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To: RobRoy

Here are a few that I think are pure theatrics:

- Moses' snake staff eating the Egyptian snake staves.
- The plague of frogs: merely annoying.
- Lot's wife and the Pillar of Salt.
- The oil in the lamp of the Temple just keeps on a-burnin' (origin of Chanukka)
- God tells Moses to look at His BACK, so that Moses won't die...but other times men see God and live.
- The laming of Jacob by the wrestler in the cave.
- "The bad-news bears" : A bunch of bears come out of the woods and devour the children who made fun of Elisha's bald head.
- Jesus walking on the water
- Jesus and the fig tree

I can think of more if I put my mind to it, but those are off the top of my head.

On the other hand, when I look at the miracles of the saints, I see them having practical value.

The Marian apparition at Lourdes resulted in the discovery of the spring at which tens of thousands have been healed by faith. Also, it shows that God favors the veneration of His Mother. Seems both practical and instructive to me.

Joan of Arc's voices told her precisely the weaknesses in the English lines, and allowed her, an untrained woman, to inflict five successive defeats on an English Army that had routinely trounced the French for 140 straight years, rolling up the entire English position in France and re-establishing the French monarchy in two short years. Pretty practical and dramatic.

The Burial Shroud of Jesus, if the Shroud of Turin is it, immediately and powerfully announces the Resurrection in a way that an empty tomb does not. And down to our day, when science has been turned against faith, the fact that science finds unfolding mystery after mystery in the Shroud, and astonishingly cannot explain the image there, results in an opening of minds hermetically sealed by an excessive reliance on logic so closed that faith has no hope of penetrating. Again, this seems to be a pretty profound practical effect. At least that is the effect the Shroud has had on ME.


386 posted on 02/15/2005 1:30:24 PM PST by Vicomte13 (La nuit s'acheve!)
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To: Vicomte13

I want to respond but I am in the middle of a presentation that I have to get finished today. You make some good points that I will give you, and others that I will argue against. I'll get back when I have some time.


387 posted on 02/15/2005 1:33:17 PM PST by RobRoy (They're trying to find themselves an audience. Their deductions need applause - Peter Gabriel)
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