Is modern technology destroying our miracles? Take for example the story Elder Holland told at a seminar for new Mission Presidents last year. A young man had left home and fell away from the church. The family did not know where he was. His younger brother went on a mission, and during that mission tracked into his brother, and brought him back to the gospel. I would say, given the odds of where the older brother could be living in the world, and where the younger brother could have been called, and then for them to actually run into each other, that this qualifies as a miracle by any definition of the word.

So what happened? Well with the internet, the story was shared on social media to many thousands, and it got back to the family, who contacted Elder Holland to tell him it was not true. There was no miracle. Elder Holland had to make a public retraction.

Turns out the family did have a wayward son, but he had already returned home before younger brother even left for his mission. Not a very good story! What if Elder Holland had told the same story pre internet, say mid 1980s. It would have been accepted by the Mission Presidents as true. They would have passed it on in mission conferences all over the world, and missionaries would then tell it after they got home. It may have eventually gotten back to the family, but I doubt they would have contacted Elder Holland 20 years latter. It would be allowed to stand, and spread as a real miracle.

I wonder what the internet would have done to other “miracles” in our history. Would the movie 17 Miracles have been renamed “3 Miracles”? With our connected world with everybody carrying a high definition camera with 1080p video capability, there is not an event that is not going to be recorded. Could Christ’s miracles have withstood this modern scrutiny? What would video of Jesus walking on water have looked like? The cynic might say that these miracles never happened, and the reason modern prophets aren’t preforming them today is there is no way to get away with making them up.

What are your thoughts. Has technology led to the decline of miracles, or is something else at play?