MIRACLES

Quote from my talk to an interesting men’s group last night:

1. Amazing miracles – most of them – happen only during four periods of biblical history: Creation, Moses/Exodus, Elijah/Elisha, Jesus/apostles…

2. There’s little or no evidence that the following have been cured miraculously:

2-1 Advanced pancreatic cancer (see Philip Yancey’s book on Prayer for an excellent discussion on this and related issues)

2-2 Replacement of limbs not there (eg. thalidomide victim with fingers protruding from shoulder becoming an arm)

2-3 Experienced Christian psychiatrist: ‘Serious narcissistic personality disorder is incurable if something in the person’s life is regularly feeding the narcissism’

2-4 Many clients who’ve been chronic child sexual abusers say such pedophilia is incurable…

However… raising of the dead? Yes, I believe that happens (though more rarely than is often claimed).

When I was speaking at a conference with Dr Paul Yonggi Cho from Korea, I heard him say categorically that (a) all the miracles recorded in the Book of Acts have been reduplicated in the young Korean churches, ‘and we’re believing that God will do in our time things that go beyond those miracles’; (b) 75% of ‘miracles’ have a psycho-somatic origin: so convince the person that they’ll be healed, and if they believe you/God they will be!’ An extra dimension of God-given ‘Faith’ is needed for conditions in the other 25%!’.

So what do you make of all that?