This is my reply to an article by Craig Keener entitled:
I offer here a challenge to Dr. Keener: please quit playing in the little leagues with your numerous anecdotal stories of miracles,
pick the ONE modern-day miracle claim you believe to be the most impervious to refutation or falsification, and explain why you think the only reasonable interpretation of it is to say it was a genuine miracle..and let's get started.
This is just an echo of a challenge I both posted here and emailed directly to Dr. Keener nearly two years ago, see
here. A challenge he still hasn't offered any reply to.
Around 1960, in the Republic of Congo,
a two-year-old girl named Thérèse was bitten by a snake. She cried out for
help, but by the time her mother, Antoinette, reached her, Thérèse was
unresponsive and seemed to have stopped breathing. No medical help was
available to them in their village, so Antoinette strapped little Thérèse to
her back and ran to a neighboring village.
According to the US National Library of Medicine, brain
cells start dying less than five minutes after their oxygen supply is removed,
an event called hypoxia. After six minutes, lack of oxygen can cause severe
brain damage or death. Antoinette estimates that, given the distance and the
terrain, it probably took about three hours to reach the next village. By the
time they arrived, her daughter was likely either dead or had sustained
significant brain damage.
Antoinette immediately sought out a family friend, Coco
Ngoma Moyise, who was an evangelist in the neighboring village. They prayed
over the lifeless girl and immediately she started breathing again. By the next
day, she was fine—no long-term harm and no brain damage. Today, Thérèse has a
master’s degree and is a pastor in Congo.
When I heard this story, as a Westerner I was naturally
tempted toward skepticism, but it was hard to deny. Thérèse is my sister-in-law
and Antoinette was my mother-in-law.
Thérèse (right), with her mother, Antoinette (middle), and
the author’s wife, Medine (left).
Image: Courtesy of Craig Keener
Thérèse (right), with her mother, Antoinette (middle), and
the author’s wife, Medine (left).
I'm not seeing how you could possibly think this anecdotal evidence somehow renders miracle-skeptics unreasonable. But I guess you were never writing this piece for skeptics anyway, correct?
And let's not forget that Christianity is full of "cessationists" (i.e., Christians who think the age of miracles ceased long ago...who therefore have their own biblical reasons to be suspicious of modern-day Christian miracle claims. See Keener debating such a person
here.
How much would a Christian cessationist push a skeptic to investigate modern-day miracles?
If even Christian scholars cannot agree whether the bible allows God to do miracles today, lets just say skeptics are more than reasonable if they choose to walk away from a confusing problem created and sustained by Christians. We cannot be intellectually compelled to go investigating miracle claims until we first determine that the bible allows God to do miracles 2000 years after the 1st century. Because if it
doesn't allow it, then the modern-day miracle might actually be done by demon...
and we wouldn't wanna play with fire or anything, would we?
And then there's the stupidity of thinking skeptics have an intellectual obligation to give two shits whether cessationism is biblical or not. Yeah, maybe we are also unreasonable if we refuse to study the differences between Trinitarians, Unitarians and Oneness Pentecostals. Yeah right. Then maybe under Romans 1:20 we are required to care enough about bible inerrancy at least minimally enough to google Geisler and Licona for several weeks so we can figure out which of them has a more "biblical" position on inerrancy, and then for thoroughness, take the next two years to study all the loquacious input Lydia McGrew has to offer about that particular issue.
You are high crack.
By contrast, in February, a video of South African preacher
Alph Lukau drew widespread attention for what appeared to be someone raised
from the dead in his church. Lukau claims he simply prayed for the unconscious
man in the coffin, but regardless of who is responsible, the situation was
clearly designed to deceive. The coffin was purchased from one funeral parlor
by customers allegedly posing as workers from another funeral parlor, and the
hearse was borrowed from yet a third. Critically, none of the funeral parlors
ever saw the body of the supposed deceased.
The video of this apparent resurrection was quickly
unmasked, and Lukau was condemned by numerous African church leaders.
Nevertheless, questions and concerns remain.
Us skeptics have colleges to attend, jobs to work and kids to raise. We are not unreasonable to say that because there are so many false miracle claims in the world, its better to toss the baby out with the bathwater, since the only alternative is to investigate (and thus fill up our lives with) a bunch of false bullshit. Since we are limited, there MUST come a time when we decide for ourselves that we have done enough research to justify drawing conclusions about the ultimate issue, just like you don't know everything there is to know about pleasing a woman in bed, but you did some study and arbitrarily decided the point at which you thought you knew enough to justify ending your studies.
I am no more open to miracle claims than I am open to archaeological claims asserting that artifacts unique to the Book of Mormon have been found. So much fraud attends both investigations that I've decided other things in life are more important than pretending to be what I'm not...an objective robot eternally willing to change my mind about anything whenever anybody comes up with some new claim. If you reached the firm conclusion that Mormonism is bullshit, at some point before knowing everything there is to know about the subject, you obviously agree with my closed-mindedness.
But my lack of openness doesn't mean I cannot be convinced otherwise. how many Christians took a firm doctrinal stance and considered the matter closed, then changed their minds later anyway? I won't be open to miracle claims until somebody comes up with something more convincing than unsubstantiated allegations about how doctors in third-world countries were baffled at some sort of healing.
And as I argued years ago, because Christians say the stakes are extremely high, we are thus perfectly reasonable to demand that their evidence meet the highest standards of authentication normally imposed on evidence by courts of law. If God has no trouble parting the Red Sea, he should have no trouble producing evidence that would meet court-tests of authentication and admissibility.
I’m married to an African, have spent time teaching in
Africa, and count many African Christians as relatives and friends. I’ve
learned much from them and their approach to miracles challenges me in good
ways. African Christianity has a tradition of prophetic leaders, and there is
great respect among Africans across the continent for a “man of God.”
And if they aren't specifically 'Christian' in outlook, your bible would require you view such prophets as false.
But
because miracles draw crowds, many leaders compete in miracle narratives.
So if my salvation is such a huge pressing issue, what should I prioritize? Picking up the kids from school? Or phone the school telling them to let the kids walk home
so I can google Christian miracle claims originating in Africa? According to your Christian logic,
my eternal destiny is more important than temporal earthly desires, correct? And didn't Jesus use promises of great material and spiritual riches to entice his followers to give up custody of their kids (Matthew 19:29)?
Do you recommend that I follow Jesus' advice in Matthew 19:29, yes or no?
Or do you recommend that I pick up my kids from school, and only google African miracle claims whenever I decide I don't have anything better to do? If that's the case, then apparently, you don't think my salvation is that important.
The
internet democratizes access, so leaders who publicly demonstrate their miracle
prowess can become wildly successful. Churches can control the setting and
potentially any staging. The opportunity for fakery abounds and my
miracle-believing, African Pentecostal friends lament the spread of fraudulent
miracle-workers.
I wonder how far a skeptic could milk the following excuse: "Given your admission to many false miracle claims among Christians, I wouldn't wanna be misled by a demon-inspired miracle, so playing it safe would counsel that I just avoid looking at miracle-claims
entirely...especially given that
as an unbeliever, I'm even more prone to being deceived by demonic miracles, than Christians are."
NOW what are you gonna do? Quote that part of the bible where God promises atheists protection from demons
as long as they are sincerely researching miracle-claims?
Is there a way we can distinguish between fabricated miracle
reports and the genuine article?
Maybe. But that means you'll have to devote your attention to a subject rife with falsehoods and demonic deceptions, and if you are an atheist, the apologist has to admit you run a greater risk of being deceived by demonic miracle reports, than any Christian would be.
Misplaced cynicism
Christians use the word miracle in different ways. Because
we believe that God works through his creation, we are right to thank God for
recoveries from sickness or injury, dramatic or not.
Do you thank god for farts, burps, predatory birds who sadistically torture their prey, and other things because they too, ultimately originate with the miracle of god's creation?
When we offer thanksgiving
for a successful surgery or an effective immune system, we don’t need to claim
it happened only by miraculous means.
Neither should we limit the term exclusively to what lacks
possible natural causes. The Bible says that God parted the Red Sea using a
strong east wind that blew all night (Ex. 14:21). But just because we recognize
the natural components of this event, we would be wrong to conclude it was
merely a fortuitous coincidence that allowed the Israelites to cross on dry
ground.
Thanks for the strong sign that you aren't writing this for skeptics, but only for those who are already Christian. If a skeptic wished to, she'd be perfectly reasonable and rational to disregard this article of yours in its entirety. You know how to address
skeptics with better arguments, but you typically choose to avoid doing so.
So how can we evaluate popular accounts of miracles?
Maybe you should have instead asked "Can skeptics be reasonable to avoid investigating miracle claims upon the basis that we Christians say many miracles are done by demons, and skeptics, not being Christians, are thus more prone to the danger of being successfully deceived by the devil?"
When we
don’t know the witnesses and lack other evidence, we have to live with varying
amounts of uncertainty.
Then, because you don't "know" any of the NT authors...
But examining credible examples can help us understand
how to approach miracles while being neither gullible nor faithless.
Since you'd never wish to stumble a skeptic, I'll assume your miracle-investigation advice is limited to just Christians, not those who are more prone to being deceived by demonic and heretical imitations?
If some African Christians accept miracle claims too
quickly, many of us in the secular West indulge the opposite cultural
temptation. Our heritage of antisupernaturalism, stemming from 18th-century
Deists and the naturalist philosophy of David Hume, predisposes us to dismiss
all miracles.
It also predisposes us to be absolutely closed-minded to any fool who might seriously wish to prove the existence of fairies.
That way, at least, we cannot be embarrassed by claims that turn
out to be fraudulent.
Resurrection reports appear through much of church history.
In the late second century, Irenaeus, for example, reproached Gnostics’ lack of
miracles by noting an orthodox church in France where, he reported, raisings
were frequent. Raisings were also among the documented miracles Augustine
surveyed in book 22 of The City of God. John Wesley offered a firsthand account
of an apparently dead man being revived through prayer, recorded on the day it
occurred, December 25, 1742.
Anecdotal evidence you surely don't expect to impress atheists?
Most early 20th-century testimonies are impossible to verify
today,
Makes you wonder how impossible it is to verify
1st century miracle reports.
but occasionally some evidence remains. For example, in 1907, one year
after the beginning of the early Pentecostal Azusa Street Revival, the
revival’s newspaper The Apostolic Faith reported the raising of one Eula
Wilson, whose blindness was also healed in the process.
I was initially skeptical, but The Apostolic Faith cited its
source, The Nazarene Messenger, another newspaper that recounted the same story
but left out the healing from blindness. My first instinct was to suppose that
The Apostolic Faith was embellishing the initial report. While such
embellishments happen, in this case The Nazarene Messenger also had a source,
The Wichita Eagle. This report, from within days of the event itself, included
testimony from the attending physician and included Wilson’s healing from
blindness.
Any fool who attended a Benny Hinn crusade in the front row next to the stage, could tell you, within the next two days, that they saw healings with their own eyes. But this would not interest you in the slightest, since, like an atheist bible skeptic, you've reached the point wherein you believe your prior studies of Hinn's miracles are sufficiently complete to justify you in drawing the deduction that NONE of his miracle claims are true or worthy of serious investigatory effort. How much attention do you pay to Hinn's thousands of miracle claims, Dr. Keener?
Or do you agree with atheist bible skeptics that
where the subject is already known to be fraught with fraudulent claims, you eventually reach a point where it becomes reasonable to generalize that the present is likely nothing but a repeat of the past? Like Benny Hinn, the general subject of modern-day miracles is full of fraudulent cases, and like you, I reached a point where I became reasonable to stop being open to the possibility of the tooth-fairy's existence, and drew the general conclusion that any future evidence is too likely to be similarly inconclusive or fraudulent to justify continued willingness to investigate.
Some recent Western raising reports have become Christian
films, such as those of Annabel Beam (Miracles from Heaven) and Baptist
minister Don Piper (90 Minutes in Heaven). Both stories are inspiring but
neither is triumphalistic: Beam experienced incredible suffering before her
remarkable healing, and Piper suffered greatly along the road to recovery. If a
testimony is being used for fundraising or a particular minister’s glory,
caution is the wiser instinct. But in cases like these, no obvious self-
aggrandizing motive is in view.
Another raising film, Breakthrough, released this past Easter.
Based on Joyce Smith’s book The Impossible, the film recounts the experience of
Joyce’s teenage son John. Unable to revive John after the boy drowned,
physician Kent Sutterer had abandoned hope when John’s desperate mother started
praying. At that moment, John’s heart restarted. Doctors deemed his subsequent
full recovery remarkable.
The witness of a medical professional like Sutterer further
pushes against knee-jerk skepticism about raisings. Chauncey Crandall, a
cardiologist in West Palm Beach, felt led to pray for a man who had already
been unresponsive for some 40 minutes. Crandall assumed the man, Jeff Markin,
was beyond help.
Although the death certificate had been signed and Markin’s
extremities were already turning black, Crandall prayed aloud for Markin. Then
he urged a colleague to shock Markin with defibrillator paddles one more time;
after the jolt of electricity, Markin’s heart immediately began beating. Markin
made a full recovery, became a believer in Christ himself, and now testifies alongside
Crandall to what God did for him.
This is an impressive story, but it has some important
context. This was not the first time Crandall had prayed for a raising.
Why would the skeptic be wrong to conclude that the naturalistic defibrillator is what naturalistically caused this person's heart to begin beating? Is that naturalistic conclusion somehow "less likely" than your miracle-conclusion, a conclusion that violates Occam's Razor by being the one hypothesis that carries the highest possible degree of complexity " (i.e, 'god')?
Previously, his own son, Chad, died from leukemia. Crandall prayed in faith for
Chad’s raising. Chad did not revive. In the face of crushing disappointment,
Crandall had to decide whether to distance himself from God or trust him no
matter what. He chose the latter, and so he was ready when God called him to
pray for Markin.
Yup, you aren't talking to skeptics. Your miracle-investigation advice is limited solely to those who already believe and are therefore easily primed to cross the line and view anecdotal evidence as confirming their views.
And it’s not just that doctors witness raisings. Sometimes,
they are the ones raised. On October 24, 2008, Sean George, head of general
medicine at Kalgoorlie Hospital in Australia, suffered a fatal heart attack. He
was in cardiac arrest for an hour and 25 minutes and even flatlined for 37
minutes. His wife, also a physician, arrived and prayed for him and, abruptly,
his heart restarted. After recovering, he returned to his medical practice.
George has the full medical documentation online.
I've reviewed that "documentation" and therefore sent the following message to this Dr. George:
After sending, the confirmation message said:
If the text is unreadable, here's what I requested:
Dr. Craig Keener, at https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/june/miracles-resurrections-real-raisings-fake-news-keener-afric.html?share=0VzDX1%2byFTTRU5sk76j9HayahHrRXwc4
says your page at https://seangeorge.com.au/my-story/medical-details/
contains the "full medical documentation" of your resurrection story, but I noticed that this "documentation" is simply your "notes" regarding specific sub-topics related to the alleged miracle, along with a few "screenshots" of select portions of the medical documents.
Would you please provide a true, correct and unredacted copy of ALL of the original medical files (including but not limited to those which bear the signature of the medical technician or doctor) documenting all of your assertions and "notes" on this matter, along with a statement from each doctor involved as to hohw likely they think the miracle-explanation is. Please send all documentation to barryjoneswhat@gmail.com, or provide a link to a cloud or google drive or similar if the documentation is more than what can be emailed. Please also provide the telephone numbers and email addresses of all doctors and medical technicians or specialists who signed the above-requested medical documents, as I would like to interview them before I accept Keener's "miracle" interpretation of this event.
Thank you, Barry.
-----------------------------
Raisings in Africa
What about raisings reported outside the West? Are there
credible African resurrection stories?
If non-Christians investigate modern-day miracle claims, are they more prone than a Christian to become deceived by a demonic imitation?
Lack of medical facilities in many locations makes miracles
both more necessary and harder to document. Still, people in traditional
cultures are often familiar with signs of death, such as rigor mortis or lack
of pulse and respiration, because they are less insulated from it than
Westerners are. So while we may not be able to say how dead a person was in a
clinical sense, such cases still seem significant, whatever the terminology
used to describe them.
Then you cannot seriously expect the skeptic to find any such miracle-raisings, originating in such context, to be sufficiently believable to put miracle-viability back on the epistemological map. If it isn't strong evidence, we kick it to the curb.
One friend I worked with during my first three summers in
Nigeria was Leo Bawa, a missions researcher who now holds a PhD from the Oxford
Centre for Mission Studies. When I was conducting research for a book on
miracles, I asked Bawa if he knew of any. “Not many,” he replied, before giving
me seven pages of eyewitness accounts.
One experience in particular caught my eye: In a village
where Bawa had been doing research, some non-Christian neighbors brought him
their dead child, asking if he could help. He prayed for a couple of hours and
then handed the child back to them alive. Reasoning it may have been a
misdiagnosed death, I asked how often he prayed for dead persons. He said he
had done so only one other time; he prayed for his best friend after his death,
and the friend stayed dead. In this non-Christian village, however, Bawa
believes God answered his prayer for the honor of Christ.
You don't provide his full name or the full account, so, dismissed.
Other miracles seem to have happened without any prayer at
all. I know Timothy Olonade from my time in Nigeria, a man who had a prominent
scar that I never asked about. Years after I first met him, some mutual
friends, including my doctor in Nigeria, told me Olonade’s story and I followed
up with him.
Please provide this Nigerian doctor's telephone number, email address and website address, if any. I'd like to interview him about this.
In December 1985, Olonade was killed in a head-on traffic
accident. After being pronounced dead in the hospital, he was sent to the
morgue. Hours later, as a worker went in to move some bodies, he found Olonade
moving. Dumbfounded, the doctor at the hospital expected that Olonade would at
least have irreparable brain damage. But he fully recovered, something his
maxillofacial surgeon described as miraculous. Now an Anglican priest, Olonade
is a leader in the Nigerian missions movement.
Please provide the telephone number, email address and website address, if any, of both this "doctor at the hospital" and and this "maxillofacial surgeon". I'd like to interview them about this, and I'll be asking for all of the medical documentation that existed in 1985, so please prepare the appropriate medical releases.
Some stories have come to me unbidden. I was in an academic
meeting with Ayodeji Adewuya, who has a PhD from the University of Manchester,
when I shared some global miracle accounts. A few Western professors in the
meeting understandably questioned me, then Adewuya stood up and shared his own
experience. His son was pronounced dead at birth in 1981. After half an hour of
prayer, however, the child was restored with no brain damage. This same son now
has a master’s degree from University College of London and another from
Cornell.
Contact details, please.
My wife is from the Republic of Congo (the smaller of the
two African countries named Congo) and I’ve interviewed her friends and family
with credible accounts, frequently corroborated by multiple, independent
witnesses.
Take the one miracle claim among them, which you think is the most impervious to falsification, and lets get started. That is surely a more efficient way to achieve your alleged goals, than simply constantly spouting these anecdotal stories.
Take, for instance, the story of Albert Bissouessoue. A
deacon in the Evangelical Church of Congo, Bissouessoue is my wife’s brother’s
father-in-law.
So, like Benny Hinn, he's already a Christian and thus already predisposed to see miracles when and if he sees something he cannot find a naturalistic explanation for.
When he was a school inspector in Etoumbi, in the north of
Congo, people knew him as a strong Christian.
So he has a "strong" predisposition to seeing miracles where he thinks naturalistic explanations fail. Ok.
A crowd brought to his residence
a girl’s body, reporting that she died some eight hours earlier.
But we don't know whether their diagnosis was correct. People's hearts stop all the time and start again, meaning heart stoppage is not a reliable sign of actual "death". What symptoms did they find, that they interpreted as her death?
They had taken
her first to traditional practitioners, who sacrificed animals and smeared
blood on her in vain attempts to revive her.
Thanks for this clue about the degree to which they were able to discern actual "truth".
After reproaching them for not
coming first to the living God, Bissouessoue prayed for half an hour, and the
child revived.
As you might expect, this caused quite a stir in Etoumbi.
If the people were gullible enough to seek out witch doctors, then yes, I can only imagine how anecdotal claims of resurrection from death would spread like wildfire in such communities.
So, when another child died, people came looking for Bissouessoue.
Unfortunately, he was out of town, so they drafted his wife, Julienne, to pray.
When she prayed, this second child revived immediately.
Why should the reader automatically assume gullible followers of witch doctors correctly diagnosed the child as "dead"? You also don't tell us how LONG she was "dead" which leaves plenty of room for naturalistically-caused revival.
Julienne herself was
shocked, reporting that God simply gave her faith in that moment.
Another sign that the people involved were of an emotional type quick to see the divine in their own feelings during moments of extreme duress.
When I asked
Albert and Julienne if they had ever prayed for anyone else who was dead, they
reported that these were the only two occasions. They consider it something
special that God was doing for his witness in that community.
And once again, you aren't writing to combat skeptics, you are writing to edify Christians. But just so that the reader is clear, you aren't making a rebuttal to the skeptical view by simply telling edifying stories to those who already believe. I'm suspicious that if you were cross-examined by somebody like me after you came prepared with all of your medical documentation, you wouldn't last long. I assume that the miracles you report after publishing your two-volume "Miracles" work are the exact miracles you think most impervious to falsification, since any smart Christian scholar would be quick to use only their very best evidence to support their beliefs. If this is the "best" you've got, let's just say I'm not exactly "unreasonable" to find wasting my money in strip bars more productive than miracle-investigation.
And of course, there is the story from my own mother-in-law
and sister-in-law, Antoinette and Thérèse. Because of how well I know them,
their story, more than any other account, forced me to reconsider my Western
cynicism.
There's simply no denying the truth in conclusory allegations targeted to an already-Christian audience.
The place of miracles
The antidote to false miracle claims is not to reject
miracles altogether.
Then apparently you think
the antidote to Benny Hinn's false miracle claims is not to reject Benny Hinn's credibility altogether. Well then what? Are skeptics under some intellectual obligation to continue reviewing each and every miracle claim Hinn spews out? If so, what is your epistemological basis for saying any such obligation exists?
We must take care when we hear of (or even experience) a
miraculous event that we neither accept all miracles as true nor dismiss them
all as fake. The reality is much more complex.
We must also make a decision about what's more important...going to work in the morning so we can keep our families housed and fed, or doing what Jesus said,
and giving up custody of our property and our children so that we can have more time to follow him around (Matthew 19:29). I LOVE committing the sin of blindly assuming that my need to hold a job and feed my family is more important than my "salvation".
But how do we exercise the appropriate amount of caution?
Would you counsel Christians to pray to God about it? If so, why? How the hell would they ever know what answer God was giving,
or if God was even giving an answer at all? Yet pray you must, as a bible-believing Christian. Nothing fails quite like prayer, but your bible-based beliefs forbid you from the obvious and constrain you to see answers to prayer even when there's no empirically detectable link between the actual answer and the phenomena you subjectively think is the answer. If God lived in the real world, he'd make known to me his desire to save me, no less directly than my neighbor notifies me that he wants to borrow a hammer. God's "hiddenness" is a real son-of-a-bitch that you aren't fixing by merely carping about God's mysterious ways.
People are always reasonable and justified to walk away from a leader, when the leader insists he has instructions for them to follow, but instead of giving them directly, forces the followers to learn dead languages and enter the fray of endless debate by scholars on the subject, as the only means they have of discerning the meaning in his list of instructions.
While no formula allows us to verify all miracle stories, I have noticed a
pattern.
Fraudulent miracles tend to flourish where they profit their
purveyors.
When Jesus ran around doing "miracles", he begged for money. What other purpose was there for the "money-box" that Judas used to allegedly "steal from" in John 12:6? See also John 13:29.
After Jesus died, the apostles demanded their follows give the apostles control over all money and property, and to hold anything back and lie about it was to ensure one's death, Acts 5.
Apostle Paul convinced his churches to put together a large bag of money he said would be used to help the starving Jerusalem church. 1st Corinthians 16:1-3. The deliverers likely knew it would be shameful for the Jerusalem church to count it to make sure it agrees with how much Paul's certification said was in the bag, so they must have been tempted to grab a few handfuls, to spend on themselves as they traveled, especially in light of Paul's advice, see next sentence:
Paul, like any good politician, insists that those who rule the church well are worthy of "double" the expected wages (1st Timothy 5:17-18). Today we call it cronyism.
This is what we see in the Lukau story from South Africa. Yes, some
Christians downplay miracles too much, but others need to stop exalting them as
the highest ministry or as a sign of divine approval, especially where
leadership and teaching are concerned.
Another complication in the study of modern miracles, thus giving the skeptic, if they choose to employ it, yet another reason to consider the subject too fraught with peril and misunderstanding to be considered worthy of any serious study.
When Paul lists spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:28, he
actually ranks teaching higher than miracles.
And as we saw, Paul turned Christian teaching into a money-making venture, and we don't really know whether his claims to "suffering" were as fearful as he describes. If prayer was so good and powerful, why didn't mere prayer solve the Jerusalem church's poverty problem, sort of like God said his miracles ensured that the children of Israel continued to have food and water as they lived 40 years in the desert? George Carlin was right: God has an on-going problem with money, and he cannot do much without it.
The Greek text of Ephesians 4:11
links pastors with teachers, and the Pastoral Epistles make teaching ability a
prerequisite for ministry (1 Tim. 3:2, 2 Tim. 2:24, Titus 1:9). Miracles are
nowhere a biblical requirement (or necessary endorsement) for ministry. Someone
might even have a gift of miracles but not be a good teacher. One can have both
kinds of gifts (Acts 19:9–12), but one does not necessarily entail the other.
By contrast, credible dramatic signs are most frequent where
the gospel is breaking fresh ground—as in the Gospels and Acts. In these
situations, the miracles tend to advance the cause of faith, not the will or
needs of a particular person or group.
BULLSHIT! The miracles advance the cause of Jesus and later the apostles no less than miracles advance the cause of Benny Hinn!
Miracles are a wonderful foretaste of
the coming kingdom.
The fact that you aren't a preterist thus makes the Christians who are preterists wonder how you could be such a smart good Christian and yet God apparently cannot enlighten you about the obvious.
Thus Jesus’ exorcisms revealed the kingdom’s nearness (Luke
11:20),
A kingdom that obviously failed to arrive as promised. Ask any Christian who is a preterist, they will tell you what's obvious, that Jesus intended this "comming soon" screed to mean "soon" according to the human sense of time, not God's sense of time. He could hardly spur them on to do good works in fear of being found lazy by the master, if he meant "you better keep busy, or the master of the house might return after a few thousand years..."
and Jesus describes his healings in language that invokes Isaiah’s
description of the ultimate restoration (Luke 7:22). Nevertheless, the
kingdom’s fullness remains future.
How much time do you think skeptics are intellectually obligated to spend learning about why other equally knowledgeable Christian scholars disagree with your eschatological views, before we become justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions about who is right, or whether the biblical data are fatally ambiguous and worthy of ignoring?
Even genuine gifts are limited: Paul says
that we know in part, and we prophesy in part (1 Cor. 13:9).
When God acts in our lives, we should testify about it, but
when possible we should also offer verification.
You mean like when I asked you almost two years ago for you to verify whatever modern-day miracle you thought most impervious to falsification? I'm still waiting.
If Jesus urged a leper to
follow the scriptural prescription to verify his healing with a priest (Mark
1:44), it is appropriate for us to verify miracles when possible.
If Jesus urged a leper to follow the scriptural prescription to verify his healing with a priest (Mark 1:44), and if in the Great Commission Jesus insisted his apostles convey "all" of his teachings to the rest of the world (Matthew 28:20), then Paul's relaxing the rules for Gentiles was one big fat heresy. I am quite aware of that divided portion of Christ's body called "dispensationalism", and I have no sympathy for such a desperate way to get rid of the soteriological inconsistencies in the bible.
This way
open-minded people who do not know the witnesses well enough to take their word
for it can still experience the awe of seeing God at work.
be sure you remind Dr. George of this, as I sent him a request for verifying medical documentation.
Additional layers of evaluation help. For example, false
teachers often exploit people for money (Jer. 6:13, Micah 3:11, 2 Pet. 2:3)
Like the apostles did in demanding they take charge of their followers' money and property. Acts 5.
and
tell them whatever they want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3–4).
Like Paul who thought circumcision to be nothing, but coddled the scruples of the Jews anyway (Acts 16:3), or the Paul who thought the law was fulfilled and faded, but who, when coming to Jerusalem, pretended to believe the same way the Jews did about the continuing divine significance of the ceremonial system (Acts 21:18-24).
Jesus warned us to discern
prophets by their fruits, not by their gifts (Matt. 7:15–23).
Then the mere fact that a miracle proves the supernatural and thus refutes the atheists, is all the more reason for atheists to stay away from such discussions. The devil appears to be a really convincing deceiver, even many Christians fall into his snares, right?. Probably best to avoid the risk entirely by entirely avoiding investigating anything that might turn out to be one of his clever imitations.
Christian apologists who insist that atheists examine modern-day miracle claims are stupid know nothings who have no interest in protective spiritual good and all interest in soulless unedifying bickering back and forth academia.
What is the
outcome of a particular miracle? God’s gifts are good, but their main purpose
is building up Christ’s body, not our reputations (note 1 Cor. 12–14). Most of
Jesus’ miracles, such as healing sickness, expelling spirits, and stilling
storms, demonstrated compassion as well as power.
They also tended to build up his reputation, sort of like miracles tend to make Benny Hinn appear in the eyes of his followers as having a stellar reputation.
Moreover, genuine gifts should honor Jesus (1 Cor. 12:3, 1
John 4:1–6). The Book of Acts shows that Jesus’ name should get the credit for
miracles, because they attest to his gospel, not the miracle worker (Acts
3:12–13; 14:3).
Indeed, Scripture offers many examples of those gifted by
God’s Spirit who were disobeying God, such as Balaam and Samson. One of the
most striking examples is Saul, who, on an errand to try to kill David, ended
up falling down and prophesying. This was not because Saul was godly, but
because God’s Spirit was strong in that place (1 Sam. 19:20–24).
So God sees nothing philosophically wrong with use his strength to prevent evil. This can only result in the hypothesis that if any evil exists, it is because God does not wish to stop it. If a little girl is raped for 15 minutes straight, this is because God didn't
want to stop it. In other words, if we were as godly as god, and saw this rape, we would just walk on by and, like god, do nothing about it. Aren't god's omissions just as "godly" as his actions?
Not every claim to a miraculous raising today is authentic.
But because so many are false, that's quite sufficient to justify the skeptic, if they choose to deny the viability of miracles
while also refusing to examine them. You stopped being objectively open to the possibility of Mormon truth long ago, despite your not knowing everything there is to know about that religion. You have no room to pretend that non-Christians are wrong when they imitate your logic and draw firm conclusions about the ultimate issue of miracles before they've learned everything about the issue.
Everywhere in the world, most people who die stay dead. Even those resuscitated
miraculously, such as Lazarus, die again;
you don't have any biblical evidence that Lazarus ever died again, while in John 11, Jesus makes explicit that what happened to him was "resurrection" and thus something more permanent than "resuscitation"...unless you admit that between the time of Jesus and the career of Paul, "resurrection"
evolved in meaning?
