Miracle Reports

Their Plausibility in
the Gospels and Acts
My scholarly work mainly writing
commentaries, but in that work
the question of reliability
required me to do some research
on miracles
Jesus’s Miracles
How reliable are the sources?
1. Ancient biographies
2. Careful with sources
 Considering Jesus’s miracles
Miracle stories constitute about 1/3 of Mark’s Gospel,
about 20% of Acts
A circular problem
⚫ One reason that Western scholars
questioned the Gospels was that they
include miracle reports

⚫ What’s wrong with miracle reports?

⚫ Earlier Western scholars said that

eyewitnesses never claim dramatic
miracles such as those in the
Gospels

⚫ Were they correct?

David
Friedrich
Strauss
(1808-1874)
(picture in common domain, copyright expired; Wikipedia
Commons)
But Strauss’ friend cured!

⚫German
Lutheran pastor
Johann Christoph
Blumhardt

⚫ (photo in public domain)

Are there credible eyewitness
reports today?
Medical sources
(samples only)
Dr. Rex Gardner, Healing Miracles
⚫ E.g.,
Dr. Rex
Gardner:
⚫ 9-year-old girl, deaf
without her hearing aid
but praying for healing
Not her real photo ⚫ instantly healed

⚫ audiologist initially
denied the possibility
⚫ but the next day, the
tests proved that her
hearing was normal
⚫ Eyewitnesses
(some
whom I know):
⚫ healings of deaf non-
Christians in Jesus’
name in Mozambique
⚫ leading to massive
church growth
⚫ Heidi, Rolland Baker

⚫ Now documented
with medical tests
Southern Medical Journal, Sept. 2010
Candy Brown
answers the
critics
(Harvard U.
Press, 2012)
Lisa Larios—even her bones healed! (from
Richard Casdorph, M.D., PhD, The Miracles)
Bruce Van Natta
Crushed beneath semi-truck
⚫ Most of small intestine
destroyed

⚫ After several surgeries, 116 cm

left of small intestine (just 25
cm of ileum, normally 350 cm)
⚫ Dropped 180 pounds to 125—starving

⚫ Someone led to fly from NY to WI and pray for Bruce

⚫ Commanded small intestine to grow, in Jesus’s name

⚫ Like electric jolt

⚫ Radiologist: small intestine now about half normal length, but
functional

⚫ c. 274-300 cm (from 116—more than doubled)

⚫ Small intestine can widen but cannot naturally grow longer

⚫ Equivalent to amputated appendage growing

Healing of broken back (from Dr. Nonyem
Numbere)
Healing of deep gash wounds
⚫ Dr. Chauncey Crandall (over a few days)
⚫ Dr. Tonye Briggs (overnight)
Carl Cocherell, broken ankle, March 7, 2006
Carl
Cocherell,
ankle
unbroken,
March 15,
2006
Joy Wahnefried, classic case of vertical
heterophoria (used on pamphlet)
Glasses
no
longer
needed
(unlike
me!)
In Cuba: Mirtha Venero Boza, M.D. and
Baptist evangelist: knows burns
⚫ hand of baby
severely burned by hot
iron
⚫ swollen and skin
peeling off
⚫ Less than ½ hour of prayer
⚫ No medical intervention

⚫ restored completely, as if it
had never been burned
The history of
Catholic medical
documentation
(e.g., Jacalyn
Duffin, Oxford
University Press)
Eyewitness testimony
⚫A form of evidence in sociology, anthropology,
journalism, and of course historiography
 Examples
From my interviews or published
sources I believe reliable
One principle I am following
⚫ A smaller number of eyewitnesses should count more heavily
than a greater number of skeptical non-witnesses
We would apply this to most other
kinds of claims
Not claiming that everyone
prayed for gets healed
Male
pattern
balding

glasses
Wonsuk and
Julie Ma
(OCMS):
large goiter
instantly
gone
 Luther Oconor

Asst. Prof. of United Methodist Studies, United Theological Seminary

⚫ In the Philippines, Luther

prayed for a
woman with an
unbendable
metal implant
Danny McCain witnessed baby brother’s
skin healed instantly
My brother Chris (later PhD in
physics) and I witnessed

⚫ C. 1983, a Fuller seminarian

lifted a disabled woman I
knew from her wheelchair
with a command of faith

⚫ I was horrified …

⚫ But from then on she walked

Healed blindness
Found c. 350 reports of cured blindness
⚫E.g., Rex Gardner, Healing Miracles
⚫ Medical trainee in North Wales: eye scarring
⚫ Schoolteacher, blind after accident; after
healing, did not even need glasses
Oct. 30, 2004:
Flint McGlaughlin

⚫ Director of Cambridge Business

Institute

⚫ 2004, prayed for blind man in

northern India
The Field Where He Ran in Circles Praising God
This is where he told his story. He began to weep and I asked why?
He said, “I have always heard the Children, but I have never seen
their faces”.
Dr. Katho, from Bunia,
Congo-DRC
⚫ Evangelical
Brethren, president of
Shalom University in Bunia
⚫ When doing evangelism
⚫ People brought them a blind
elderly woman, not helped by
doctors or shamans
⚫ They prayed two minutes
⚫ She shouted, “I can see!”
⚫ Remainedsighted for the
remainder of her life
 Cameroonian
Baptist Paul
Mokake, one of my
students

⚫ My student Yolanda McCain witnessed blind eyes opened when Paul

prayed
Gebru Woldu (Ethiopia)
Greg Spencer
“remarkable return of his visual acuity”
No longer
qualified for
disability
Raisings from the dead
Samples from Asia and Africa
Helpful because
⚫ Usually
people are not considered merely
psychosomatically dead
Clusters of miracles
Historically
⚫ E.g., one experience so interpreted by
Wesley in his journal (Dec. 25, 1742)
⚫ Prayed for a Mr. Meyrick

⚫ Who appeared dead

From Doctors (combining prayer and medicine)
⚫ E.g., Dr. Mervin Ascabano
(Philippines, Jan. 7, 2009)

⚫ (Now pastoring a
megachurch)
Dr. Chauncey Crandall, cardiologist
⚫ Jeff Markin, West Palm Beach,
Oct. 20, 2006
⚫ Dead 40 minutes, pronounced
dead
⚫ Crandall led to pray, use paddle
⚫ Markin restored
Jeff Markin, not brain-damaged, either!
Dr. Sean George (Australia)
⚫ 55 minutes trying to revive him

⚫ Acute kidney failure, etc.

⚫ No brain damage

⚫ (though 3 months before he

returned to work)
Dr. Deborah Watson’s sister Gloria
Charlie Mada, Romania
Many claims from India, e.g.

⚫ Government
official’s son died
⚫ prayed to “Jesus,
the Christian
God”
⚫ Raised
⚫ resultant growth
among Nishi tribal
people
Two western sociologists
⚫ interviewed locals (including Hindu
village elder)
⚫ woman returned to life
after being pronounced
dead (no breathing or
pulse)
⚫ an Indian pastor prayed for a girl
dead with “worms coming out of
her nose”
⚫ returned to consciousness,
shared her postmortem
experience
⚫ local newspapers covered
story
University of Southern
California Press, 2007
Pastor in Mumbai shared with me:
⚫ Believers found a Hindu boy,
Vikram, lying at the bottom of
a pool

⚫ Jaya, a nurse, and Suneeta,

an intercessor, took him to
doctors, who pronounced
him dead
(Photo: Vikram feeling better after raising)

⚫ As they were returning 1½

hours later he revived

⚫ He said he heard the name

“Jesus” and then was rescued

⚫ His Hindu parents noted that

he had never heard this name
before
Vikram and his family joined the
Christians in their worship service
Sister whom I interviewed in Philippines
⚫ Diagnosed with liver cancer in 1983, but
unable to afford treatment
⚫ in 1984 died in hospital
⚫ dead for 1 hr, 45 minutes
⚫ Minister
prayed, but the woman was already
under sheet
⚫ Came to life; thought she had just been asleep
⚫ Cancer completely gone
⚫ Doctor
and doctor’s husband converted,
became missionaries
Indonesia: testimony from my neighbor
Dominggus Kenjam
Transported to the hospital
Neck sewn
Professor J. Ayodeji Adewuya
⚫ At scholars meeting in U.S.,
2009, publicly noted

⚫ newborn son was

pronounced dead at birth on
January 1, 1981
Raised after 30 minutes of prayer
⚫ Ayo was witness

⚫ Son has now finished master of

science degree at the University of
London
My friend Leo Bawa
⚫ One evening in Mayo Belwa in northern
Nigeria, his host’s neighbors handed him
their dead child

⚫ Prayed for a few hours

⚫ The boy was “fully restored”

⚫ “I came out of the room and handed

over the boy to his parents alive!”
Others in Capro
informed me: c. 5 pm,
Dec. 1985: Timothy
Olonade from Kano
toward Kaduna
2 people killed in accident
⚫ Police found no pulse, heartbeat

⚫ The blood baked on him

⚫ C. 3 am, found moving in mortuary

Doctors assumed severe brain damage
⚫ After 3 weeks released from
hospital, though treated at home

⚫ Maxillofacial surgeon/professor:
return to life, rapid recovery
beyond medical explanation
Now a leader in Nigerian missions
movement
⚫ I taught for Capro three summers
in Nigeria and know Timothy well
Pastor André Mamadzi: Olive 6 years old
Died a.m.,
raised 6 p.m.;
five years later,
remains well
E.g.’s, Congo-Brazzaville (ROC)
⚫ All
these examples are from Eglise Evangélique du
Congo (mainline Protestant denomination)

Craig Keener
Médine Moussounga
Keener (my wife)
& Pastor Nsouami
(President of ECC)
 E.g.’s, Congo-Brazzaville

⚫ Mama Jeanne Mabiala (2/3

accounts)
⚫ Marie—not eaten for three weeks, laid
dead on mat
⚫ A baby born dead, umbilical cord around
neck, coffin being built
⚫ Mille Grace (1000-fold grace) now in
school
 ⚫ Corpse brought to him after
mornings of failures with witch
doctors; raised
Papa Albert Bissouessoue
⚫ His wife also prayed, another
raised

⚫ My brother-in-law’s parents-in-
law
Antoinette Malombé
Thérèse Magnouha
⚫ 2 years old
⚫ Stopped breathing about 3
hours
⚫ restarted when Ngoma
Moïse prayed over her
⚫ Fine the next day
⚫ Finished seminary in
Cameroon
⚫ My wife’s sister
Sarah Speer, Canadian nurse in Congo
⚫ Also reports raising of a baby
through prayer twenty minutes
after her medical team had given
up on him
Reports of nature
miracles

A few examples
17th-century Sri Lanka
⚫ It is said that:
⚫ during a severe
drought, a Roman
Catholic priest, Father
Joseph Vaz, was asked
to pray
⚫ abundant rain before
he could get up
Water to wine
⚫ Indonesianrevival
in the 1960s-1970s
⚫ Massive reports of
miracles
⚫ Previously doubtful
W. researcher (Kurt
Koch) saw a number
of blind eyes opened
and saw water turned
to wine
Petrus Octavianus, Indonesia
⚫ Rain starting to disperse
conference

⚫ He commanded it to stop, and it

did

⚫ (K. Koch interviewed witnesses)

⚫ (I witnessed a similar occurrence)

Donna Arukua, Papua New Guinea,
1997
 worst drought in memory
 well nearly dry (just mud at bottom)
 Kindiwa prayed, and in morning well was full and clear
 Normally only like that after rain—but hadn’t rained in
months
Watchman Nee (though more healings
associated with John Sung)
⚫ 1903-1972

⚫ (photo in public domain)

⚫ Account from Angus Kinnear’s

Against the Tide
Watchman Nee (China)
⚫Villagersclaimed their god always
prevented rain at festival
⚫Member of evangelistic team: will rain
on that day
⚫Rained even on rescheduled day; many
conversions
 Dr. Emmanuel Itapson
(ECWA)

⚫ C.
1975, his father told skeptics that it
would not rain in village for four days,
though rainy season
⚫ For
four days, water fell around village
while village remained dry
⚫ After four days only one person in village
still non-Christian
⚫ Scholarswho claimed that eyewitnesses could
not report experiences such as these simply
reveal their own very limited exposure to the
world!
Some will grant that such things happen
⚫ But deny that they are miracles
⚫ Because, they argue, true miracles cannot happen
⚫ Usuallybecause assuming a nontheistic (often
atheistic) starting point
Problem today:
from
David Hume
(1711-
1776)--miracles
are not part of
human experience
David Hume
⚫ Regarded miracles as violations of
natural law
⚫ As if God would be “breaking” a law to do them!
⚫ Against earlier thinkers

⚫ Most early Enlightenment scientists were

Christians
⚫ This is a philosophic, not scientific, issue
The way he argued
1. Miracles violate natural law
2. Natural law cannot be violated
3. Therefore, miracles don’t happen
⚫ BUT WHO SAYS that God cannot act upon, change or
“violate” natural law if he wills? Hume simply presupposes
this without admitting that he’s doing so. This is a
statement of Hume’s opinion, not an argument.
Hume’s argument
⚫ Much of it depends
on miracles
violating natural
law
⚫ But modern physics
undermines Hume’s
prescriptive
conception of
natural law!
 Supposedly inductive, but
(often noted) actually
circular
⚫ “Experience” shows no miracles
⚫ Therefore: Well-supported
eyewitness claims for miracles must
be rejected
⚫ because miracles do not happen
Rejected: healing of Pascal’s
niece’s running eye sore
• Instant
• Public
• Queen Mother’s
physician
⚫ Presupposes atheism or
deism

⚫ Hume explicitly framed his

argument against
contemporary Christian
science and philosophy
 Recent major philosophic challenges to Hume on
miracles:
⚫ J. Houston, Reported Miracles: A critique of Hume
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
⚫ David Johnson, Hume, Holism, and Miracles (Cornell
Studies in the Philosophy of Religion; Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1999)
⚫ John Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure (Oxford, 2000)
(not from Christian view)
⚫ Much of Richard Swinburne, The Concept of Miracle
(New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion; London:
Macmillan and Co., 1970)
Hume: only “ignorant and barbarous nations”
affirm miracles

⚫ If
someone said
this today, we
would call him/her
ethnocentric
Hume’s racism
⚫ Hume doubted “exceptional” persons of color (Francis
Williams, etc.)

⚫ He advocated slavery
R. Bultmann: “mature” modern people do
not believe in miracles
⚫ “It
is impossible to use
the electric light and the
wireless … and … to
believe in the New
Testament world of
spirits and miracles.”
 Bultmann: Modern world denies miracles

⚫ Excludes from the “modern” world:

⚫ All traditional Jews
⚫ Traditional Christians
⚫ Traditional Muslims
⚫ Traditional tribal religionists
⚫ Spiritists; etc.

⚫ Limits the modern world to:

⚫ Westerners (and those influenced by them)
shaped by the radical Enlightenment:
⚫ Deists and atheists (including Marxist derivatives)
⚫ Justo González (citing Latino churches):
⚫ “what Bultmann declares to be impossible is
not just possible, but even frequent”
⚫ HwaYung, retired Methodist bishop of
Malaysia
⚫ Bultmann’s issue is W., not relevant in Asia
⚫ Philip Jenkins:
⚫ Christianity in the global South is quite
interested in “the immediate workings of the
supernatural”
⚫ John S. Mbiti:
⚫ most western scholars “expose their own
ignorance, false ideas, exaggerated prejudices
and a derogatory attitude” that fails to take
seriously genuine experiences pervasive in
Africa
How widespread are healing
claims?
healing claims?
(starting with churches known for
that emphasis)
Major
academic
studies,
e.g. …
 2006 Pew
Survey

⚫ Pentecostals, charismatics
in just ten countries
Country and % that claims % of % of
Protestants who Pentecostals,
estimated to be
are Pentecostal, charismatics, &
population Pentecostal;
other Christians
charismatic; charismatic, or
who claim to have
and total neither “witnessed divine
healings”

United States: 5% P; 18% C; 10% P; 18% C; 62% P; 46% C;

305,199,101 23% total 72% neither 28% other
Christians
Brazil: 15% P; 34% C; 72% P; 6% C; 77% P; 31% C;
197,577,861 49% total 22% neither 32% other
Christians
Chile: 9% P; 21% C; 59% P; 19% C; 77% P; 37% C;
16,454,143 30% total 22% neither 24% other
Christians
Guatemala: 20% P; 40% C; 58% P; 27% C; 79% P; 63% C;
13,002,206 60% total 15% neither 47% other
Christians
Kenya: 33% P; 23% C; 50% P; 23% C; 87% P; 78% C;
37,953,840 56% total 27% neither 47% of other
Christians
Nigeria: 18% P; 8% 48% P; 12% 79% P; 75%
146,255,312 C; 26% total C; 40% other
neither Christians
South Africa: 10% P; 24% 14% P; 29% 73% P; 47%
48,782,756 C; 34% total C; 57% C; 32% other
neither Christians

India (parts): 1% P; 4% C; Figures not 74% P; 61%

1,157,276,93 5% total calculated C; 55% other
2 Christians
Philippines: 4% P; 40% 37% P; 30% 72% P; 44%
96,061,680 C; 44% total C; 33% C; 30% other
neither Christians

South Korea: 2% P; 9% C; 9% P; 29% 56% P; 61%

48,379,392 11% total C; 63% C; 20% other
neither Christians
Thus:
⚫ For
these countries , and for Pentecostals
and Protestant charismatics in these
countries alone
⚫ the estimated total of these people
claiming to have “witnessed divine
healings” comes out to somewhere
around 202,141,082, i.e., about 200
million
 More surprising:
“other Christians”
⚫ somewhere around 39% in these countries
claiming to have “witnessed divine
healings”
⚫ Thusperhaps over one-third of Christians
worldwide who do not identify themselves
as Pentecostal or charismatic claim to have
“witnessed divine healings”
⚫ (presumably many more than once)
Even in U.S.: A 2008 Pew Forum
survey
34% of Americans claim to have
witnessed or experienced divine or
supernatural healing
⚫ 30% for Hindus
⚫ 34% for members of Orthodox churches
⚫ 27% for Catholics
⚫ 54% for historic African-American churches
⚫ 50% for evangelicals
The point
⚫ Isnot what proportion of these claims
involve divine activity or miracles
⚫ The point is whether Hume can legitimately
start from the premise that “uniform
human experience” excludes miracles
Millions of non-Christians convinced
⚫ Changed centuries of
ancestral beliefs because
of extraordinary healings
China (not in above
survey), c. 2000

⚫ One official source: roughly 50 percent

⚫ House church estimate: roughly 90 percent
⚫ Not starting with Christian premises
A 1981 study: 10% of non-
Christians in Chennai
Pastor Israel, one of my past
seminarians from India
Through prayer for
the sick
His Baptist church
grew from a handful
to about 600 (mostly
Hindu converts)
⚫ J. P. Moreland:
⚫ rapid evangelical growth in past three decades
⚫ up to 70% of it “intimately connected to signs
and wonders”

⚫ Even 3 decades ago:

⚫ 1981 Fuller thesis, Christiaan De Wet:
⚫ surveyed over 350 theses representing most of
the world, plus interviewing many missionaries
⚫ more reports of signs and wonders contributing
to church growth than he could use
Not exclusively, but most often

⚫ Groundbreaking evangelism in relatively

new areas
⚫ God may answer prayer anywhere
⚫ butspecial “signs” most often reported
during evangelism in largely unevangelized
regions
Also in past:
⚫ many church fathers claim to be
eyewitnesses of healings and
exorcisms that were converting
many polytheists
⚫Leading cause of conversion in
3rd and 4th centuries
Prominent feature of Korean Revival
(early 1900s; mainly Presbyterian)

Kil Sun Ju; Kim Ik-tu (Ik Doo Kim); photo of

1907 Korean Presbyterian leadership
 Science as science pronounces
on repeatable events

⚫ Not unique events in history—such as miracles by definition

are
⚫ Journal articles usually treat only what is REPLICABLE—
miracles aren’t
⚫ Skeptics demand replicability
⚫ therefore demanding something that almost by
definition cannot be provided
⚫ Skeptics demand something that can never happen naturally
⚫ but apart from virgin birth and resurrection, almost all
miracles involving nature involve events that sometimes
can happen in nature—simply not on this level
History, journalism often depend on eyewitnesses;
sociology and anthropology report experience
For each subject, we use the appropriate
method
⚫Much science
involves
experiments
⚫Events in history,
including miracles,
not subject to
experiments