Miracles Today

evfimy
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Miracles Today

Question: Why didn't Jesus just appear in the Twentieth Century? And if Christianity is true, why doesn't God perform more miracles, like maybe in the middle of an atheist meeting, or in public, so that more people will believe in him? Why doesn't he do it? Why doesn't God respond more?

Answer: I think there are many reasons why Jesus doesn't appear in the Twentieth Century, or why there is not even more evidence than we already have. We find that God gives us plenty of evidence to believe, but not enough to force us to believe. In other words, the evidence is there for anyone who wants to check it out, but not enough to make it so obvious that God is virtually twisting arms. He wants those who want or desire to come to him. Still, there are many signs that God is at work today. I can't unpack this in a detailed email discussion, but here are some things I've said before: I think that there are many indications in the world today of supernatural activity, even if we just considered those that have been published in medical journals or in other trustworthy places.

  1. For example, there have been several major studies of answers to prayer, even a double- blind experiment where the conclusion as stated in the medical journal was that the results were most consistent with prayer offered in a Judeo-Christian setting.
  2. Further, there have been some rather incredible, documented reversals of terminal illnesses in the presence of prayer. A few of these cases were immediate reversals. For example, two patients had serious cancer diagnoses, one of which was a terminal liver cancer case with inoperable cancer throughout the person's body, who was given perhaps only weeks to live. Both were prayed for regularly, and afterwards their tumors showed absolutely no cancer cells, even though the same tumors were previously biopsied (even more than once) as clearly being cancerous. We're not talking about some crazy religious claims here, but cases that have been experienced in the medical community. Both of these persons are doing fine after almost two years—both without any cancer in their tumors.
  3. Many well-evidenced near-death experiences have been published in other medical journals, especially where the near-death individual reports something from some distance away that can be objectively verified or falsified. Some of these patients registered no heart or brain activity for very long periods of time. Please note again that I am basically only speaking of cases where there are rather incredible data--a fair number published in medical journals, for example.
Something else to consider is that a clinical psychologist and I have done some careful surveying and many (if not most) examples of doubt and rejection of God arise for emotional rather than rational reasons. So often you have to ask what the persons were feeling rather that what they were thinking. Emotional uncertainty seems to be far more common than rational rejection. So you really need to know what happened in the person's life, if they are angry at God, and so on. This applies to both Christians and non-Christians alike; almost everyone seems to do it at some time. If you want to do some reading on this, I have a website being put up now where you might be able to research this topic. More items are due to be loaded soon (URL edited out). If you look on the left side, under "Online Resources" and then under the next category, "Books," you can find the book Dealing with Doubt. If you are interested in this subject of doubt, I'd recommend Chapter 2 on "Identifying Doubt" and Chapter 4 on "Emotional Doubt." From: URL edited out

[MOD EDIT - removed URL links to avoid giving this person any site traffic]


Fish
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evfimy wrote:   For

evfimy wrote:

 

  1. For example, there have been several major studies of answers to prayer, even a double- blind experiment where the conclusion as stated in the medical journal was that the results were most consistent with prayer offered in a Judeo-Christian setting.
  2. Further, there have been some rather incredible, documented reversals of terminal illnesses in the presence of prayer. A few of these cases were immediate reversals. For example, two patients had serious cancer diagnoses, one of which was a terminal liver cancer case with inoperable cancer throughout the person's body, who was given perhaps only weeks to live. Both were prayed for regularly, and afterwards their tumors showed absolutely no cancer cells, even though the same tumors were previously biopsied (even more than once) as clearly being cancerous. We're not talking about some crazy religious claims here, but cases that have been experienced in the medical community. Both of these persons are doing fine after almost two years—both without any cancer in their tumors.
  3. Many well-evidenced near-death experiences have been published in other medical journals, especially where the near-death individual reports something from some distance away that can be objectively verified or falsified. Some of these patients registered no heart or brain activity for very long periods of time. Please note again that I am basically only speaking of cases where there are rather incredible data--a fair number published in medical journals, for example.
Could you provide some references for these studies?
efvimy wrote:
Something else to consider is that a clinical psychologist and I have done some careful surveying and many (if not most) examples of doubt and rejection of God arise for emotional rather than rational reasons. So often you have to ask what the persons were feeling rather that what they were thinking. Emotional uncertainty seems to be far more common than rational rejection. So you really need to know what happened in the person's life, if they are angry at God, and so on. This applies to both Christians and non-Christians alike; almost everyone seems to do it at some time.
Even if god is rejected for emotional reasons more often than rational reasons, it doesn't change the fact that there are rational reasons to not believe in god, whereas there really are no rational reasons to believe.


Susan
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Evfimy, you assert much yet

Evfimy, you assert much yet once again do not back anything up.

Please back up your assertions. 

evfimy wrote:
as stated in the medical journal

evfimy wrote:
cases that have been experienced in the medical community

evfimy wrote:
a fair number published in medical journals, for example.

Please provide links. 

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CrazyRoper
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Umm yeah what Fish and Susan

Umm yeah what Fish and Susan said...I would love to see the links to these studies


Textom
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Pat Robertson has a series

Pat Robertson has a series of books explaining how to get God to do miracles for you right now!

http://www.cbn.com/premiums/Miracles/

Pat and Terry do miracle healings for their CBN News viewers every night.  Where you been, evfimy? 

"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert