The Case for Miracles

by Lee Strobel

  There were no clinics or doctors. She carried her child up a mountainous area and back down the other side in order to find a family friend, “Coco” Ngoma Moise. She calculated that Thérèse had stopped breathing for more than three hours.

  “Three hours?” I echoed. “Brain damage begins after just six minutes without oxygen.”

  “That’s right. With no medical assistance available, all they could do after arriving was to pray to Jesus. They did—and as they lifted their cries to heaven, Thérèse began breathing again.”

  “Did she suffer any ill effects?”

  “That’s the other amazing thing—no. She promptly recovered, and by the next day she was fine. She recently completed a graduate-level seminary degree in preparation for full-time ministry, so there was no brain damage or other problems.”

  My skepticism kicked in. “Let me guess,” I said. “They are part of an exuberant charismatic church where spectacular miraculous claims like this abound.”

  He shook his head. “No. They’re part of a mainline Protestant denomination.”

  “With no doctors around, was there any way of knowing whether or not she had actually died?” I asked.

  “This is a culture where people personally encounter death a lot more than Westerners do. They know what it looks like. Plus, a mother has every reason to grasp at the hope of any breath she could find. But let’s say she wasn’t clinically dead. Nevertheless, at the very minimum, it would be an astounding recovery, especially given the timing—right after the prayers began.”

  Because of the family connection, the incident resonated deeply with Keener. But in reading page after page of miracle accounts in his book, it wasn’t even among the best attested.

  “Of all the cases you examined, what are some of the strongest in terms of witnesses and corroborating evidence?” I asked.

  Keener smiled and sat back in his chair. “How long do you have?” he asked.

  A Deaf Child Hears

  With that, Keener began recounting some of the stories he had investigated. He started with the case of a nine-year-old British girl who was diagnosed with deafness in September 1982, apparently the result of a virus that severely damaged nerves in both of her ears.

  “Her case is reported by Dr. R. F. R. Gardner, a well-credentialed physician,” Keener said.2 “What makes this case especially interesting is that there is medical confirmation before the healing and immediately afterward, which is unusual to have.”

  The child’s medical record says she was diagnosed with “untreatable bilateral sensorineural deafness.” Her attending physician told her parents there was no cure and nothing he could do to repair her damaged nerves. She was outfitted with hearing aids that did help her hear to some degree.

  The girl didn’t want to wear hearing aids the rest of her life, so she started to pray that God would heal her. Her family and friends joined her. In fact, her mother said she felt a definite prompting to call out for God’s help.

  “I kept feeling God was telling me to pray specifically for healing,” she said. “Passages kept coming out at me as I read: If you have faith like children . . . If one among you is ill, lay hands . . . Ask and you shall receive . . . Your faith has made you whole.”

  On March 8, 1983, the girl went to the audiologist because one of her hearing aids had been damaged at school. After being examined and refitted, she was sent home.

  The next evening, the child suddenly jumped out of her bed without her hearing aids and came bounding down the stairs. “Mummy, I can hear!” she exclaimed.

  Her mother, astonished, tested to see if she could detect noises and words—and she could, even whispers. Her mother called the audiologist, who said, “I don’t believe you. It is not possible. All right, if some miracle has happened, I am delighted. Have audiograms done.”

  The following day, she was tested again, and her audiogram and tympanogram came back fully normal. “I can give no explanation for this,” said the audiologist. “I have never seen anything like it in my life.”

  The girl’s doctor ruled out possible medical explanations. After repeated successful audiograms, the dumbfounded consultant’s advice to her parents: “Forget she was ever deaf.”

  In the medical report, the child’s ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgeon used the word “inexplicable” to describe what happened. He wrote, “An audiogram did show her hearing in both ears to be totally and completely normal. I was completely unable to explain this phenomenon but naturally, like her parents, I was absolutely delighted . . . I can think of no rational explanation as to why her hearing returned to normal, there being a severe bilateral sensorineural loss.”3

  After documenting numerous case studies like this in his book, Gardner concludes, “A belief in the occurrence of cases of miraculous healing today is intellectually acceptable.”4

  He said people who are still skeptical should consider what evidence they would be prepared to accept. “If the answer proves to be, ‘None,’ then you had better face the fact that you have abandoned logical enquiry.”5

  “One of the Most Hopelessly Ill Patients”

  Keener went on to discuss another case, not in his book, for which there’s significant documentation. “I’ve personally interviewed Barbara, who was diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic with progressive multiple sclerosis,” Keener said. “I’ve confirmed the facts with two physicians who treated her. There are numerous independent witnesses to her condition and years of medical records. In fact, two of her doctors were so astounded by her case that they’ve written about it in books.”6

  One of those physicians, Dr. Harold P. Adolph, a board-certified surgeon who performed twenty-five thousand operations in his career, declared, “Barbara was one of the most hopelessly ill patients I ever saw.”

  Another physician, Dr. Thomas Marshall, an internist for thirty years until his recent retirement, described Barbara as a budding gymnast in high school, playing flute in the orchestra. But symptoms began appearing: she would trip, bump into walls, and was unable to grasp the rings in gym class.

  Eventually, after her condition worsened, the diagnosis of progressive multiple sclerosis was confirmed through spinal taps and other diagnostic tests. After thoroughly examining her case, doctors at the Mayo Clinic agreed with the dire diagnosis.

  “The prognosis was not good,” Marshall said.

  Over the next sixteen years, her condition continued to deteriorate. She spent months in hospitals, often for pneumonia after being unable to breathe. One diaphragm was paralyzed, rendering a lung nonfunctional; the other lung operated at less than 50 percent. A tracheostomy tube was inserted into her neck, with oxygen pumped from canisters in her garage.

  She lost control of her urination and bowels; a catheter was inserted into her bladder, and an ileostomy was performed, with a bag attached for her bodily waste. She went legally blind, unable to read and only capable of seeing objects as gray shadows. A feeding tube was inserted into her stomach.

  “Her abdomen was swollen grotesquely because the muscles of her intestine did not work,” Adolph said.

  “She now needed continuous oxygen, and her muscles and joints were becoming contracted and deformed because she could not move or exercise them,” Marshall said. “Mayo [Clinic] was her last hope, but they had no recommendations to help stop this progressive wasting disease except to pray for a miracle.”

  By 1981, she hadn’t been able to walk for seven years. She was confined to bed, her body twisted like a pretzel into a fetal position. Her hands were permanently flexed to the point that her fingers nearly touched her wrists. Her feet were locked in a downward position.

  Marshall explained to her family that it was just a matter of time before she would die. They agreed not to do any heroics, including CPR or further hospitalization, to keep her alive; this would only prolong the inevitable.

  Barbara entered hospice care in her home, with a life expectancy of less than six months.

  “This Is Medically Impossible”


  One day someone called in Barbara’s story to the radio station of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. A request was broadcast for listeners to pray fervently for her. Some 450 Christians wrote letters to her church saying they were lifting up Barbara in prayer.

  On Pentecost Sunday, 1981, her aunt came over to read her some of the letters in which people offered prayers for her healing. Two girlfriends joined them. Suddenly, during a lull in the conversation, Barbara heard a man’s voice speak from behind her—even though there was nobody else in the room.

  “The words were clear and articulate and spoken with great authority, but also with great compassion,” Marshall wrote.

  Said the voice, “My child, get up and walk!”

  Seeing that Barbara had become agitated, one of her friends plugged the hole in her neck so she could speak. “I don’t know what you’re going to think about this,” Barbara told them, “but God just told me to get up and walk. I know he really did! Run and get my family. I want them here with us!”

  Her friends ran out and yelled for her family. “Come quick; come quick!”

  Marshall described what happened next: “Barb felt compelled to do immediately what she was divinely instructed, so she literally jumped out of bed and removed her oxygen. She was standing on legs that had not supported her for years. Her vision was back, and she was no longer short of breath, even without her oxygen. Her contractions were gone, and she could move her feet and hands freely.”

  Her mother ran into the room and dropped to her knees, feeling Barbara’s calves. “You have muscles again!” she exclaimed. Her father came in, hugged her, “and whisked her off for a waltz around the family room,” Marshall said.

  Everyone moved to the living room to offer a tearful prayer of thanksgiving—although Barbara found it hard to sit still. That evening, there was a worship service at Wheaton Wesleyan Church, where Barbara’s family attended. Most of the congregation knew about Barbara’s grave condition.

  During the service, when the pastor asked if anyone had any announcements, Barbara stepped into the center aisle and casually strolled toward the front, her heart pounding.

  “A cacophony of whispers came from all parts of the church,” Marshall said. “People started clapping, and then, as if led by a divine conductor, the entire congregation began to sing, ‘Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see!’”

  The next day, Barbara came to Marshall’s office for an examination. Seeing her in the hallway, walking toward him, “I thought I was seeing an apparition!” he recalled. “No one had ever seen anything like this before.”

  He told Barbara, “This is medically impossible. But you are now free to go out and live your life.”

  A chest X-ray that afternoon showed her lungs were already “perfectly normal,” with the collapsed lung completely expanded. “The intestine that had been vented to the abdominal wall was reconnected normally,” Adolph said. “She was eventually restored to complete health.”

  Barbara has now lived for thirty-five years with no recurrence of her illness. “She subsequently married a minister and feels her calling in life is to serve others,” Marshall said.

  Both physicians marvel at her extraordinary recovery. “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,” Marshall wrote.

  Said Adolph, “Both Barbara and I knew who had healed her.”

  A Broken Ankle That Wasn’t

  I sat in silence for a while, flabbergasted by Barbara’s story. Keener shared my amazement. “When I interviewed Barbara about her case, she was still brimming with excitement, even after all these years,” he said.

  My mind searched fruitlessly for naturalistic explanations. Could her recovery be written off as some sort of natural remission? If so, why would it suddenly occur after so many years, right when hundreds of people were praying for her? Remissions typically take place over time. Certainly the placebo effect or misdiagnosis or fraud or coincidence or medical mistakes couldn’t account for what happened.

  Besides, what about the mysterious voice telling her to get up and walk? Or the immediate muscle tone in her atrophied legs? Or the instant and simultaneous healing of her eyesight, lungs, and so on? With so many witnesses of unquestioned integrity and expertise, plus a proliferation of corroborating documentation, her case seemed to meet even the high evidential bar typically set by skeptics.

  Absent a presupposition against the miraculous, this did seem to be a clear and compelling example of divine intervention. And Keener was far from finished. He began to rattle off a series of other amazing stories he had documented in his book, including the story of Carl Cocherell.

  “In March 2006, on a trip to Missouri, Carl was checking the oil in his car when he stepped down and felt a sharp crack,” Keener said. “He fainted from the pain, which was the worst he had ever endured. I have a copy of the radiology report of his X-rays, confirming the fracture. The orthopedist ordered him to stay overnight. During that night, though, Carl experienced a voice from the Lord.”

  “What did the voice say?” I asked.

  “That the ankle was not broken.”

  I cocked my head. “Despite the X-rays?”

  “That’s right. The next day the doctor casted his leg and warned he would eventually need months of physical therapy. Back in Michigan, his family doctor ordered more X-rays, and this time the results were radically different.”

  “How so?”

  “There were no breaks or even tissue damage where a break had been. Again, I have the radiology report that says there’s no fracture. In fact, the doctor told him, ‘You never had a broken ankle.’”

  “But,” I interjected, “what about the Missouri X-rays?”

  Keener calmly continued the narrative. “The doctor looked again at those Missouri X-rays and said, ‘Now, that’s a broken ankle.’ But at this point, there was no sign of a break. He removed Carl’s cast and sent him home. Carl never had further problems or needed any therapy.”

  “What do you make of all that?” I asked.

  “Personally, I don’t see how this could have occurred naturally,” Keener said. “Would a sixty-two-year-old man’s bone heal so quickly that no sign of a fracture would remain at all? It doesn’t seem likely. And, of course, that wouldn’t explain how God told him in advance what would happen.”

  “Can Jesus Heal Me?”

  Next Keener brought up Ed Wilkinson, whose education in neuropsychology convinced him that people who rely on faith to cure their ills are merely using religion as a neurosis to avoid dealing with reality.

  “Then, in November 1984, his eight-year-old son, Brad, was diagnosed with two holes in his heart. The condition also impaired his lungs. Surgery was scheduled,” Keener recounted. “As the surgery got closer, Brad started giving away his toys, not expecting he would survive. One day he asked his dad, ‘Am I going to die?’”

  “That’s quite a question, given the circumstances,” I said. “Was his father honest with him?”

  “He said not everyone who has heart surgery dies, but it can happen. Then his son asked, ‘Can Jesus heal me?’”

  “Now, that’s quite a question,” I said.

  “His father was aware of how often faith is abused, so he said, ‘I’ll get back to you on that.’”

  “And did he?”

  “Yes, a few days later, after some anguished prayers and reading Philippians 4:13,7 Ed told him that God does heal, but whether or not he would in Brad’s case, they still had hope of eternal life in Jesus. After that, a visiting pastor asked Brad, ‘Do you believe that Jesus can heal you?’ Brad said yes, and the minister prayed for him.”8

  Before surgery at the University of Missouri hospital in Columbia, Missouri, tests confirmed nothing had changed with Brad’s condition. The following morning, Brad was taken in for his operation, which was expect
ed to last four hours. But after an hour, the surgeon summoned Ed and showed him two films.

  The first film, taken the day before, showed blood leaking from one heart chamber to another. The second film, taken just as surgery started, showed a wall of some sort where the leak had been. The surgeon said there was nothing wrong with Brad’s heart, even though the holes were clearly visible the day before. The lungs were also now normal.

  “I have not seen this very often,” the surgeon said. He explained that a spontaneous closure rarely happens in infants, but it was not supposed to occur in an eight-year-old. “You can count this as a miracle,” he said.

  The hospital risk manager said firmly, “You can see from the films: this was not a misdiagnosis.” Added the pulmonologist, “Somebody somewhere must have been praying.”

  Later, an insurance agent called Ed to complain about the forms he had submitted. “What’s a ‘spontaneous closure’?” the agent asked.

  Replied Ed, “A miracle.”

  Today, said Keener, Brad is in his thirties with a business and children of his own. He has never had any heart problems since his healing.

  A Death, a Prayer, a New Life

  Keener continued with the case of Jeff Markin, a fifty-three-year-old auto mechanic who walked into the emergency room at Palm Beach Gardens Hospital in Florida and collapsed from a heart attack on October 20, 2006. For forty minutes, emergency room personnel frantically labored to revive him, shocking him seven times with a defibrillator, but he remained flatlined.

  Finally, the supervising cardiologist, Chauncey Crandall, a well-respected, Yale-educated doctor and medical school professor who specialized in complex heart cases, was brought in to examine the body. Markin’s face, toes, and fingers had already turned black from the lack of oxygen. His pupils were dilated and fixed. There was no point in trying to resuscitate him. At 8:05 p.m., he was declared dead.

  Crandall filled out the final report and turned to leave. But he quickly felt an extraordinary compulsion. “I sensed God was telling me to turn around and pray for the patient,” he said later. This seemed foolish, so he tried to ignore it, only to receive a second—and even stronger—divine prompting.