Heidi and Rolland Baker head a burgeoning Christian effort (Iris Ministries) in Mozambique. Iris is planting around a thousand churches a year in a region which has historically been resistant to Christianity. A key part of their ministry is prayer for healing. Friends of mine have traveled to Mozambique and reported back that they saw numerous healing miracles in Iris’s meetings. Often this occurs in visits to villages, where people can see that individuals whom they knew to be formerly deaf or mute can now hear and speak. For instance, this one-minute clip shows a woman declaring her vision to now be “normal”, and her villagers rejoicing (“Obrigado” means “Thank you” in Portuguese). I heard Heidi speak in New Jersey last week. The main thrust of her talk was living a life of radical love and trust in God. She mentioned that there is a special grace on her ministry for healing of deafness, such that essentially everyone from their local Makua tribe gets healed. She noted that a team of PhD’s had recently come to check out reports of these healings. She indicated that some of these scientists had arrived as skeptics, but were won over by what they observed. The results of this research have just been published by Brown., et al. here in the peer-reviewed Southern Medical Journal. I suggest downloading the “Article as PDF” for better readability. The researchers measured changes in hearing and vision before and after healing prayer.
For hearing, they used a standard audiometer which made tones of varying loudness in a pair of earphones. The subjects responded verbally or by pressing a button when they could hear the tones. This enabled the researchers to determine how soft a sound that the subject could hear in each ear. The usable results for hearing before and after prayer are shown in the figure below.
Hearing results from Brown, et al. study of healing prayer
For each ear tested, the left bar shows the hearing threshold before prayer, and the adjacent (right) bar shows the hearing threshold after prayer. Lower bars mean better hearing ability. Seven subjects had both ears tested, and three had only one ear tested. There was a high level (50-100 decibels) of ambient noise during the testing, so it seems that a 40-50 decibel hearing theshold was about normal here. The researchers note that “Field conditions were challenging.” I can imagine the noise and chaos they had to endure, along with language and cultural barriers. For many ears the hearing threshold dropped dramatically after prayer, indicating healing. The article clinically notes “a significant effect of PIP on auditory function (P < 0.003)”, where a P value this low indicates a super-high statistical effect. “PIP” stands for “Proximal Intercessory Prayer”, which denotes prayer typically within earshot of the recipient. For the seven ears which started with significantly impaired hearing (approximately 70+ decibel hearing threshold under these measuring conditions), every single one got major ( more than 20 dB) improvement. Two ears went from deaf or nearly deaf to normal. All but one person (designated subject 7H-2) came away with normal range hearing in at least one ear. Even 7H-2 went from majorly deaf in the right ear to merely impaired. This backs up Heidi’s claim of essentially 100% healing of deafness in Iris’s evangelistic meetings.
For vision testing, the subjects were shown a chart with E’s pointing up or down or left or right. The subjects were asked to identify which direction each E faced. Lower rows on the chart had smaller and smaller E’s, to test the visual acuity. The usable before and after results are shown in the following figure:
Vision results from Brown, et al. study
Lower is better for these data bars. As I understand it, a value of 6 here represents 20/20 vision. Again, many improvements were shown after prayer. The scientists concluded that significant improvement was observed (P= 0.02). As I see it, five of these ten subjects were more or less blind (6/100 is like 20/333 vision). Two out of these five improved to pretty good vision (6/7 , 6/10), two ended up with some usable vision (6/20, 6/35), and one showed no measurable improvement. Three cases started with moderately impaired vision (6/30 to 6/50); two of these three showed significant improvement. Subjects 7 and 9 started off with fairly decent vision, and showed little or no improvement. So there it is, in black and white. It is not known how much of the initial vision problems were near- or far-sightedness, versus problems with the retina or cataracts. In a region with no optometrists or money for glasses, correction of severe myopia counts as healing of blindness.
To get an understanding of how Heidi and Rolland Baker function in a supernatural lifestyle, I’d suggest visiting YouTube for videos of their talks, finding a time (maybe while doing the dishes) when you can let the video stream for at least 30 minutes. Heidi has a unique blend of inherent faith, gushing love, and administrative vision that keeps her joyful and effective in the face of some horrifying disasters. Rolland is a bit of an odd duck, a man with a genius-level intellect now living and trying to interpret a life of childlike faith. Rolland and Heidi also have books available through Amazon. They and their associates are the real deal, laying down their lives to bring blessing to the poorest of the poor.
The article did not attempt to explain mechanisms by which functional improvements occurred. The article includes discussion on why some other studies, typically in Western countries and not involving hands-on ministry by Pentecostal-type Christians, showed lesser benefits to healing prayer. My add: There does seem to be a huge disconnect between stories of miracles overseas and the lack of confirmed miracles in the West. In Tim Stafford’s Christianity Today article about the Bakers’ ministry, he noted that the same researchers (led by Candice Brown of Indiana University) had confirmed miraculous healings in Brazil, but were unable to do so at charismatic Christian gatherings in North America. Nevertheless, there are glimmers, even in the U.S. The largest credible community I know of in North America that models a lifestyle of the miraculous is Bethel church in Redding, CA. Talks, testimonies, and books can be found on Bethel’s website. Also, Global Awakening (Mechanicsburg, PA), which co-sponsored the outreach in Mozambique studied above, offers training in many cities for effective healing prayer.
POSTSCRIPT: I added a short post The Power Behind The Miracles in Mozambique summarizing Rolland Baker’s description of the attitudes and practices that power their lives. For more on healings in answer to prayer, see Healings on YouTube: Legs Growing Out . Candy Gunter Brown later (2012) published a book, Testing Prayer: Science and Healing , which carefully discusses the methodology and propriety of testing for the effects of healing prayers, and also provides more details and follow-ups which demonstrated that many of the subjects in the Mozambique study discussed here really did experience significant improvements in hearing and vision. (She is careful not to claim that these are necessarily outright miracles, but she does document the nature of the changes).
And here is my writeup of my later in-person scouting visit to Bethel Church in Redding: Prayer for Healing at Bethel Church .
******* FOR FIRST-TIME VISITORS TO THIS BLOG ********* Other posts are listed on the right hand side of the main page. For instance, one deals with God and chaos in the book of Job, and how that may relate to evolution. There are longer essays or letters dealing with science and faith (e.g. STAN 3) that are accessed by clicking the tabs at the top of the page. I’d suggest skimming the README page first, to get an overview of what is in these essays.
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My cousin and I have been having some interesting conversations over the last few months concerning evolution, creationism, & faith in general. I am non-believer and he is a believer. My cousin shared with me a link to http://www.worldmag.com/2012/09/debunking_junk and I came across the link to your blog in the comments. I have been thoroughly enjoying reading it. The level of research and thought you put into that rebuttle was stunning as well as your latest post on young earth (YE) creationism.
Then I came across this post and the others concerning leg growing, deaf healing & this medical study. I found a link to the actual study (yours was broken) and read it – https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/14131
The section on the stated knowledge of their limitations to the study blew my mind. They went to one of the poorest places in the world for this experiment, not a developed nation where people most certainly have the same conditions. They had a limited study of just 24 people and thought this was a good enough sample size for something as ground-breaking as this. They made no diagnoses of the cause of the original condition (etiology) nor made any measurement that anything actually changed in their body. They relied on witness testimony alone, the least reliable evidence for any experiment, for measurements of improvement. Modern medical equipment is able to measure vision and auditory response without testimony and could have avoided this ambiguity entirely. And, most importantly, they provided no control group and used no double-blind methods to help prove their findings weren’t biased. Also, I can find no followup at a later time to show that these people were actually healed and didn’t experience demand characteristics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_characteristics). How this paper was even accepted to a medical journal, I am stunned. While I do admire their work in helping those that are in far more need, and I don’t doubt their sincerity in trying to help people, I think the people of Africa would be better served with known working methods (hearing aid & glasses) than a chance a prayer might work.
So I asked myself then, where did that mind so critical of YE creationists go? Then I remebered something else you said in that Junk DNA article
“Humans have a well-documented propensity towards confirmation bias, which is the tendency to acknowledge and remember only the information which accords with a previously-formed opinion. This tendency becomes more pronounced with emotionally-loaded issues.”
Having read your other articles, I know you had experience as a faith healer and it is something you believe is possible. I’ve seen no change in that belief in follow up articles. So my question to you, similar to the one you ask of YE believers is, what drives you to such a state of crippled perception here?
Keith,
First, thank you for letting me know the link was broken and for pointing to a working link. You raise a number of thoughtful questions.
About the article — I went back and re-read it. I would agree with many of your observations, but in fairness to the researchers, it seems like they were very forthcoming in acknowledging them up front (no control group, no double blind, etc.).
I’m not sure you are appreciating the difficulties they were operating under. The subjects were likely illiterate tribesmen who may have walked miles barefoot through the bush to attend these meetings. The meetings were likely controlled chaos. There was likely no medical facilities of any kind for miles around, and these meeting may have been the only time the authors would have to interact with the subjects. So there was no chance for etiology ,etc.
Iris Ministries does provide physical help in the form of drilling wells and bringing in food and providing housing for orphans, and I’m sure they would be happy to distribute hearing aids and glasses if these were available and had skilled medical personnel to support this activity, but all that just is not there out in the bush. It is a different world, with none of the amenities we take for granted.
They explained clearly why they traveled to this particular area, with its inherent clinical difficulties: “The site was selected because Iris leaders are widely reputed among pentecostals globally as “specialists” in praying for those with hearing and vision impairments—especially during village outreaches in rural Mozambique.” The authors were specifically investigating “Proximal intercessory prayer (PIP)” [as opposed to distant intercessory prayer (DIP]. since PIP is ” a common complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapy”. They note that their testing in the U.S. on PIP had been unsuccessful, and the word among the Pentecostals was that these effects tend to show up more in third world countries. (WHY that is, is of course a matter of debate). Anyway, the word on the Pentecostal street was that Iris ministries in Mozambique seemed to have the best success rate with PIP, so off to Mozambique the authors went, to give this technique its best chance. If they did not see results there, it would be reasonable to write it all off.
I did not read the authors as saying, “This proves that a supernatural God has miraculously acted in time and space.” On one level, they were simply reporting the results of a particular subset of a well-defined healing practice, on a par with reiki or hypnotism or whatever. This is a legitimate subject of medical reporting. Doctors today are more willing than 20 years ago to give alternative healing practices a chance, if there is reason to believe they bring about improvements, even if the operative mechanism is entirely psychosomatic.
re: ” They relied on witness testimony alone, the least reliable evidence for any experiment, for measurements of improvement.” — I don’t think that accurately represents what happened. Yes, the authors relied on witness testimony to select a suite of patients for testing, i.e. a suite of those who said they had initial hearing or vision problems. But then they did the actual, more or less quantitative physical testing on these patients before and after PIP. That testing, not the witness testimony, was the basis for “measures of improvement”. As the article noted, “In support of experimenter reliability, several audition subjects showed no measureable improvement, despite self-reported improvement.” Again, the authors based their conclusions on the measurements, not on patients’ testimony. These measurements, such as they are, clearly show that marked marked and fairly consistent vision and hearing improvements did occur after PIP.
What gets the Iris ministers invited back to a region is not just that some locals swooned in a frenzy in a meeting and claimed to be healed. No, it is because they actually do experience lasting healing. These villages are not like anonymous suburbia where nobody knows their neighbors. In these villages, everyone knows everyone, and if Norberto has been blind all his life and now can actually see, they all know it. If his healing was just ephemeral or self-deception, they would know that, too.
I happen to know several people who have visited the Iris mission in Mozambique, and they all tell me that this is really how things are. A few years ago I encouraged my older daughter, a very savvy and reliable person, to make the pilgrimage there, partly because I was curious about the remarkable reports I was hearing. She went with Iris staff to an outreach in a village in the bush. They bounced along dirt roads for hours till they came to a clearing with huts. That evening they gave an evangelistic message, and invited people with medical problems to receive prayer. As I recall, she told me that at least one person who was known to all the other villagers to be deaf, became able to hear again. And I think other people reported healings as well that evening.
Besides the Mozambique experiences, there are numerous credible reports of significant, unexpected healings following prayer in the name of Jesus. I have posted some links elsewhere on this blog. e.g.
Two friends of mine, stolid middle class professionals like myself, reported to me that they saw a girl, who had stunted growth, gain four inches in height in a few minutes during prayer. I have observed some notable healings when I have prayed, but I haven’t presented those on the blog since they would be just anecdotal to the general reader. (For instance, once when a friend and I prayed for a young woman whose toe was blue and painful, having been broken the day before, right before our eyes it turned from blue to healthy pink, and the pain left. This was not in any sort of emotionally hyped state or group setting. It just… happened.)
Given those observations and experiences, it would be irrational for me to reject the power of healing prayer. With all due respect, it seems to me that it is the skeptics that might be the ones exhibiting the “I don’t care what the evidence is, I will never believe it” denial which is characteristic of YE creationists.
For full disclosure here, I am not claiming that every manifested healing is necessarily a supernatural miracle. Also, I have bothersome unresolved questions about the consistency of response to healing prayer. Last year I attached myself to the entourage of Randy Clark, a leading practitioner of healing prayer, on a mission of his to Germany. I was part of the supporting prayer team. Friends of mine have gone on trips with Randy to places like Brazil or India and reported back many notable healings. I decided to go to a tougher place for healing, among hard-headed Germans. I related my experiences here:
https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/germany_mission/
That is probably longer than you want to read. For me, that trip was a mixed experience. Yes, a number of people felt aches and pains go away when I prayed, and I was of course happy for them to feel better. But it was pretty hard to tell if that was all just psychosomatic. Also, for most of the people I prayed for, nothing happened, at least at the time. So, I am still a humble learner in this area.
Best wishes in your journey…
If memory serves ( rather go through the whole Google thing again) The Templeton Foundation sponsored the largest intercessory prayer ”experiment” to date and returned no genuine positive evidence, and in fact, some individuals suffered negative effects when they were(made?) aware they were being prayed for.
Therefore, I too am somewhat baffled about your acceptance of ”faith healing” or whatever term you care to describe it as and wonder ”where did that mind so critical of YE creationists go?”; and you provide the answer yourself.
But this does not in any way lessen my bafflement.
It is much like myself acknowledging the wonderful engineering present in my car and then standing outside my garage praying for something supernatural to happen to the fuel system so I wont be obliged to fill the tank with petrol, simply because I ran out of cash or forgot to go to the bank or some-such)
If you saw me doing this you would, and rightly so, very likely think i had lost my mind!
I simply just don’t get it.
Ark,
I understand your bewilderment, but I think if you re-read my Oct 1 comment below, and Oct 5 comment below, that may clarify things. Just to recap some of the key points there:
1. I am not claiming that all these unusual healings are supernatural miracles…I can only report what I and others have observed. I don’t claim to know the metaphysics behind each episode.
2. Thus, all these episodes could in theory be psychosomatic, via some as-yet-poorly-understood mind/body relations. Who knows, maybe the caring and the faith of the pray-ers touches the pray-ees in some primal way….
3. So it is unwise in my opinion to dogmatically claim that no such healings (whatever the underlying explanation) can or ever have been experienced. That is simply to impose an antisupernatural prejudice. Rather, the impartial empirical approach is to let the facts speak for themselves, which is what I have tried to do.
4. And on a practical compassion level, yes, there can be widespread fakery that takes advantage of people’s credibility, but for the cases I discuss here, the subjects (as far as we know) did experience significant benefits, that did not seem to be forthcoming otherwise, given the resources in that situation. I have personally seen several significant improvements in conditions follow upon proximal prayer by faith-filled Christians [two instances described here: https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2018/07/08/prayer-for-healing-at-bethel-church/ ], which again if you want to argue it was all psychosomatic or spontaneous remisson, fine. But it seems from all I know of the backgrounds here highly unlikely that these improvements would have occurred when they did without this proximal prayer.
5. I discuss the Benson study below. I don’t know anyone experienced in prayer ministry who would have thought this sort of impersonal exercise would do anything. It’s great for that study to clear the air by ruling out the efficacy of distant mechanical verbiage, but that is simply is a different animal than the proximal prayer that can have salutary effects.
Not that this will likely satisfy you, but I thought I’d give you the courtesy of a brief explanation here.
Because of your Christian worldview, your reporting of these occurrences has the ring of an endorsement, however subtly, and especially as those involved were also Christian.
There is no evidence whatsoever of the supernatural.
There is no evidence of gods, yours’ or anyone else’s, merely arguments. And most of these are very weak.
Faith is merely a belief in things unseen.
To me, this is what make your (justifiable) criticism of YEC more than baffling. as you still hold on to a corpse rising from the dead.
So you dismiss global flood, but how do your view Moses and Exodus?
Every evangelical Christian I have encountered believe this to have been an historical event, yet archaeology refutes it.
However, it is the primary tenet of Christianity that is the most disturbing – the belief that humans are all sinners and require salvation, in the form of acceptance that a human sacrifice was demanded to appease a god who as himself that said god in human form.
It neither makes any moral sense or plain commonsense.
In fact, it is simply barbaric.
So while I applaud your efforts regarding Beazely ( who has still not responded to your post , I note) I feel there is an unhealthy dollop of what I can only kindly say serious confusion on your part as well.
Hi Ark, you are asking some thoughtful questions.
Interestingly, I got in a dialog on my blog here with a (Dutch) conservative Christian some years back around exactly the same sort of question (if you dismiss the literal Genesis creation story because of physical evidence, what about the Exodus?). I said that if the evidence clearly showed the Exodus story was not literally true, I would not be able to endorse it. He was horrified by my response, but maybe you will be more sympathetic to my explanation. Here is what I told him:
…. It is clear to me now that the New Testament writers were men of their age, who would NECESSARILY buy into a literal acceptance of the Old Testament narrative, unless God gave them some special revelation otherwise (which He apparently didn’t)…
…. I happen to hold truthfulness as a high personal priority. Whether it or not it is pleasant or easy to digest, I attempt (however imperfectly) to align myself with truth and reality and integrity. I try to not pre-judge what the truth “must” be. Perhaps this comes of being a professional scientific researcher for so many years: you learn in the laboratory to be open to unexpected truths, and not rigidly force your own grid of understanding on everything. …
That is why it would not shake my faith if some portion of the Exodus story were shown to be untrue. I should be clearer as to what I meant by this: yes, it would bother me, for the reasons you state so clearly, but no, it would not shake my faith to the core – at its core, my faith rests on the finished work of Christ, demonstrated by his resurrection, which was attested to by many eyewitnesses who maintained their witness at the cost of their lives.
…The key tenets of Christianity were summarized by Paul in I Cor 15, and they all had to do with the person and work of Christ, not Adam or Moses….
You have done a fine job disclosing the Old Testament typology, and the many references to the Exodus in the later Old Testament and in the New Testament. This does not necessitate that every detail in the Old Testament story actually happened. The Old and New Testament writers and major players were steeped in the traditions of Judaism, so they would necessarily treat all the Old Testament events, from the 6-day creation through Noah’s world-wide Flood to the Exodus as completely factual. Since their audience consisted almost entirely of Jews, this would be a divinely-inspired means to communicate the truths of the Old and New Covenants.
As noted above, God the Son was a master story-teller, weaving detailed tales which never really occurred instead of plainly stating the point. He was entirely capable of entering into the (Jewish) worldview of his hearers. God could similarly inspire stories in the Old Testament which edified the hearers, whether or not they actually occurred. The way to discern whether or not these stories actually occurred is to gather and examine the actual evidence; a medieval approach would be to ignore the evidence and instead build up chains of reasoning as to what “must” be the case (e.g. “Paul treats it as literal so it must be literal”).
[end quote]
About some guy rising from the dead – – well, again for me that comes down to letting the evidence speak for itself.
I don’t want to set off a full-on debate on the evidence for early Christianity (there are other sites where such discussions go on…and on), but will try to very briefly outline my thinking here. It is well-established that Paul wrote the New Testament book of First Corinthians to the church in Corinth, sometime around 55 A.D. ( e.g. Clement of Rome quoted from this letter and referred to it as still being in their possession when he wrote c. 95 A.D to the Christians in Corinth). In the fifteenth chapter of this letter, Paul is focusing on the importance of the (future) resurrection of Christians. As a lead-in to that topic, he reminds them of what he had already taught them about the foundations of Christianity:
“Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (I Cor 15:1-9)
Paul had visited the Jerusalem church about 37 A.D. and again around 50 A.D. (plus or minus a few years, but sources basically agree; see e.g. Galations 1-2) :
(a) Within 5 years of Jesus’s death in c. 30 A.D., Paul (as a persecutor of the church in and around Jerusalem) had been exposed to the claims of the local Christians that some of them had seen the resurrected Jesus.
(b) Within 10 years of 30 A.D., Paul had returned to Jerusalem as a friend of the church, and talked with local leaders and presumably other members.
( c ) He was back again for other visits over the next decades.
From (a), (b), and (c) , Paul had extensive, personal knowledge of what the local Judean Christians were saying about the resurrection. Per I Cor 15, Paul had passed on the Corinthians during his stay with them c. 51-52 A.D. that there were hundreds of people, some still alive, who said they had witnessed the resurrected Jesus. (Some of whom would hold to that profession under threat of prison and execution – – per https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/historicity-of-jesus/ ).
Paul, in his letters, comes across as a straight shooter. Irascible, yes, but a guy who is telling the truth as he sees it, not holding back even on acknowledging his own misdeeds. So unless you treat this literary evidence with the same sort of unreasonable skepticism practiced by YE creationists regarding physical evidence, you must acknowledge that there were indeed a bunch of people who were close to the facts (located in Jerusalem and within a few years of Jesus’ death) who said they had seen the risen Christ. According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus told skeptics who demanded a sign that these reports of the resurrection would be the only sign they would get; he elsewhere noted that the typical skeptic would not be convinced even if they did have evidence that someone had risen from the dead.
Whether or not you accept the claims of these witnesses is a different issue. I’ll hazard a guess that you do reject these claims, not because you have independent knowledge of the events of c. 30 A.D. , but because you have made up your mind ahead of time that they *can’t* be true – – presumably because you have decided that nothing supernatural exists. (Not meant to be a criticism – – we all have unprovable starting points in our thinking).
My “brand” of Christianity is much like that of Oxford/Cambridge don C. S. Lewis. If you are curious about what an educated Brit can make of Christianity, his “Mere Christianity” is a classic. It is a very readable compilation of some of his BBC broadcast talks during WWII.
As of mid-twentieth century, in the evangelical world at least in the U.S. there were the “fighting fundies”, fundamentalists who clung to (and memorized) their King James Bibles and had no use for secular learning. (Although, ironically, as I pointed out to Kim, they rejected young earth chronology, holding instead to a “gap” theory). And there were the more moderate and more scholarly evangelicals, who looked largely to British evangelicals like Lewis and John Stott for their role models. Billy Graham would be classed with them as well. Though not a scholar, he tried to focus on the big picture and avoid squabbles over nonessentials. Being an old guy, those are my roots, although as a PhD researcher I push more to the empirical side than most.
The publication of The Genesis Flood changed everything. It re-energized the fundamentalists, as now they thought they had now had proof that them thar godless scientists had been lying to us, just as we suspected all along. And the YE creationists have been extremely vigorous in spreading their message. They make it tough to be a moderate evangelical – – I get accused routinely of being in league with the devil, and so on. Unfortunately, this nonsense has jumped the Atlantic and made inroads in the UK. There are still some thoughtful Christians left in Britain – -you will hopefully find them at Christians in Science http://www.cis.org.uk/ , and with Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (see at https://www.bethinking.org/ ).
Finally, about “…that a human sacrifice was demanded to appease a god…”. I appreciate your dismay. If you live in the land of John Knox you may not be aware of this, but the “penal substitution” theory of the atonement is just a theory, and not the only or even the earliest theory of how the death and resurrection (they go together) of Jesus brought reconciliation between God and man. See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_in_Christianity .
Western (Latin, then Roman Catholic, and followed by Luther/Calvin) Christianity had tended to focus on forensic justification aspects; the church in the East more on the spiritual union with Christ and personal transformation as the outcome of the atonement. Athanasius’ famous saying: “God became man, so we could become [like] God.”
The problem in this relationship is more on our side than God’s. Somehow, those who believe in and follow Jesus end up participating in a sort of death (to their old life) and resurrection to a new life, but the exact under–the-hood (bonnet) “mechanics” of how this reconciliation works are never spelled out in the New Testament. Hence the many different theories. Lewis addressed this issue in Mere Christianity. I cannot quote exactly, but I believe he noted that people benefit from eating citrus fruit whether or not they know the metabolism of vitamin C.
Phew, this is a lot of words. I wish you well.
Greatly appreciate your long response. I can tell you exactly why healing practices like this don’t work as well in developed nations. It’s because they use control groups and double-blind methods. Here’s an example of when they did just that: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567
Turned out no better or worse than normal statistical results than would be expected in medical practice. Yes this is the only study done I’ve been able to find with results like this, but it’s also the only one I’ve seen actually do it in a proper scientific manner.
Of course the reports of healings in third-world countries are going to be astronomically higher than anywhere else. It’s the same reason such things were more common in our country’s own past. And I totally agree that people should concentrate on those areas of the world much more closely to understand what’s going on. But if they’re not going to use methods that have proven to remove the fault inherent in human experimentation, then they shouldn’t be taken anymore seriously than young earth creationists (YECs) and their bad scientific methods.
Your dismissal of control groups & double-blind methods is something I cannot just let go. Unlike glasses and hearing aids may be, those two methods are perfectly reasonable requests which are possible no matter how poor the area someone goes to do an experiment. Their dismissal of such methods is highly suspect, and while I can’t claim intentional, the confirmation bias behind it to improve their end results is unmistakable. And like I said, I don’t doubt the sincerity and good intentions of the people that went on this trip. I greatly admire the work and help they give to people so much less fortunate than us. But I am most certainly going to call them out on doing bad science just as you so eloquently do for YECs. Bad methods like those that were done in Mozambique are what lead down a long road of misconceptions just like the 25 page packet that Stan produced in your second letter to him. Bad methods like this are what lead to tens of thousands of homeopathic medical studies that give all the same sorts of measurements and charts that this Mozambique study provided. But as soon as a control group is added to a homeopathic study, all those numbers mean nothing. And I’ll clarify what I mean when I say they relied solely on witness testimony for their results. Their numbers were based soley on the responses given that an improvement happend. The use of eye charts and audiometers relies on the person themselves to tell you they got better. I understand they couldn’t get the advanced equipment there to do truly automated responses. But that should lead you to caution in their results, most especially without a control group.
I can’t really speak to dismissing your witnessed claims of healing. What I am going to go on is how the human body is understood to work and none of these claims hold up to any known medical explanations. If you’re going to invoke a supernatural cause for changes in human biology then you’re going down the same road as the “apparent age” philosophy of YECs.
I’m going to go with the fact that witness testimony to an event is considered the worst possibly evidence by psychology, sociology & law enforcement. There’s a reason modern courts of law do not normally accept it as the only evidence for a criminal case.
I’m going to go on the human tendency of confirmation bias and the ability of the human mind to change what it remembers to fit what that confirmation bias wants it to remember. I’m totally guilty of this myself and hate the tendency of my mind to do so. The claim of photographic memory in people is all but false except in the rare case of some autistic savants, and even then it’s not perfect. So I’d ask you to be a little more skeptical of your own memory of the event without empirical evidence of the occurrence that anyone that doubts it could verify.
I’m going to go with Occam’s Razor for the leg growth phenomenon because it is so prone to fakery & demand characteristics: shifting your feet out to the side, slipping the shoe off slightly, bending your ankle just slightly, shifting your hips, all can easily cause displacement where the cause is not obvious on a camera. Hip shifting can even make it difficult to spot in real life (done some experimentation with this one myself). Did you actually do any physical measurements before and after or did you rely soley on observation & testimony of the healed? Did you get a doctoral diagnosis of the person beforehand that they actually had a difference in their leg height? That can be proven beyond a doubt with x-rays or even a tape measure. I propose to you the following for your next leg growth healing session:
1) With no shoes on (leave them off for entire session), stand with the back and shoulders firmly against the wall, ensuring shoulders are at equal height. If there is a legitimate length difference in their legs, then one leg may be higher off the ground when doing this. That’s fine. If they still cannot keep their shoulders straight, then I would get further medical advice from a doctor to first see if the person has spinal problems and is unable to stand straight and ask them to stay out of this session if that cannot be done. This is not for healing the spine (can do that one another day! :).
2) While standing straight like this, measure from the protrusion of the hip bone to the bulge at the end of the femur above the knee. Make sure all measurements by everyone are done from the same points at hip and knee. This should stop the hip adjustment trick, even if they are standing.
3) Measure from the bulge at the top of the tibia to the bottom of the heal.
4) Measure from the heal to the tip of the big toe on the bottom of the foot (avoids issue of bending food forward and back).
5) With the leg fully bent, measure from the end of the femur at the knee to the beginning of tibia below the knee on both sides of the knee (to see if the space between the femur and tibia grew)
Have at least 3-4 people take these measurements (without the others that are also taking measurements around) and then put their findings in an envelope to keep them untouched until done. Perform the healing. Repeat all measurement steps again with a different group of people than did the original measurements. Again ensure all measurements are being taken from the same places at all times by all people.
A control group and double-blind conditions are also required. Would be kind of tricky in this case, but I think valid controls would be to have those that claim they are healers and several that are not and all perform healing. The people being healed don’t know who is who. Also have people that you know are faking the leg growth, others that will purposely report no change & others that believe they have a difference that will be healed. The healers don’t know who is who.
And don’t do this measurement method just once. Do it again and again with different groups of people, most especially those that are skeptical of it being true. Document it all. Video tape it all. Screw all this measurement stuff and get x-rays done. Use what the modern world has given you to prove what you claim is real. Probably more clinical than you’d typically want to do in a faith healing session, but that’s tough. As you well know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Use that skepticism and passion for the scientific method you had for young earth claims back when you were writing letters to Stan.
Thank you again for your blog and taking the time to respond.
Keith,
Appreciate your thoughtful comment. You’ve raised a number of issues. I’ll start with responding on the Mozambique article. You’ve done a thorough job laying what a solid, controlled, double-blind experiment in healing might look like. Nothing on a theoretical level to disagree with there.
However, I think you don’t fully appreciate the challenges faced by these academics in that study. It’s all very well for us to sit in our armchairs and say, “… control groups & double-blind methods … are perfectly reasonable requests which are possible no matter how poor the area someone goes to do an experiment. ” This was not just a “poor area”, as in an urban slum where there is at least some schooling and organization, where you might be able to settle in and set up some structured study. These gatherings were fluid and chaotic, and people are just not interested in participating in some enterprise where half the outcomes are expected to be nil. The authors noted, for instance, “It would be desirable to follow-up with subjects several days or weeks after PIP, although systematic follow-up would be extremely difficult under similar field conditions (we tried but could only locate one subject for re-testing the following day).” If you re-read the study, you will note that the authors were barely able to do the minimal measurements on the treatment group, e.g. they were apologetic over only being able to measure hearing at one frequency. The ministry team, with the testers, likely jounced in by truck to each village, and only spent 1-2 days there.
More importantly, their hosts, the Iris ministry staff, just aren’t going to consent to taking a random half of the people who have walked barefoot all day in hopes of a healing touch, and then give them some other treatment than what they came for. Nor should they, given their belief that their prayers have a reasonable probability of bringing relief. Trying to prove anything to skeptics is just of no concern to them. Unlike the homeopathic advocates, they are not trying to sell anything to the broader public or to claim that they have a transferrable curative method that anyone else can imitate.
So the chance of these academics doing a classic randomized, double-blind, control-group study here was nil. They had a choice of doing a prospective study, or none at all. And prospective studies are fine, in their place, as long as all the methodological limitations are made clear, as they were in this article. The structure of this study of course weakens its scientific value, yet it does not eliminate it.
An article in Lancet [ http://apps.who.int/rhl/LANCET_696-700.pdf ] noted, “Double blinding proves difficult or impossible in many trials. For instance, in general, surgical trials cannot be double blinded. …If researchers do not describe their trial as double-blind or the equivalent, it could still be scientifically strong. Apart from assessment of the other methodological aspects of the trial, readers would have to assess how much bias might have ensued due to absence of blinding.”
Unlike the case of homeopathy (where the claims are often that e.g. over a period of weeks or months, a certain percentage of testees reported “feeling” better) , the observed effects here were startling and immediate: substantial healing of functional deafness and blindness in most of the testees, in less than an hour, as measured by outside, trained investigators. The dramatic, fairly consistent changes measured by these researchers at least merit followup to more clearly prove or disprove these putative effects. Again, this was a prospective study, nothing more, nothing less.
Maybe a follow-up double-blind study would show that prayer was not the determining factor, but rather rural Africans routinely experience enormous improvements in hearing and vision just from outsiders coming to their villages and giving them compassionate attention for an hour. That would be worth knowing, if only as a stopgap measure for the next decade until full-on medical services can be provided for them. But to quash these promising findings just because they are unexpected would be irresponsible.
re: “Their numbers were based soley on the responses given that an improvement happend. The use of eye charts and audiometers relies on the person themselves to tell you they got better. ” Well, sort of. It’s not that the testers merely interviewed the subjects and asked if they thought their hearing had improved. The methods used in this study were standard techniques used everywhere for quantitatively assessing hearing and vision. These techniques are how my kids were screened at school for hearing, and how the optometrist adjusts my glasses prescription every two years.
It is hard to fool the tester about the final (post-prayer) seemingly improved level of hearing and vision. The testers took reasonable precautions to minimize practice effects that would boost performance on the final test compared to the initial (pre-prayer) test. The skeptic is reduced to speculating that, for unknown reasons, the testees performed way, way, way below capability on the initial (pre-prayer) testing. While that cannot be disproven, there seems to be little objective reason to believe that was the case, other than the fact that the measurements showed unexpected results.
The article discusses the possibility of various other factors which have been suggested as having the potential to skew the results (e.g. suggestion , hypnosis), but note that the average effects in their study were far greater than seen for these other effects.
There are varying degrees of “witness” evidence. Agreed that witness testimony regarding the details of some complex event, particularly relying on memory of the past, can be unreliable. But these optical and auditory measurements related to fairly straightforward reports, recorded on the spot.
To dismiss all prayer on the basis of that 2006 Benson study that you cited is naive. It assumes that all types of prayer are of equal effect. That is like assuming that all pills are alike, so a negative study on one type of pill means that all pills are useless. Nobody I know who is serious about prayer would think that this sort of clinical exercise using long-distance prayer for strangers on a list would do much. If a friend asks me to pray for their sick aunt in Ohio, I will do so out of sympathy with my friend’s concern, but I really don’t expect much to come of it.
The Mozambique article discussed this Benson study, clarifying some differences between its distant intercessory prayer and the Proximal Intercessory Prayer (PIP) which is the type which is most reputed to sometimes have strong effect. It may be worth noting that one of the three groups doing the praying in the Benson study, Silent Unity, has prayer beliefs and practices which are not even recognizable as intercession to God, being instead “creative thought” to help us “express our divine potential”.
If we are going to give New Testament-type prayer a fair chance, we need to work within its categories as much as possible. There not all prayer is of equal impact. The effectiveness of prayer is heavily dependent on the quality of faith. When he healed people, Jesus often credited their own faith for enabling the healing, with phrases like, “According to your faith be it done to you”, or “Your faith has healed you.” Conversely, when he went back to his hometown where they would not receive him as messiah because he was just the local carpenter’s son, the gospel of Mark (6:4-6) records that even Jesus (playing by his own rules) “could not do any miracles there…and he was amazed at their unbelief.” James (1:5-7) has this to say about the role of faith and doubt in prayer: ” If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.”
God is obviously capable of healing near or far, but the New Testament norm is for it to be part of a personal encounter, not names on a list.
Also, in the New Testament model, not just anybody has equal effectiveness in prayer. Some believers are graced with special gifting for healing ( I Cor. 12:9, 30). It was thus appropriate that the authors of the Mozambique sought to follow up persistent reports that the Iris ministers in Mozambique were experiencing significant responses to their prayers.
Finally, there is a pattern in the New Testament of miracles most often occurring when the gospel message is first brought to a new people group, presumably serving to authenticate a new, foreign message. Things then seem to taper off, since the primary witness to the Christian message is then supposed to be the quality of life of the Christians in that community.
Whether we like them or not, those are some of the principles of biblical Christian prayer, so prayer studies that flout these principles are flawed from the start.
With homeopathy, there have been many, many prior studies over the years involving therapies where presumably the practicing homeopaths were involved in recommending the most promsing treatments. [If you are a fan of epidemiology, you might enjoy reading this description of a randomized, double-blind study of homeopathy performed in 1835(!) : http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/homeopathy-failing-randomized-controlled-trials-since-1835/ ]. In contrast, there have been few if any professional-level studies of the effects of the reputedly most-effective form of prayer (i.e. PIP by individuals with special gifting, preferably on the mission field) other than this Mozambique article.
One other remark on that article: I can understand that your reaction to it is “This simply cannot be true!”, if your only contact with its contents is the article itself. It would seem like a fantastic claim, incompatible with all the rest of your knowledge base. I would have been hesitant to give it such a favorable posting on my blog, except I had extensive prior knowledge of what goes on there. In 2004, I heard Rolland Baker, the co-head of Iris Ministries in Mozambique, describe what was happening there. Healing of the deaf was routine, and healing of blindness and other maladies was not uncommon. These healings occurred in the villages where everyone knows whether someone used to be blind and whether they now could see. And this healing ministry is the crucial element that has allowed Iris to operate in a Moslem-dominated region where otherwise Christian missionaries are driven out or murdered.
This, of course, got me curious. Was this speaker a liar, or delusional? Could this be real? Despite my open-mindedness to remarkable answers to prayer, I had never heard of this level of operation. But what I heard from reliable friends who went to Mozambique consistently matched what the speaker said. And, as I mentioned earlier, I encouraged my highly-reliable 20-something daughter to go there, partly to slake my curiousity. Her report confirmed everything else I was hearing. And so the published article was merely putting quantitative numbers on the consistent qualitative reports I had gotten. Is there a vast, vast conspiracy here? A mass delusion, extending over thousands of diverse people for more than a decade? Maybe, but I doubt it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Moving to other topics – – -You politely questioned the accuracy of my memory of that toe healing episode that I witnessed, which I mentioned in my previous comment here. That is a very fair question, so here are some more details:
(a) The young woman’s toe was initially in distress (blue and painful), which is why we undertook to pray for her. (b) After a brief prayer, her toe was healthy pink and pain-free. (c) All three of us were left gaping as it turned from blue to pink before our eyes, and asking each other, “Did you see that?” and finding we had all witnessed the same thing. (d) We immediately told other people about it; some of those people still recall what we told them at the time , since it was so dramatic . (e) Since it was such a bizarre event, I could not help contacting the young woman a few weeks later and asking her, “Did that really happen?”, whereupon she assured me it did.
So this episode is epistemologically firmly grounded. That said, no, I don’t have videos to prove this healing to outsiders, so to them this is just an anecdote. But I did not mention this episode to try to prove anything to anyone else, but to indicate to you (since you seemed to be probing my mindset) some experiences I have had which make me open-minded to the possibility of miracles.
About legs growing out, I fully agree that this is vulnerable to fakery, intended or not, especially in regards to legs swinging off to the side (done by the pray-er) or hip shifting done by the pray-ee. I discussed that clearly in my blog article on legs growing out:
There I made an effort to select videos where the sideways movement is minimal, and where the shoes are not easily slipped off. The viewer can weigh in his or her own mind the likelihood that some sort of fakery is being practiced. I myself have actually never prayed for someone’s leg to be lengthened. If that did happen, I would leave it up to them to measure and publicize it.
While I am happy to post some encouraging videos or studies that I come across, I am not motivated to try to prove God or miracles with scientific rigor. People seem to forget that even in a triple-blind study, God is not blinded, and He may or may not wish to participate in such an exercise. There is a pretty consistent position in the New Testament that God has already provided the appropriate level of evidence, enough to justify belief but not enough to compel it. When skeptics came to Jesus demanding a “sign” on their terms, he point-blank refused, saying that no sign would be given to them other than his resurrection. So I doubt that today’s skeptics will be given the type of proof they demand, either.
A couple of months ago, I posted a lengthy discussion of the nature of evidence for God available in the natural world:
It is too long to summarize here, but it concludes with this quote which is relevant to the issue of setting up studies to put God to the test:
“A fundamental tenet of Christianity is free will. It is no stretch to say that Christianity without free will is simply not Christianity anymore. The Christian God grants humans free will and will not interfere with its exercise. Humans are free to believe or not believe, free to follow God’s laws or free to sin and separate themselves from God…
Luckily for everyone, scientific attempts to prove or disprove God are all doomed to failure. We live in exactly the world the thoughtful Christian would expect to find. For those who believe, hints of God are everywhere. But none are convincing. Faith remains a requirement and atheism remains an option. A God who values free will would set it up just that way.”
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Your initial reply references biblical text which is not evidence in the struct sense, merely argument.
However, even though I am unaware of any evidence for this claimed event.
I would be very interested in reading what you have – assuming it is something a bit more concrete than what Habermas and his Empty Tomb apologetic touts as ”evidence”.
There is no evidence that supports the biblical tale. In fact, the Internal Settlement Pattern as put forward by the likes of Finkelstein demonstrates this.
And of course there are a great many other details.
What I find quite disturbing is for someone who has such in-depth knowledge likely capable of refuting every YEC argument, how on earth can you express any doubt over the lack of veracity regarding the nonsense of the biblical tale of Captivity , Exodus and Conquest?
Seriously, this comes across as Compartmentalism at its most blatant and also just a tad hypocritical.
Are you suggesting that the vast majority of archaeologists, historians,and scholars working in this field are so way off the mark that they should be rethinking their entire approach to this issue, or worse, there is some sort of conspiracy?
Ark,
With all due respect, your claim that biblical text is “not evidence”, but merely argument, is a statement of unreasonable prejudice. Biblical documents are not physical artifacts, but they are documents like any other historical documents. In the case of the New Testament, the documentary evidence for the events of Jesus’ public ministry is far stronger than for many of the other events of ancient history. The apostle Paul knew in person Jesus’ brother and closest associates. These men were well-known personages in the early church. He summarized their testimonies in letters written around 25 years after the events in question, whilst these witnesses to the resurrection were busy being tortured and killed for their testimony. The time gap between when these events and when they were recorded, and between the writing of these documents and our physical copies of them are way smaller than for much of ancient history. I go through all of this in more detail here: https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/historicity-of-jesus/
If you don’t care how soon after the events these documents were written or how great is the testimony they contain, because they can’t possibly be true because they affirm some supernatural happenings, that is merely a statement of your personal prejudice. Again, this is not a criticism. In everybody’s worldview, there are some unprovable first principles. If you have decided that there is no reality beyond the observable regularities of the physical world, I cannot persuade you otherwise. No matter the weight of testimony for a supernatural event, you will be driven (by your logic, which is OK) to discount it.
In looking at the history of New Testament studies, I have observed that yes, the prejudices of skeptical scholars do indeed affect their judgements. As of 1900 or so, learned men were confidently asserting that the gospel of John was written in the middle of the second century, that John just made up his reference to the pool of Siloam, and that Luke just made up a lot of details in Acts, such as the weird titles of some officials (e.g. “First man” of Malta). All this because there was at that point no archaeological evidence to the contrary. However, as I note in the link above, subsequent discoveries proved the scholars wrong and the Bible correct.
I have less familiarity with Old Testament studies, but my understanding is that there is an independent archaeological and documentary confirmation of many of the events from the time of the prophets onward. On the other hand, it seems clear that the events of Genesis 1-11, at least, cannot possibly be historical. It’s not just that we haven’t yet dug up Noah’s Ark or bones of Adam, with a missing rib. Rather, there is an overwhelming mass off interlocking positive evidence that the universe came into existence around 13 billion years ago, the earth has been around some 4 .5 billion years, and we got here via evolution.
The absence of evidence so far for the massive Exodus Narrative naturally inclines to me towards skepticism. Did X million Israelites flee Egypt, devastating the population and economy and the army there, and mob the land of Canaan? Probably not. Did a band of Asiatics sojourn in Canaan, then in Egypt, pick up some monotheism there, and infiltrate Canaan and spread the religion? Maybe.
But as I noted above, just because a lot of critical scholars agree on something does not mean it is true, and absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.I don’t have the time or inclination to do a deep dive into all the pros and cons and possibilities here. I just have other things I need to be doing. So my position here is simply, I don’t know.
I am tempted to suggest this is a Strawman. There certainly is no corroborating evidence at all.
That said, based on the amount of fallacious (nonsensical) text contained in the New Testament, and considering your sterling efforts at completely rubbishing archaeological and geological claims regarding the biblical text of Noah and the ark (Flood) I am quite frankly surprised you would make any serious appeal to the Gospels.
Although it is generally accepted that there was an individual called Saul of Tarsus there is not a scrap of independent evidence for him.
Several modern scholars regard the reference to James the brother of the lord as bogus. Offering you a breakdown why or relevant links will have no effect , so I won’t bother.
Evidence show Christianity’s roots began in Syria/Turkey, not Jerusalem.
Acts is now considered, by and large, myth by modern scholars.
The Exodus is also a geopolitical foundation myth – an excuse for a land grab, if you like! 🙂
Sorry, Scott, but this old trope simply won’t fly.
As I mentioned, there is contrary evidence, a lot of it, and if you are disinclined to investigate – see Dever, Finkelstein etc then it says considerably more about your bias and unwillingness to go the extra mile in the pursuit of truth, than it ever does about my ”unreasonable prejudice” .
And the extra mile is something you have done with exemplary thoroughness with Young Earth Creationism.
This is the problem when pointing accusatory fingers at the more extreme sects of your religion – someone is going to point a finger at you and ask you to explain your position with the same degree of passion and thoroughness.
The biblical character Jesus of Nazareth references Moses numerous times, which strongly suggests he believed in his historical veracity.
As I said, that you won’t/don’t and merely offer a thinly veiled hand wave is somewhat disappointing, and dare I say a little hypocritical?
Anyway .. perhaps we can go some way to rectifying that?
This chap, John Zande, spent many months in communication with numerous archaeologists in Israel over the Exodus position and many of their views are quite enlightening.
He has written a number of essays on Exodus.
This one, with images, is an excellent starting point for anyone who is serious about truth.
Best
Ark.
Ark,
Most of your claims here were already refuted in the Historicity of Jesus link, https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/historicity-of-jesus/ , I gave you to read in my previous comment here. I have other things to do, so let’s draw this dialogue to a close at this point. I appreciate your courtesy in the midst of disagreements. I will respond only briefly to some your points here, since more complete responses, with literature references, are in that link.
“There certainly is no corroborating evidence at all. “ – – – Incorrect. See link.
“Although it is generally accepted that there was an individual called Saul of Tarsus there is not a scrap of independent evidence for him” – – – We have at least seven excellently attested letters by the man himself, most of them written to established, local congregations at the time who would know perfectly well whether or not they had a letter from Paul. And fact we have a letter from Clement and his fellow Roman Christians to the Corinthians, referring to Paul’s letter which they still had in their possession, and similarly from Polycarp to the Philippians referring to Paul’s letter to them. Not to mention the lengthy description of Saul/Paul in Acts. That is way more attestation than for almost any other individual in ancient history. If you want to automatically dismiss anything and everything written by Christians, that is just your prejudice speaking, not the facts.
To demand further evidence outside the Christian community for some missionary for what at the time was a fringe Jewish cult is unrealistic. For the vast majority of men and women in the ancient world, even those who had some public visibility at the time, we have no accounts, especially records written within the lifetime of the person.
“Several modern scholars regard the reference to James the brother of the lord as bogus.” – — You can find “several modern scholars” to affirm practically anything. The vast majority of scholars with credentials in the field take that reference in Josephus to be genuine.
“Evidence show Christianity’s roots began in Syria/Turkey, not Jerusalem. “ – – Incorrect.
As I noted, Peter, John, and Jesus’s brother James were well-known personages in the early church. In writing to the Corinthians c. 55 A.D., Paul took it for granted they know who these people were. They were all Palestinian Jews. Paul first learned of the claims around Jesus (Messiah, sent from God, died for our sins, rose from the dead) in the Jerusalem area as he was arresting and interrogating Christians c. 35 A.D.
Paul did claim some extra revelation regarding the inclusion of Gentiles and the role of the law, and of course, “Christianity” has developed over time, with different emphases and cultural expressions, from the primitive church to early orthodoxy to (in the West) medieval Catholicism to Reformation Protestantism to modern Pentecostalism or whatever, with a zillion branches and subsets. But the roots go back to what happened in Jerusalem and was reported by the Palestinian crowd, as Paul reminded the Corinthians:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
“Acts is now considered, by and large, myth by modern scholars.” – – – Incorrect. The critical scholars of say 1890 regarded as a myth, but archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century have thoroughly confirmed it.
In the late 1800’s, a British scholar, Sir William Ramsay, had been convinced by contemporary scholars that Acts was riddled with errors. There appeared to be no evidence for several cities, persons, and locations named in Acts, and so skeptics assumed Luke must be mistaken. They accused Luke of fabricating titles such as “politarch” and “first man”. Ramsey traveled to the Middle East and did excavations in Greece and Asia Minor (which is in today’s Turkey), expecting to confirm the inaccuracy of Acts. To his surprise, he found archaeological evidence again and again which showed Luke to be precisely correct, even on fine points of titles and local customs. These confirmations of the Bible text led Ramsay ultimately to become a believing Christian. The classical historian A. N. Sherwin-White wrote of Acts, “Any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted.”
And I already gave you my take on the Exodus.
Best wishes,
Scott
Thank you for share this paper.
I am a Brazilian (also Italian) Christian. ( sorry about my pior english). I always was a ceptic person as I am an architect, have a master science degree in engineeering. Had studied in Salford, UK, a copule do years ago. Why am I say that?! To explain that Jesus is the SAME in the past and now a Days. 🙂
I Saw with my eyes legs grow up. Was touched them. No Trucks, no deals behind a “ miracle scene”. No!
Jesus still cure, still doing miracles!
Want to see them? Well move yourself with the Holy Spirit!
Have intimacy with God!
p.s: about the gasoline as a someone asked, well, well I know personally missionaries that have no money at all and need a car to spread the Gospell, and God multiply God gás for 5 month one tank…
Ola Karen, obrigada por compartilhar isso. Muitas bençãos…