< The Bible

The Bible/Awesome


Moses parting the Red Sea as envisioned by Genzoman.


...That's good Bible.
—Mal Reynolds, Firefly

God

  • Assuming you are a believer, pretty much every miracle counts. But some specific examples:
    • The entire universe gets created, because He said so.
    • The Tower of Babel. Humanity has gathered together and reached its peak, thinking there's nothing it can't do. So how does God respond? He pretty much snaps His fingers and Humanity takes a huge step back, by suddenly not understanding each other.
    • The Ten Plagues. Joint with Moses and Aaron only in terms of the two humans being God's message boys.
      • Note that there are many who criticize some of them as being misdirected in their targets. Whether they are or not is subjective.
    • The parting of the Red Sea. To top it off, He drowned Pharaoh and his army while at it.
    • Toppling the walls of Jericho. By having His people march around it for a week in silence, and then making noise and yelling on the last day. God also very precisely saved only one small section of the wall, where a lady had helped His spies stake out the area.
    • A sort of joint Moment of Awesome for God and Gideon in the book of Judges. The Isrealites are up against a ridiculously powerful enemy - and outnumbered. God chooses timid Gideon to lead them - a man who, IIRC, he literally found hiding in a hole. Before the battle, God tells Gideon that he wants the eventual victory to be so awesome that everyone will know it had to be God's doing, and the Israelites to be absolutely sure they know who's delivering them. So Gideon tells the men they can all leave if they want. OVER HALF THE ARMY shrugs and wanders off, but God still says the odds are not bad enough - so God and Gideon whittle it further down to a mere 300 of the original force, judging who stays and who goes by the way they drink, of all things. The final odds are 300 versus "as numerous as locusts" and "can't be counted as like than sand on the seashore". Then, just to really hammer the point home, Gideon issues an order that, rather than go into battle wielding weapons, they are to wield clay jars with torches in them and trumpets. They do as he says, against all logic, and when they charge the enemy said enemy all turn around and try to flee - cutting themselves up with their own swords in the process.
      • A little bit of extra stuff, they did it at night. They sounded the trumpets, smashed the jars, held up the torches, and yelled. To the enemy, it sounds like Israel is packing a HUGE army, and then God added to their confusion, which makes the joint armies of the enemies attack each other for betraying them to the Israelites.
    • Okay, there's a bit where the Philistines have captured the Ark of the Covenant and want to sacrifice God to their idol, Dagon. They have a fight. God wins. By strangling Dagon to death.
      • More specifically, the day after the Ark is captured, Dagon is found bowing to God with his head and hands ripped off and tossed aside. God then proceeds to devastate every place the Ark gets sent to with panic, tumors, and death until they finally send it back to Israel. With gold gifts, even.
      • In addition, the ark is sent back in a cart led by two cows that have never been tamed and were separated from their calves. The cows ditched their babies willingly for service to God, and headed straight back to Israelite territory.
    • The showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. The challenge: to prove whose god is legit, both parties will pray for a pyre to burn. Elijah stacks the deck against himself, on purpose, by soaking his pyre in water and letting them go first. God still sets it fully aflame regardless, proving who's in charge.
      • Soaks the pyre so much that water is filling the runoff trough. And the fire leaves a crater.
      • Not only that, Elijah taunts the priests of Baal when they can't deliver, suggesting that their god is sleeping, away on a trip, off taking a leak, etc. He gives them a whole day to cavort about.
      • Then The Isrealites, in their rage at the realization of their fallacy, killed all of them.
      • He once resurrected a widow's son.
      • And at the end of Elijah's life, instead of dying, he's carried bodily up into God's presence in a chariot of fire. Even better, when he died, people absolutely refused to believe that he was really dead, and they looked for him for generations. Even Elisha, Elijah's successor, couldn't stop them.
    • Subtler, but no less awesome: God manages to hammer some compassion into Jonah's thick skull using only biting sarcasm and a large gourd.
    • Then there's the story of King Uzziah of Judah. Uzziah, his ego bloated from his many successes, tries to do something only the priests are allowed to do-burn incense in the temple. God's response? He strikes Uzziah with leprosy, essentially ending his days as king of Judah.
    • When the Assyrian army lays siege to Jerusalem and its commander trash talks God in fron of the city walls, God sends an angel that kills 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a single night.
    • Well, it's like they sing: our God is an Awesome God.
    • What's that Mr Satan? You've finally beaten me, you say? Killed my son, you say? I'll never see him again, you say? The human race is now doomed to an eternity of sin and death, you say? GUESS AGAIN!!!


Jesus

  • He gets better. It's a Moment of Awesome, Heartwarming Moments and a Tear Jerker, all at the same time. Of course, he had plenty before that:
    • Ever want to know what the Son of God is like when you thoroughly piss Him off? Turn one of His Father's temples into a black market bazaar.
    • In The Inferno -- both the original by Dante and the remake by Niven and Pournelle -- He spends His time between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection by going down to Hell. To rescue people. According to Niven and Pournelle, when He got to the city of Dis, the Infernal bureaucrats tried to get Him to fill out their forms before they let Him in. So he kicked the iron gates of the city down, and scared the demons so much that they were afraid to repair the gates for over two thousand years.
    • The Pharisees confront Him with the supposedly impossible: condemning an adulteress to be stoned and thus certainly ending up in jail for violating Roman law, or, by letting her go, allowing for claims that he is not the Son of God by not upholding the Jewish law. As the Guile Hero that he is, Jesus simply replies "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." To which, everyone simply walks away as the realization of his words sinks in. Especially as He is the only one who can actually throw the first stone. After they all go, He asks the woman whether anyone remains to condemn her. Reply? "No one, Lord". His answer to that is "Then neither do I condemn you. Go, and leave your life of sin."
    • Any time somebody gets raised from the dead counts, but when it's a little girl...
    • Moments before, a lady with chronic bleeding healed herself merely by touching Jesus' clothing -- and He realized at once that someone had done it. Interesting note: she had been bleeding for the same years as the girl's life (12 years).
    • A Roman centurion begs Jesus via messenger to heal his sick servant, humbly claiming to be unworthy of the Messiah's personal attention and confiding that Jesus' mere word will be sufficient. Impressed, Jesus does indeed say the word, and lo, it sufficeth mightily.
    • That whole "turn the other cheek" thing? It's a lot more Badass that it sounds. "Backhanding" someone[1] was used in that day and age to humiliate and devalue ones' inferiors--to "put them in their place", so to speak. Because using the left hand was socially taboo, the right hand was always used for this purpose; so if the person who had just been backhanded turned his head so that the opposite cheek faced his opponent, the aggressor would be forced to hit him with the front of his hand, or his fist...the way that only equals fought. It told the person abusing you, "I am a human being, and I refuse to be treated as your inferior--and if you're going to continue beating me, you will acknowledge that."
    • John 18:1-9. Judas gets a "band of soldiers" (estimated by Biblical scholars to be around 200) to arrest one guy. Jesus asks them who they seek, and they say "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus says "I am" and the soldiers fall to the ground. Oh, and he does this to them twice. Clearly showing that he could have pwned all of them if he wanted to. What makes it even better? YHWH (pronounced "Yahweh"), one way of saying God, can be literally translated to mean "I am."
    • Peter, rather understandably, tries to come to Jesus's aid when he's arrested by drawing a sword and slashing the nearest enemy. Jesus berates him, picks up the guy's ear and heals it back on. Then goes with them of his own accord.
    • The Apostles see him with the spirits of Moses and Elijah. They described him as glowing white with otherworldly energy like he was a super saiyan or something.
  • Mary: It takes alot of guts for a woman to accept the responsibility of being the Mother of God and the Mother of all men so its very impressive that she chose to beocme this by Her own will and without being forced. And following the will of Her Son and our own needs, She let Him be crucified for us and according to Saint Alphonsus, Mary loves us so much that had the executioners been lacking, She'd have crucified Him herself to redeem us! Plus, unlike the apostles who doubted in Jesus, Mary never felt the least doubt in her Son, as proven by the fact she was present at the foot of the cross and that Jesus Himself trusted her so much that He gave her to us as our spiritual Mother.
      • Really, Mary was destined to do awesome things. The Latin Vulgate translation of Genesis 3:15 says that the woman 'shall crush the head of the serpent' who is obviously Satan.
      • Guess who usually gets the credit for Catholic military victories? Mary.
  • Jacob wrestles all night with ... well it's not clear who, but one translation of the name he's given, Yisrael, is "he struggles with God."
    • The text implies it's Jesus. Speaking of which, every time Jesus appears prior to His Incarnation, He's doing something awesome. Then again, so is most of the stuff He does after His Incarnation.
    • Not only that, Jacob won, with a broken hip.
      • He didn't quite outright win. But they were evenly matched after his hip was dislocated. He was allowed to win because it was daybreak, and the guy wanted to leave, to which Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me.". He got his blessing. He kept his limping from his hip though.
  • Simeon and Levi. Some guy violated a daughter of Jacob, and then asks his daddy to go get her as his wife. Her father and multitude of brothers are understandably furious. Her brothers tell him he can have her as long as his entire city gets circumcised first. The city agrees. Three days later Simeon and Levi go in and slaughter them all while they're still recovering writhing in pain.
  • Joshua, when fighting an alliance of about ten city-states, realized that night was approaching and that the enemy would be able to escape, so he told the sun to stand still until he had won the battle. The sun complied.
    • Even before that, there was a few Moments of Awesome. How about taking down an entire fortress wall with only trumpets and the voice of the army.
      • One of the WMG'S is that the marching army was just a diversion so Jericho never notices the Israelites infiltrating the city via the wall. When the signal came, they came out, killed the sentries and threw open the gates. Not as iconic as the traditional interpretation but still badass.
  • Ehud, God's Ninja and soon-to-be Judge of Israel, is sent to deliver tax money to the oppressive King Eglon of Moab. When he arrives, he delivers the money and sends his assistants home. He then announces that he has a secret message for the king, so Eglon sends all of his servants away. When the two of them are alone, he says I have a message for you from God! and then stabs Eglon. He then escapes by simply walking out the door and locking it behind him.
    • The reason Ehud was able to sneak in a weapon was because he was left-handed; he had strapped the sword to his right thigh. The guards did not think to check because most people then were right-handed.
    • Also notable is the fact that when Ehud stabbed Eglon in the gut, the blade went so deep that "even the handle sank in after the blade, which came out his back... and the fat closed in over it." So gross. So awesome.
    • Not only that, but it says that when the blade went into his stomach his bowels let loose on the floor. The reason his servants waited so long to go check on him was because the thought he was taking a dump.
  • There's a single verse in Judges about a guy named Shamgar, who killed six hundred Philistine warriors with an oxgoad.
  • Samson's whole life is a CMOA. Start with his birth. His mother was sterile, but was promised by an angel that she would conceive. Then, he kills a lion with his bare hands. Some time later, he killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. And who also pulled a Taking You with Me by breaking two columns of a Philistine temple and killing so many more as well as himself. And he was blind and chained at that time. In that moment, "he killed many more when he died than while he lived."
    • Not to mention that, after killing all those guys with a jawbone, Samson even gives a Bond One-Liner.
    • Samson also once got pissed off at the Philistines because his first wife was given away to his best man, so he went and caught three hundred foxes, tied them together in pairs by their tails and attached a lit torch to each pair and set them loose in the Philistines' fields.
  • Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, got an honor denied to high-ranking Jewish general Barak (because he was too pansy to go into war without Judge Deborah). The enemy commander named Sisera flees from a lost battle and barges into Jael's tent. He asks her for a drink and a place to rest and commands her to stand guard against his pursuers; she agrees... but when he falls asleep, Jael calmly grabs a mallet and a tent peg and hammers Sishara's head into the ground, driving the tent peg through his temple and confirming Israel's victory. She then also calmly invites Barak in to see her lovely handiwork. Awesome.
  • This troper would like to present this passage from the Second Book of Kings, 2:23-25, wherein the prophet Elisha is threatened by a gang of delinquents:

"From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria."

  • Elisha's first Crowning Moment happens before he even becomes a full-time prophet, by having the audacity to ask Elijah for TWICE as much awesome as Elijah got. (And indeed, Elisha has at least twice as many recorded miracles as Elijah.)
    • Actually, "a double portion" doesn't mean twice as much -- in those times the firstborn son got a double share of his father's inheritance, meaning, however much all the other kids got, firstborn son got twice that.
    • Elisha had a CMoA after he died. Some people tried to bury a dead person on top of his bones on accident, and the dead person instantly sprang back to life as soon as he touched the bones.
  • An unnamed woman of the city of Thebez in the book of Judges picks up a millstone by herself and tosses it over the city wall onto the head of would-be invading conqueror Abimelech (Israel's first self-proclaimed king), crushing his skull and leading the severely humiliated man to beg his armor bearer to stab him so that they couldn't say, "A woman killed him."
    • It's more likely she moved the stone with levers or whatever, but it's still awesome.
  • Rather more subdued--Ruth and Naomi losing their husbands (which was pretty much the end of any woman's world in those days), but carrying on, saying 'screw you' to everybody else, and making a life for themselves (keep in mind that Ruth is David's great-grandmother and by extension a direct ancestor of Jesus; clearly, saying 'screw you' to everybody else runs in that family).
    • On both sides, apparently, as Ruth's second husband, Boaz of Bethlehem, was the son of Rahab of Jericho.
  • The Hebrew army's been getting their butts kicked, and now are being challenged to single combat by a nine foot man who carries a gigantic sword and spear. A shepherd boy by the name of David takes the challenge, refuses the king's armor, knocks the giant in the middle of his head with a sling stone, killing him, and then chops the giant's head off with his own sword.
    • Made only slightly less awesome by the fact that most people forget that, at the time, the sling was a legit and lethal weapon of war. More importantly, is is a ranged weapon. Never bring a knife to a gunfight.
      • Albeit best used by a regiment, with a regiment-sized target to aim at. Fortunately David, as a shepherd used to discouraging dangerous predators, could actually hit individual targets with some accuracy.
      • David wasn't sure it would only take one stone, he'd taken five with him. He only used one. They were also smooth river stones.
      • IIRC, Goliath had four brothers.
    • Indeed, a young David had already killed a lion and a bear, with his hands.
  • Samuel gets one of the best. Saul, in desperate need of military advice, decides to consult the wise old prophet Samuel. There's only one problem: Samuel's dead. No worries: Saul chooses to go to a medium (the Witch of Endor) to have Samuel's spirit brought back for a strategy session. Saul himself had decreed that all who consult such mediums will be executed, thus breaking his own law. Samuel's spirit comes forth, tells Saul that the Lord is sick of his behavior, and says that Saul and his sons will die in battle against the Philistines the next day. Needless to say, Saul and several of his sons died in battle with the Philistines the next day (and the other son, Ishbaal, doesn't last much longer). Even as a ghost, Samuel is incredibly awesome.
    • There was actually a reason the Israelites were warned not to consult mediums, or seek out magicians or use any similar power of that kind. Ecclesiastes 9:5 tells us that "the dead know nothing." Meaning, the dead can't interact with the living. Which brings into serious question just who Saul was really talking to when the witch summoned what he THOUGHT was Samuel's ghost...
    • One possibility is that God made an exception by bringing him back Himself.
    • Crown Prince Jonathan and his armor bearer killing an entire army by themselves.
  • An Crowning Moment of Awesome from when Samuel was alive: King Saul had disobeyed God's direct orders to completely obliterate his opponent down to even the livestock and had captured King Agag alive in addition to some other stuff. After ripping into Saul for presuming that God would like sacrifices rather than simple obedience, he ends with "Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has also rejected you from being king."

Then Samuel said, "Bring here to me Agag the king of the Amalekites." And Agag came to him cheerfully, full of hope, for he thought, "Surely the worst is over, and I have been spared!" [After all, he had just faced Saul and the whole army of Israel with God behind it all, and now he's just facing a cranky old man right? WRONG.]

But Samuel said, "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women." And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the LORD in Gilgal. (1 Samuel 15:32-33)

  • While fighting a battle, King David wishes aloud for a drink from a certain well he knew of that was currently behind enemy lines. Three of his soldiers broke through the enemy lines, drew water from the well, and brought it back to David.
    • The three are named. As a group. David's Three Mighty Men. They each have their moments of awesome, all involving being a One-Man Army against however many Philistines they faced that day. They are also a part of a group of 37 men, two others are also named with awesome One-Man Army exploits attached to them, and the rest are just named. But named out of all the armies of King David.
      • One killed 800 Philistines with his spear, another got his hand so cramped after a battle that he can't let go of his sword, and another survived a booby trap, a lion, and slain two great Moabite warriors.
    • The three sons of David's sister Zeruiah: Joab, Abishai, and Asahel.
      • Joab was David's military commander through most of his rebellion and later kingship. He was pragmatic, charismatic, and ruthless, which earned him many military victories over far stronger foes. He was also kind of a dick. However, he did have one moment, when David got cocky and ordered a count of all his fighting men to show how Badass he was. Joab told to reconsider, knowing it was a bad idea. Forced to do it anyways, Joab refused to count the tribe of the priests, Levi, and the tribe that encompassed Jerusalem, Benjamin.
      • Another time, he got wind that David was loudly weeping for his traitorous son Absalom, whom Joab had just killed, possibly knowing that David would have been too soft on him. The soldiers that just risked their necks for the king are now demoralized because he seems to care more about the guy who just tried to rebel against them than his own men. So Joab goes over to his king and then delivers a What the Hell, Hero? speech, snapping his boss out of it.
      • Abishai killed 300 enemy soldiers in a single engagement, as well as commanding many other battles alongside his brother Joab. He is also one of the ones who broke through enemy lines to get the king some water. His exploits were so great that he was not only recognized to be as great as the three mightiest of David's warriors, he was put in charge of them.
      • Asahel unfortunately doesn't get much mention in the Bible, aside from dying a particularly gruesome death at the hands of Abner. However, he is mentioned to be one of the thirty mighty men who were only one notch below the top three. Going by the standards of what was needed to get on that list, he probably had an Offscreen Moment of Awesome
  • Of course, David himself was no slouch. Way earlier, King Saul told him that in order to marry his daughter Michal, David had to go out and bring back one hundred Philistine foreskins. David then goes out and brings back two hundred, for no reason except to prove how hardcore he is. Cracked.com puts it best.
  • Nathan, the court prophet of King David, has arguably one of the greatest What the Hell, Hero? moments ever. David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, another man's wife, gotten her pregnant, and arranged to have her husband killed in battle so they could marry. When God informs Nathan of the coverup, Nathan tells David a parable about a rich man, with lots of sheep, who takes a poor man's beloved pet lamb and slaughters it for food. Enraged, David says such a man deserves to be killed. Nathan responds "You are the man!" The king sincerely repents and his life is spared, though he loses his illegitimate child and the rest of his life is made of suck. Keep in mind David could easily have had Nathan killed for this.
    • At least David fathered Solomon by Bathsheba, so there turned out to be compensation.
  • Solomon started out his young reign by answering God granting him a freebie for anything with wanting wisdom over everything else. Smart move. God then further grants him long life and wealth and honor.
    • Two ladies come up to him with a dispute of whose baby is whose, one dead, one live. He solves the problem by ordering the baby shared... by cutting it in two pieces. He then gives the unsliced kid to the woman who cried out, "Please, my lord, just give her the living baby! Don't kill him!"
    • (Then he also pulls a What the Hell, Hero? by multiplying his dad's mistake of having multiple women, by oh a thousand or so. 700 wives and 300 concubines.)
  • The Book of Esther is dedicated to a Jewish girl using her beauty, her charm and her uncle/ward Mordechai's wise counseling to win the favor of Persian king Xerxes, marry him, blow the cover of a Smug Snake who planned to kill all the Persian Jews and save her people.
    • Not only that, Esther approached the king to gain an opportunity to plead for her people, even though he could have had her put to death for entering his presence without being summoned. The woman was just made of win.
    • Don't forget the fact that Haman (the aforementioned Smug Snake) is hung from the very gallows which he had built for Mordechai.
    • Also, let's not forget Queen Vashti, Esther's predecessor, who was ousted because she refused to appear, presumably naked, at a party for her husband and all his drunk friends. She was so far ahead of her time in the women's lib movement.
    • Oh, and one more thing. Though it is implied in commentary and is the purpose of the entire book, God is never stated to have anything to do with this one. Esther did it on her own, no miracles involved. In fact, this point is frequently emphasized at my own synagogue during the holiday celebrations: God lets people solve the problems if at all possible.
      • I dunno...there were a lot of suspiciously convenient "coincidences" that lead up to the finale. And apparently in the original Hebrew, it's written as an acrostic poem that spells out God's name over and over again.
      • It's more like God subtly manipulated events so she could become queen, and Esther used her position to help the Jews. Mordecai even lampshades that Esther was specifically put in her position to help the Jews in their hour of need, as if God saw trouble in the future and prepared a countermeasure in advance.
  • Ezekiel 37:1-14. The Prophet Ezekiel raises a ZOMBIE ARMY.
    • 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.
    • 8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.
    • 9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
    • 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.
      • That never actually happened. It was just a prophetic vision referring to the rebirth of Israel after the Diaspora. Of course, reviving a nation that hasn't existed in over 2000 years is still very awesome.
  • Okay, see once there was this time when the Assyrian army laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. All the elders are ready to cave in, and then a rich and beautiful widow named Judith calls them out for their lack of faith in God and tells them to give her a week to solve the problem. So, she goes to the Assyrian camp with her handmaid, pretending she's making a Face Heel Turn. The general of the army, Holofernes, falls in lust with Judith and decides to let her hang around. So, biding her times, she hangs around the camp until one night, Holofernes drinks himself into a stupor and is alone on his bed. Judith sneaks in and cuts his head off with his own sword. Even better, she sticks his head in the food bag she and her handmaid have been using and waltzes out of the camp with nobody the wiser. Pure awesome.
  • Prophet Daniel's friends Shadrach, Meishach, and Abednego (The Three Hebrews) refusing to bow before the king's statue. The King sentences them to be incinerated in a "furnace heated seven times hotter than usual", "so hot that the flames killed the soldiers" (who were "some of the strongest soldiers in his army" btw) who threw the three in. Looks like a Heroic Sacrifice, except they don't burn! And of course, since God always takes it to the next level, The Messiah himself is in the furnace with them. Made. Of. Win.
  • Don't forget Daniel's own CMOA as he does something similar. He is thrown to a lions' den... and with some help from God, he manages to befriend the beasts. This is also while he's some maybe eighty years old or so, according to Bible scholars.
    • Some years earlier he had another: when Belshazzar calls him to interpret the handwriting that appeared after he had an impious feast with gold sacred cutlery, he basically tells him "God says You Suck, milord, and tonight you'll know why..."
    • Daniel, as a youth, hears about some shenanigans along these lines: A pair of elders have trapped Susanna, a beautiful Jewess, making her an offer she can't refuse by threatening to jointly accuse her of adultery. With each to corroborate the other's lies, things look bleak, until Daniel arrives and cross-examines them on a point of detail: "Under what kind of tree was the act being carried out?" Not having rehearsed their answer to this, unable to tell different types of trees from quite a long way away, and being questioned separately, they give conflicting accounts, at which it's not only a Not Guilty verdict but summary execution for bearing false witness.
      • Even better, in the original Hebrew text he delivers their sentences in the form of puns based on the names of the trees they claimed Susanna was under.
    • There's another time when a bunch of people are worshiping a dragon. God tells Daniel that this ain't cool, because dragon-worship isn't a real religion. So Daniel gets a bunch of bitumen and pitch and things and...
      • Note: The above two stories are only found in the Catholic Bible. For the Protestants, they're Apocrypha, but no less awesome for it.
  • Saul of Tarsus, later known as the Apostle Paul. Early in life, he was fanatically opposed to the Christian faith, having as many Christians as he could jailed and executed. After his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, he applied the same fanatical devotion to spreading the Christian message far and wide. By his own account, this caused him to suffer "far more imprisonments [than other Christian preachers], with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one [the maximum punishment the Jews were allowed to hand out under Roman law]. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure." Yet he kept on going. The man just could not be stopped.
    • Another CMoA for Paul was during one of his arrests (it was a recurring theme in the book of Acts). He was sentenced to a flogging and was being chained by a centurion when he spoke up: "Excuse me, I'm a Roman Citizen. I was born a Roman Citizen. You cannot flog me, especially without a trial." The authorities realized what they were about to do, and they stepped back.
    • Roughly the last 40% of the book of Acts is devoted to Paul's numerous arrests, trials and forced journeys. At one point he demands an audience with the Emperor (he appeals and as a Roman citizen he is permitted to do so). He then uses that free publicity to tell him about Christ. Well played, Paul.
    • Not to mention the time Paul incited an argument between the Pharisees and Sadducees at one of his trials.
  • Moses:
    • Parting the Red Sea and the plagues.
    • Arguing with God to spare the Israelites. And winning.
    • Aaron turning his staff into a snake, the Egyptian priests do the same, but the crocodile eats all of the others. [2]
  • Gideon destroying an entire enemy army using scare tactics to thin the ranks then killing the rest with only less than 300 men.
  • Joab dividing his forces and still beating an enemy army, the only time in history this has ever happened. But he knew not to push his luck and quickly retreated.
  • The building of God's temple. God's presence was seen and felt when it was completed. This didn't happen when the temple was rebuilt.
  • Elijah had many, including:
  • Jehosaphat defeating a coalition army by placing a choir in front of his lines.
  • Hezekiah prayed to God in the temple, something no king of Judah has done in decades. God killed the Assyrian army in a single night and Judah survived for another century.
  • Abijah is dismissed in Kings as wicked but Chronicles records the one time he turned to God, allowing him to decisively defeat Jeroboam in battle and keeping Judah's borders safe for the rest of his reign.
  • Once, when Paul was preaching, he was bitten in the hand by a poisonous snake that no one had ever survived before. He just brushes the snake off with his other hand without even pausing in the middle of his talk.
    • Another time, he was making a long late-night sermon and a poor kid nodded off and fell out of a window. Paul went downstairs, resurrected the kid, and went back to preaching.
  • What about Nehemiah? That guy was amazing! He goes up to the most powerful man in the entire world and asks if he can leave his job, for twelve years, to rebuild Jerusalem, with the king's own resources. The city the king had just conquered. The king could've had him executed for frowning in his presence, and yet that's how much Nehemiah relied on God.
  • Abraham gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome after Reasoning with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if one righteous man could be found(Gen: 22-33). This being the Old Testament God who could have struck him down in an instant, Abraham had a lot of guts.
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  1. ↑ (striking a person across the face with the back of the hand)
  2. ↑ The word used for what the staff turned into is ambiguous and refers to several different animals, but another verse implies that it was most likely referring to a crocodile in this instance, not a snake.
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