*as Walter Cronkite*
"I just want to begin by saying to Roosevelt E. Roosevelt, what it is, what it shall be, what it was."
Posted on 12/25/2022 3:02:47 PM PST by SeekAndFind
[EXCERPT ONLY]
In 2009, on a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the Browns flew to Mozambique to investigate the healing claims of Global Awakening and Iris Global, two ministries focused on healing and revival. They brought audiometry equipment and eye charts to test people who requested prayer for deafness and blindness. The sample size was small — they tested 24 people — but they found statistically significant improvement beyond placebo effects and hypnosis.
“I was standing right there next to this woman who could not tell how many fingers were held up when you were a foot in front of her,” Candy Brown told me. “Then five minutes later, she’s reading an eye chart with a smile on her face.” She and her colleagues published the results in The Southern Medical Journal — not a prestigious publication but a respectable one with peer review — and she drew on the research for her 2012 book, “Testing Prayer.”
Skeptics complained about the Browns’ methods and field conditions. They pointed out that the hearing tests were in a noisy setting, there was no control group and test subjects would naturally want to please those who prayed for them by showing results. “That simple trick explains why both hearing and sight appears to have dramatically improved among these poor, superstitious villagers,” one critic declared. (The study explained in detail how the researchers did their best to weed out false data.)
If you want to evaluate people’s experiences at a revival in rural Africa, you probably need to give up on double-blind studies in a perfectly controlled environment. But let’s imagine for a moment that researchers could meet such standards (and that an all-powerful deity humors us and submits to this scrutiny). They might persuade skeptics that something strange happened. But is there any evidence that would persuade a nonbeliever that God was behind it — that we do not live in a closed system in which all causation is a matter of natural laws?
Why does something unexplained have to become a miracle. Why can’t it just be...”What is...is”.
What is...is. What was, will be. What will be, was, but will be again.
The lack of belief is on the side of the church. That is why we don’t see the miracles of healing and raising from the dead as in the early church.
Those irrefutable miracles DO bring non-believers to Jesus. But we in the church need to get with the program, align with the Gospel of the Grace of Christ, and let his power be demonstrated to a lost and dying world.
only” what is...is” exists
Could you ever prove fraud to a believer?
It is pretty much beyond science to "prove" such a thing.
Science deals in things which are repeatable.
It is nearly impossible to repeat some events.
It is clearly impossible to prove nothing supernatural exists.
Those who do not want any higher power, will just define anything not explained as "natural".
*as Walter Cronkite*
"I just want to begin by saying to Roosevelt E. Roosevelt, what it is, what it shall be, what it was."
Thou shalt not put The Lord thy God to the test.
RE: I class coincidences that couldn’t be a coincidence as life’s miracles.
Can you cite an example or two?
Here's a few scriptures that deal with God revealing himself. It usually takes some initiative.
I once read a 700 page book by Hans Kung titled Does God Exist. He went through proof after proof of God's existence and gave a skeptic's answer to each. At the end of the book, he concluded that only God could reveal himself to an individual.
You can however pray that God shows that person a miracle. T.W. Hunt talked about doing that once for a person. And I've heard that miracles occur more frequently on the mission front where the gospel needs some form of validation in face of competing faiths.
There are a few of the scriptures that speak to when God reveals himself:
See the Hebrew Generation that wandered in the desert.
Luke 16:31
“They have Moses and the Prophets. If they will not believe them, they will not believe one who came back from the dead.”
81,000,000 American voters voted for an old man who hid in his basement for the duration of the campaign.
RE: Thou shalt not put The Lord thy God to the test.
I don’t think investigating a miracle to see whether it is true ornot belongs to the category of “Putting the Lord to the test”.
In the Book of Judges Chapter 6, Gideon puts God on trial, and tests him several times. God first consumes an offering that Gideon places upon a rock (Judges 6:17-22); later, God fills some fleece with dew while leaving the surrounding area dry (Judges 6:36-38), and then does the opposite (Judges 6:39-40).
But God never rebukes Gideon for testing him; God never says, “I said no testing, you unbeliever!” God gives Gideon all the evidence he needs to believe.
In the Book of First Kings Chapter 18, God prompts Elijah to summon people from all over Israel to witness a test between God and Baal (1 Kings 18:19). Elijah reasons with the people saying, “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). God wasn’t trying to run from a fight, he was saying, “Come, let us put this matter to a test!”
God had no objection to being tested against another god, in fact, it was his idea!
In fact, what I see is this: When it comes to belief in other gods, God demands evidence before faith, but when it comes to belief in God, God demands faith before evidence.
Jesus said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ - Luke 16:31
That’s kind of like proving that the masks don’t work.
How does one fake being able to read an eye chart to please those who prayed for them by showing results?
Luke 4:12 Jesus answered [the devil], “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.
Let’s just say I, personally, would be wary of trying to make God the subject of a science experiment.
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