Imagine that I had a time machine that would let you go back 200 years.  Now I tell you your job is to go back and teach people from that era that men and women of all races are equal and deserving of equal treatment.  It's really a pretty basic moral concept and it seems like it should be easy to get it across given your vastly superior modern knowledge.  How would you do it?

One path would be to first prove your knowledge of the universe through science, mathematics or engineering and then use that as a platform to get people's attention focused on human equality.  Do you think it would work?  If you kept you scientific revelations only somewhat ahead of their time so that people could grasp them you would be widely hailed as a genius, but how many people then or now really take moral leadership from scientists?  If you went beyond that and produced impressive engineering wonders you might find yourself burning for heresy.  Given the wrong message and the right time and place and it's possible that the people carrying the torches might be scientists themselves.

The problem is that science and technology can be beautiful, impressive or event scary but they aren't the kinds of things that change people's hearts and minds.  We like to imagine that truth by itself is powerful and will win out, but history suggests that truth is easy to ignore and easy to shout down.  Truth must also be within the grasp of its audience before it can be accepted.  Discussions of electromagnetic fields would not go to far 2000 years ago.  You would need to first describe the entire conceptual framework.  It would be like teaching people magical spells in every sense.

How do you do it then?  How do you get people to willingly give up something that they benefit from in order to help other people?  How do you get men to give up power over their wives for the sake of a belief?  It would take a miracle.

But history tells us that there are those who did change the hearts and minds of people, whose influence literally altered the moral course of humanity.  There were miracle workers like Buddha and Christ and others whose ideas still shape our thinking and enable some people to step beyond their narrow self interest and embrace a broader truth.  

Now I'll tell you a secret.  You don't need a time machine to make miracles and you don't need to be a Moses.  You don't need anything you don't have with you this very second.  We can all work small miracles if we are willing to sacrifice for the moral truths we believe in.