Modern Manna

Sometimes we are tempted to believe that God performed miracles only in biblical times. But genuine miracles are still occurring today, as I personally witnessed in March 2014 when I visited the Adventist mission in Namba, Angola.

Seventy-five years earlier, there were some one hundred church members living on that large property. During a very dry season, the crops did not grow, and they were left without food. On March 19, 1939, the wife of the mission director invited the local families for a special meeting. She explained the situation and assured them that God could still provide for their needs as He had done in the wilderness for ancient Israel (Exodus 16). After prayer, her five-year-old daughter went outside and soon came back with her hands full of some white stuff she was eating. Questioned about it, she explained that she met six European men outside the house, who told her that God had answered their prayers and sent manna for them to eat. Manna continued to fall there quite abundantly until the next harvest. After the production of crops was normalized, manna continued to fall but in very small quantities. But when the Adventist mission was taken over by Angolan revolutionists, the manna stopped falling. It only restarted after the government of Angola returned the property to the church. When I visited the mission in 2014, tiny manna flakes were still falling in a small area behind the local church every Wednesday morning and Friday morning. It melts in the mouth and has a pleasant, sweet taste (Exodus 16:31). Gerson Pires de Araújo submitted some samples of manna to the Laboratory of Spectrometry of Masses at the State University of Campinas in Brazil.

The analysis indicated that it “is composed mainly of sugars (oligosaccharides), as well as of small quantities of nitrogen and oxide compounds, metallic elements suitable for human consumption.” God never forsakes His children.

As stated by Ellen White, “Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us of which we know nothing.

Those who accept the one principle of making the service of God supreme, will find perplexities vanish and a plain path before their feet.” Let’s trust in God’s providing care for us!