Actually, I am REALLY glad this was brought up. I’ve been reading in the threads and comments etc. so often regarding ‘miracles’ that, "the miracles that Christ did can now be replicated by human beings easily’. . .you know, 'bringing back the dead, curing the sick, why He was just using ‘modern’ techniques dontcha know.
But this. . .OOOOH. I would like to those those nattering nabobs explain THIS away. THIS miracle is not SCIENTIFICALLY explainable. It can’t be done by us humans!
I’ll drink to that . . .
I kind of figured that this OP might pry open some panels in the woodwork. Nope, not scientifically explainable, and exceedingly complex. I did not mention the intricacies behind the questions, such that the additional chemicals which are the components of a a good wine are more complex than hydrocarbons. Other atoms must be manufactured— Sulfur, Sodium, Chlorine, Magnesium, Boron, Nitrogen, and Iron are atop the list. These atoms require considerable energy for their synthesis, so much that they are normally synthesized in the sun, where the sustained million-degree temperatures and awesome pressure in the solar core kind of helps the process along. All the king’s horses and the nuclear physicists at Cern and Fermilab could not manufacture those atoms from water.
But, assuming that it was somehow accomplished, there was still considerable work to do, namely constructing the complex chemicals which give wine its texture, scent, and flavors. These are normally assembled by tedious biochemical processes within plants, then extended within cool oaken casks, over time. Probably no more than a few trillion-trillion of these molecules would be needed. There would be at least 1000 different kinds of these molecules, all combined in perfect balance. (Too many tannins make a wine taste harsh, and too many esters are simply nasty.)
Now if I were Christ and wanted to pull of a showy miracle like this without vaporizing myself, my mother, a nice young couple anticipating the most wonderful night of their lives, and Jerusalem, I would do it differently.
I would plan ahead. First I would cause some shekels to materialize. I would use my psychic skills to locate where some skinflint hoarder had buried some gold pieces without telling anyone before he died, and order a few of my followers to go dig them up in the dead of a moonlit night. I would use these to clandestinely purchase a cask of the finest wine available, ideally from a little known source outside the city.
Then I would pour it into a water cask.
In the dead of the next moonlit night, I and a trusted follower would sneak into the house where the wedding was to be held and squirrel this cask away in the back corner of an obscure closet, We would also abscond with a cask of wine already awaiting the festivities, ensuring that the wedding supply would fall short.
Come wedding day, while the guests were getting themselves thoroughly crocked, my trusted henchmen would retrieve the mislabeled water cask, marked for easy identification, and place it among the other water casks, but back out of convenient reach lest it be opened prematurely.
Then, when the boozy wedding guests started whining about their empty chalices, I would make a show of having them follow me to the back pantry, where I locate the cask of wine, perform an arcane incantation or two, wave my hands, and invite them to open it. Voila! Mission Impossible accomplished!
Of course, I’m not Christ, for which He is surely thankful, so there is no doubt that He would have done this trick the hard way, dealing with the giga-ergs of thermonuclear energy by maybe conducting them into the roots of a nearby fig tree, and performing trillions of complex atomic and chemical transformations in the space of a few seconds. That’s why He’s a God, and I’m a gnarly old crank whose common-sense rants cannot stand up to Biblical Truth.
