Lee Strobel: The Case for Miracles

well I'd like to begin by telling you two stories true stories and after each of these stories I want you to ask yourself a question the question is this is this story best explained by saying it was a coincidence or could it be a miracle so the first story took place several years ago in a little village in Africa right along the equator it was a place with no electricity no hospitals no pharmacies no incubators for newborns very few medical supplies and a woman died during childbirth and she left behind a little two-year-old girl and this newborn prematurely born little boy and they knew that the life of this fragile prematurely born child was at risk because people don't generally think about it on the equator but gets really cold there at night and they knew they needed to keep this fragile child warm during the cold evening so they took a hot water bottle and filled it with hot water but as the helper was doing that it burst and destroyed the hot water bottle and it was the last one in the village and they knew without that hot water bottle chances are that little fragile child would not live through the night well there was a missionary doctor in the village from Northern Ireland her name's dr. Helen Rose vir and she gathered together all of the orphans said let's pray for this little newborn boy and so the orphans began to pray but one little ten-year-old girl by the name of Ruth seemed to go too far she prayed this she said please God send us a water bottle it'll be no good tomorrow God because a baby will be dead so please send it this afternoon and then as if that weren't audacious enough then she added this and she said oh God while you're at it would you please send a dolly for the little girl so she'll know that you really love her the missionary doctor said later I was put on the spot could I honestly say Amen I just did not believe that God could do this oh yeah I know he can do everything the Bible said so but their limits aren't there I mean the only hope of them getting this hot water bottle that this child needed to survive would be is if it if it were to arrive in a package sent from home and in the four years that that doctor worked in that village not one package had ever arrived from home not one besides if someone's packing a package a care package for people on the equator the last thing you think you're gonna include would be a hot water bottle right well a couple of hours later a jeep pulled up and dropped off a 22 pound package and the orphans pounced on it and they're sorting through the content there was some clothes for them there was some bandages for the leprosy patients there was some food and so and the missionary said this as I put my hand in again I felt the could it really be I grasped it and pulled it out yes a brand new rubber hot water bottle and she bursts into tears she said later I had not asked God to send it I had not truly believed that he could and with that little Ruth rushed forward and said well if God sent the bottle he must have sent the dolly - and so she dug through the package and sure enough at the bottom of the pack she found it a beautifully wrapped little doll and Ruth said can I go over with you mummy and give this dolly to that little girl so that you'll know that Jesus really loves her well friends that parcel was packed by the missionaries former Sunday school class in Northern Ireland five months earlier the leader felt led by God to include a hot water bottle and a little girl contributed the dial and this package again the only one ever to arrive happened to be delivered the very same day that little Ruth prayed for it with the faith of a child so here's the question was that just a curious coincidence or isn't a miraculous answer to a little girl's prayers second story and Fauss a brilliant young african-american student from the inner city of Detroit Michigan who earned a full scholarship to study medicine at Yale University but he was having trouble it was the end of his first semester and he was failing his chemistry class and chemistry class was a prerequisite if you wanted to be a doctor you had to pass chemistry and he was just he was not doing well in this class everything depended on the final exam that would determine if he passed the class or failed and he wasn't prepared and so he prayed he said God medicine is the only thing I ever wanted to do would you please tell me what it is that you really want me to do so he was planning just to study all night to cram for this exam so he would pass it but he fell asleep and it all seemed lost until he had a dream and in that dream he was alone in the auditorium when a nebulous figure began to write chemistry problems and answers on the blackboard in chalk and so the next day when the student went to take his exam he was stunned because the first problem and the exam was the exact problem from his dream and the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one and he ended up acing the exam and he got a good grade in chemistry and he promised God you will never have to do that for me again well he became an extraordinary physician by age 33 he became the youngest director of pediatric neurosurgery in the country doing pioneering brain surgery on little children he served at Johns Hopkins Hospital and maybe you've heard his name it's Ben Carson later became one of the 10 most admired people in the United States ran for president now he's a member of the president's cabinet so what do you think was that a coincidence or was it a miracle well as you may know I was an atheist for much of my life but ultimately it was the historical evidence for the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus what we're gonna observe this Easter next week was the historical data about the resurrection of Jesus it convinced me that Jesus not only claimed to be the Son of God he backed up that claim by returning from the dead and so I came to faith in Christ because of the strength of the evidence but you know what my skeptical nature did not disappear at my conversion yeah I believe God had done miracles in the past I believe that the Gospels report these miracles of Jesus in a very sober way they're not once upon a time they're in a historical context and even his opponents didn't dispute the fact that Jesus did miracles they merely criticized him because he would do him sometimes on the Sabbath but I wondered is God still in the miracle business today I mean is God still divinely intervening in lives in the 21st century I didn't really know I wasn't sure and so I decided to use my journalism training and my legal training to systematically investigate the realm of the supernatural and I ended up spending two years on this project and the result is my new book which is called the case for miracles I travel the country the interview scholars to do research and I interview people on all sides of this issue in fact the first three chapters of my book is an interview with the most famous skeptic in America dr. Michael Shermer founder and editor of skeptic magazine so I have all sides in the book but I'm telling you what the results of my investigation absolutely blew me away here are my conclusions number one God is still in the miracle business number two miracles occur a lot more often than people think and number three lot of miracles are far better documented than skipped it than skeptics suppose in fact you're gonna hear in this message from a woman whose miracle is probably the most well documented miracle I ever came across but I want to look at four big questions about miracles the first one is this how should we define a miracle what is a miracle you know people throw around the word miracle very loosely these days you know you're you're in downtown Houston traffic it's rush hour traffic's a mess but oh look a parking space right where you needed to go to this one building you see it's a miracle it's a and you know what in Houston it may be a miracle but you know we throw that word around and often there is a natural explanation behind it there are natural causes behind these coincidences as sometimes we'll just call a miracle and after all God set up the world God set up these natural processes and so you would expect that most of the time God would work through the natural processes that he himself created so what is a miracle then well lots of philosophers have suggested definitions from I think the best definition comes from the late philosophy professor Richard Purtill he gave a five-point definition and it goes like this a miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history I think that's a pretty good comprehensive definition of a miracle now for me when I see something that's absolutely extraordinary that has spiritual overtones that is well documented that is not explainable by natural means and is validated by an independent source or event or reliable eyewitnesses that's when the miracle bell goes off in my mind in other words a dream about a nebulous figure writing chemistry problems on a blackboard in and of itself that is not a miracle but if those equations and answers turn out to be the very same ones that present themselves the next day on a test independently prepared by someone else that does seem miraculous especially when the incident follows a fervent prayer to God for help question number two aren't miracles impossible because they violate the laws of nature you hear this a lot from skeptics and in fact the most famous skeptic of history is daya is David Hume a Scottish philosopher from the 1700s and he said miracles are a violation of the laws of nature so they're not possible but he just misunderstood what a miracle is miracles are not a violation of the laws of nature if I had an apple and I dropped the Apple the law of gravity says the Apple would fall to the ground that it would be pulled to the ground by gravity but if I take an apple and I drop it and you reach in and grab it before it hits the ground you're not violating the law of nature of gravity you're merely intervening so when God performs a miracle he's not overturning or invalidating or violating the laws of nature that he himself created he's merely intervening in his creation in my book I spent two chapters and I've talked on this topic here before but I have an interview with a PhD from UCLA a physicist and and I spent two chapters building the scientific evidence that points toward a supernatural creator of the universe the Genesis 1 verse 1 is accurate when it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth I believe that cosmology and physics back up that claim and if God is the creator then of course he can intervene in the world Timothy Keller put it this way if a God exists who is big enough to create the universe in all its complexity the investments why should a mere miracle be such a mental stretch in other words if God can cause a universe to leap into existence then a virgin birth or walking on water that's just child's play question number three how common are miracles today how common are they really was part of my research I hired a highly respected public opinion polling service to do a scientific sampling of Americans and asking about their opinions and experiences with the miraculous and what I found really surprised me for instance I found that nearly two out of every five Americans said they have had at least one experience in their life that can only be explained as being a miracle thirty-eight percent let me ask you how many of you have had an experience in your life that you could only explain as being a miracle yeah a lot more than 38 percent yep now let's extrapolate from that number if 38 percent of American adults say that they have had at least one miracle in their life this would mean that we would have a minimum of 94 million seven hundred and ninety-two thousand miracles just in the United States now let's pick an arbitrary number and let's say well let's say 99% of those cases they weren't really miracles they were just really extraordinary coincidences so let's rule out 99% of those cases we would still have a million miracles that have taken place just here in the United States it's a lot more than I anticipated now I interviewed as I said dr. Michael Shermer editor of skeptic magazine for my book and skeptic magazine had an article that claimed that it's only the in their words uneducated and uncivilized who believe in miracles and yet get this this is maybe the most amazing statistic of all fifty five percent of physicians in the United State say they have seen an incident and their practice of medicine that they can only explain as being a miracle 55% of doctors have seen a miracle in their practice now you can't write off doctors as being uneducated and quote-unquote uncivilized they understand how the human body works they understand the process of healing and how it usually takes place they are well educated and yet a majority of them say I've seen it in my own practice friends I think miracles occur a lot more often than we might suppose we could it be that we just need to open our eyes a little wider to the supernatural activity of God right in our midst now let me mention this my opinion is and I think the research bears this out the number of miracles around planet Earth are not evenly distributed there are clusters of miracles that take place and they generally tend to proliferate in areas where the gospel is just breaking into a new area in Mozambique in China you see a an outbreak a cluster of miracles taking place in fact one expert told me that up to 90% of the growth of the church in China is because of people either themselves or they know someone who's experienced a supernatural healing in their life in fact in Ethiopia where again the gospel is breaking in more than 80 percent in the Lutheran Church attribute their conversions to divine healings so we see this around the world outbreaks pace of miracles breaking out where the gospel is breaking in and God is showing his power in pointing people toward him and toward the truth of the gospel question number four how can we know that a miracle is genuine how do we know it's real I mean after all many times what we loosely call a miracle really has natural explanations behind it for instance it could be the placebo effect the placebo effect is when people think they're gonna get better and it's kind of a mind over matter thing they think they're gonna get better and so they tend to feel better it's kind of a mental psychological phenomenon or it could be a mistaken diagnosis or it could be fakery or fraud or a lot of charlatans out there could be faulty memories could be spontaneous remissions some diseases are known to go into spontaneous remission now generally it's over a period of time and often the disease will come back but sometimes that happens and all of that is true but as I discovered my investigation those naturalistic explanations cannot account for all of the miracle claims there are other healings and miraculous events that are simply inexplicable apart from the supernatural work of God so how can we tell if a miracle has occurred well some skeptics when you get in the topic of miracles that ratchet up their skepticism unreasonably high they just set the bar a belief unreasonably high I'll give an example there was an atheist a woman physician who wrote an article for skeptic magazine and she said what would it take for me to believe a miracle had taken place well she said if a chicken learned how to read and then be the Grandmaster of chess then I might start to think okay something's going on here she wouldn't say miracles there's something unusual something may be supernatural well I think that's setting the bar unreasonably high here's my view I believe we can reasonably conclude that a miracle occurred if we have solid documentation and multiple and credible eyewitnesses who have no motive to deceive if there's no alternative natural explanation and if there's spiritual overtones for instance prayer in fact science can be used sometimes to point us toward whether or actual miracles are taking place I think science is the friend of miracles not giving an example for my book I interviewed a woman PhD from Harvard who is a professor at a well-respected secular University Indiana University she heard about this outbreak of miracles in Mozambique and so she decided I'm gonna check it out I'm gonna research it I'm gonna use science to try to determine is something supernatural taking place so what did she do she took a team of researchers and scientists to Mozambique and they would go into these remote villages and they would ask anybody who is blind or deaf bring them to us or anybody with severe vision or hearing problems bring them to us and they would test them scientifically what is their level of hearing what is their level of vision immediately thereafter so they test them one minute the next minute they're turned over to Christians who have a track record of God using them in miracles turned over to Christians to be prayed for and they these Christians would lay hands on them and they would pray for them for 10 minutes up to an hour each and then immediately after that their scientifically tested again what is their level of hearing now what is their level of vision now and guess what they discovered virtually every single one of them improved to one degree or another often astoundingly so for instance there was a woman by the name of Martine when they tested Martine scientifically they found that she was incapable of hearing a jackhammer next door that's how deaf she was after 10 minutes of prayer in the name of Jesus Christ they tested her again she could hear a normal conversation absolutely amazed how do you account for that and then they said this is so extraordinary we need to try to replicate this experiment somewhere else so they went to Brazil in another place where miracles are breaking out they did same thing guess what they got the same results now this was a rigorous scientific study that was accepted for publication in a major secular peer-reviewed medical journal and I interviewed the woman in charge PhD from Harvard dr. candy Gunther Brown here's what she told me she said Lee our study shows that something is going on she said this is more than just wishful thinking it's not fakery it's not fraud it's not some televangelist trying to get widows to sending their money it's not a highly-charged atmosphere that plays on people's emotions something she said is going on and she's right I think it's something supernatural now my book talks about lots of of the documented miracles taking place but the one that I investigated that absolutely blew me away the most was a woman by the name of Barbara Schneider I interviewed Barbara at length we have extensive medical records from her dating back many years from the Mayo Clinic and her other physicians we have multiple credible eyewitnesses with no motive to deceive we have two of her doctors who were so blown away by what happened to her they wrote about it in books because they said I got to write about this unbelievable so let me tell you what happened to Barbara Barbara was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the Mayo Clinic for the next several years she just deteriorated got worse and worse she had repeated hospitalizations repeated surgeries until ultimately she was dying and they put her in Hospice at her home so she's confined to bed at her home one of her physicians dr. Harold P Adolph a board-certified surgeon who had performed 25,000 operations in his career he called Barbara quote one of the most hopelessly ill patients I ever saw hopelessly ill one of her lungs was non-functional the other was just inflated at 50% a tube was inserted into her neck and oxygen was pumped from canisters in her garage so she could breathe she'd lost control of her urination and her bowels she was legally blind all she could see were were gray shadows a feeding tube was inserted into her stomach she hadn't walked in like seven years and so her legs had atrophied her muscles had had shrunken and and her legs atrophied and and she was curled up like a pretzel in her bed from her illness her hands were flexed so that her fingers were touching her wrists and her feet were permanently flexed and extended her parents met with doctors and they agree there's nothing more medically that could be done and they said the next time she contracts pneumonia breech because of her lung situations she would contract it on a regular basis they would not try to revive her because it was just prolong her inevitable death well then one day someone a friend called wmb I which is the radio station in Chicago that's run by the Moody Bible Institute a Christian radio station and they said would you announce and just ask people to pray for Barbara Barbara's on her deathbed she's really suffering would you please have people pray and we know that a minimum of 450 Christians began to pray for Barbara how do we know because they sent letters telling Barbara we're praying for you so what happened I'm gonna let Barbara describe to you what happened next to tell you herself what happened on Pentecost Sunday with her friends who came to her to read her some of these encouraging letters that the people who were praying for her had written to her so let's watch Barbara June 7th 1981 I'll never forget it it was a day like any other day for me that was one spent confined to bed unable to breathe on my own hope stuff to machines tracheostomy tube in my neck my arms curled up my legs curled up I lay there trapped inside my own body is really how it felt I had two friends over there came over all the time they were from my church my church family never forgot me so while they were there I still remember exactly what they were reading when all of a sudden I heard a booming authoritative loud voice over my shoulder over here say my child get up and walk and there was nobody else in the room there was no one else in the room and the door was over here there were windows over this way and instantly I knew it was God but instantly I also knew that my friends didn't hear that hmm which is kind of interesting - yeah and I needed to share with them what I heard well I had this trach he asked me to be my neck that's how I breathe and I had hands that did not work so my friend said whenever I looked a jeté today knew I wanted to talk so they come and plug the hole in my neck and I said I don't know what you're gonna think about this but God just told me to get up and walk and my friends got really quiet I know but he really did tell me to get up and walk run get my family I want them to be here and my friends all of a sudden jumped up and while they jumped so did i I was so excited I couldn't wait for anyone and I literally jumped out of the bed this this is where you'd almost have to have know me to see how totally impossible that was so this time I remember reaching up and pulling my oxygen off my neck I remember that and then I jumped toward the voice my friends are over here but I jumped towards the voice and as I jumped up the first thing I remember isn't what I would think I would remember but I jumped out of the bed and I looked and I saw my feet they were flat on the ground just like everyone else's which sounds normal but not for me I had foot drops so badly I couldn't even wear slippers on my feet they were so curled so when I jumped up to have feet flat I was amazed and stood staring at my feet and when I did that I jumped like this and then I saw my hands and they were open and they never opened and so now they were open and I stood staring at them and then it taunted me I could see me that's what I would have thought I would have noticed first was my vision but I didn't I was after you could see it was back I was perfectly fine and I stood staring again for a little while just feeling what it felt like to look at and see me and then I turned and that's when we were like women we all started jumping up and down screaming and thanking the Lord I remember I didn't understand anything except where once I was real sick I was well again and it has to be God that's all I knew Barbara was instantly and thoroughly healed her eyesight was immediately restored her lungs immediately affected normal her mother came running into the room and fell to her knees and began to feel her calves she said your muscles are back their muscle tone had returned instantly to her leg so she could walk after seven years her father came in and and hugged her and then began waltzing with her around the room well this was a Sunday that this happened and there was a church service that night at her church which was Wheaton Wesleyan Church in suburban Chicago they were holding a service and so at the point in the service a pastor gets up and says now does anybody have any announcements they want to mention and with that Barbara began to stroll down the aisle in front of everybody who had only known her for all these years as being curled up in a wheelchair or sick in bed she comes strolling down the aisle and the place erupts and people began singing Amazing Grace I once was blind and now I see the next morning she went to one of her doctors dr. Thomas Marshall an internist for 30 years and when he saw her walking toward him down the corridor he said later my first reaction was oh she died and this is a ghost that's the only way he can account for it his response was this quote this is medically impossible friends god instantly and completely an astoundingly healed Barbra in one miraculous moment this is there's no natural explanation for this this was not some sort of spontaneous remission which happens over a period of time and the illness often comes back this was instantaneous her eyesight returning her lungs re-inflate her entire body immediately healed and how would you explain that voice telling her to get up and walk this would be like a voice telling you get up and fly and you'd say well I can't do that that's how wild it was for her say get up and walk after all these years and yet she heard that how do you explain that well the illness has never come back today this happened more than 30 years ago today Barbra is married to a pastor and they have a little Church in Fredericksburg Virginia and one of her doctors wrote this quote I have never witnessed anything like this before or since and considered it a rare privilege to observe the hand of God performing a true miracle friends this is just one of several cases I document in my book the case for miracles I mean I have credible accounts of Dead coming back to life of people being healed instantaneously of deafness and burns and broken ankles and meningitis and so after prayers to Jesus here's the point God is still in the miracle business today now I think these miracles yeah I think these miracles tell us three things about God number one he's real these miracles point people toward the reality that God exists in fact Jesus said in John 4 verse 48 unless you people see signs and wonders you'll never believe well people believe when they see this kind of miracle take place and points them toward the reality of God number two it shows that God is powerful he can do anything and sometimes we think he can't deal with my situation he can't deal with my hopelessness that God is powerful he can do anything he desires to do and then third God is loving God is loving a miracle like the one - Barbra is just such a beautiful expression of the love and grace of God in her life now what about people who pray for healing that doesn't come in this life right I guess Barbra at the end she's such a sweetheart at the end I said can I just give you a hug and I gave her a hug and I said Barbara let me ask you one other thing why you why you you know my wife Leslie has a chronic illness she's in pain every single day for the last twenty years she's not been heal God's not done a miracle in her life why you and she looked at me she said Lee I don't know I don't know but we know that God is sovereign that God will do as he will do we know that God's ways are above our ways he understands things and sees things that we don't that he sees good that can emerge that we don't see it in the midst and we know that God will ultimately heal all of his children as he takes us into eternity with him we also know and this is interesting miracles were not automatic in Jesus day either you know Matthew says that Jesus didn't do many miracles in Nazareth in fact in Matthew chapter 10 the disciples are given the authority to heal and yet seven chapters late they fail when they try to heal an epileptic boy Paul didn't heal everyone he left trophimus behind while he was still sick and in fact Paul himself was never healed of this thorn in the flesh that he talks about some affliction that he had that apparently God never chose to take away well I'm gonna do a message in the future on this topic what about miracles that don't happen we don't have time to go into it much today but we will and in the chapter in my book I knew I could not write a book about miracles without addressing this and I went to a guy who is a brilliant philosopher PhD professor at a major seminary written major books about the evidence for God and his wife is dying prematurely of a brain disease that is robbing her of her ability to reason she no longer understands what a hairbrush is she no longer understands what a telephone does and she's she's young she's just in her 50s and they have prayed fervently for healing and it's not yet come and I interviewed him and he is able to talk as a philosopher as an expert as a theologian and bring context but also at the heart of someone who is watching this unfold in his very life and that chapter I wept as I wrote that chapter it is the single most profound interview I've ever had in my life the wisdom that God has given him because of the circumstance is so deep and so rich and so relevant that for me as a husband to a wife who suffers and maybe to you I just think that chapter it's gonna be so powerful so we'll do a message on that at some point not today's not the time but in meantime I believe that interview God's gonna use it to heal a lot of hearts that's our God that is our God he is still in the miracle business today let's talk to him let's pray father we are in awe of what you do I mean I talked to Barbara I look at the records I see the witnesses and I cannot deny that you are still in the miracle business I listen to this tape from Dewayne and I see evidence that you're still intervening divinely in people's lives we thank you for that we thank you you're not some distant and disinterested God but you are ever-present you offer a relationship with us that will go forever in eternity so we celebrate that right now we thank you for the fact that you love us so much that there are those times when you reach in and you sovereignly heal or you do something else that just opens our eyes once more to how great you are how loving you are and how real you are we thank you for all of this and all God's people said amen

Channel: Woodlands Church with Kerry Shook

Views: 297,561

Rating: 4.8290148 out of 5

Keywords: woodlands, church, kerry, shook, chris, christian, god, faith, bible, tbn, daystar, joel, osteen, rick, warren, jesus, hope, ministries, pastor

Id: y3VSIWHZtOI

Length: 38min 5sec (2285 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 26 2018