18sec (3018 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022