by Lee Strobel
A nurse was already disconnecting the intravenous fluids and sponging the body so it could be taken to the morgue. But Crandall began praying over the corpse: “Father God, I cry out for the soul of this man. If he does not know you as his Lord and Savior, please raise him from the dead right now in Jesus’ name.”
Crandall told the emergency room doctor to use the paddle to shock the corpse one more time. Seeing nothing to gain, the doctor protested. “I’ve shocked him again and again. He’s dead.” But then he complied out of respect for his colleague.
Instantly, the monitor jumped from flatline to a normal heartbeat of about seventy-five beats per minute with a healthy rhythm. “In my more than twenty years as a cardiologist, I have never seen a heartbeat restored so completely and suddenly,” Crandall said.
Markin immediately began breathing without any assistance, and the blackness receded from his face, toes, and fingers. The nurse panicked because she feared the patient would be permanently disabled from oxygen deprivation, yet he never displayed any signs of brain damage.9
Keener shook his head in wonder. “As you can imagine, this case got a lot of attention in the media,” he said. “One medical consultant for a national news program suggested that perhaps Markin’s heart had not stopped completely but had gone into a very subtle rhythm for those forty minutes.”
“What was Crandall’s response?” I asked.
“That he was grasping at straws. The resuscitation couldn’t have happened naturally. An electrical shock administered in those circumstances would not normally accomplish anything,” Keener said. “The unanimous verdict of those actually present was that Markin was deceased, and that includes Crandall, who is a nationally recognized cardiologist with many years of experience.”
Indeed, in light of the circumstances, skeptical explanations seem hollow and forced—and, again, they can’t account for the two mysterious urges that prompted Crandall to turn in his tracks and pray for a victim who had already been declared dead. Absent those, Jeff Markin would be in his grave today.
“The critics have to strain at the bounds of plausibility in order to keep their anti-supernatural thesis intact,” Keener said.
For me, Acts 26:8 sprang to mind: “Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?”
“I Know, It’s a Miracle”
I knew Keener could go on for hours talking about the cases he unearthed in his admittedly limited survey of miraculous claims. For example, he has accumulated 350 reports just of people who have been healed of blindness. Here are several cases taken at random from his book:
• A welder named David Dominong suffered extensive third-and fourth-degree burns when he was electrocuted in October 2002. Hospitalized for more than five weeks, he was told it could be five years until he would be able to walk again. He was confined to a wheelchair and considering amputation when he received prayer and was promptly able to walk and run without assistance.
• Dr. Alex Abraham testified to the case of Kuldeep Singh, who had intractable epilepsy to the point where he would lose consciousness during frequent seizures. Ever since Pastor Jarnail Singh prayed that God would heal him fifteen years ago, he has had no more seizures or treatment. Abraham, a neurologist, said the abrupt, permanent, and complete healing of epilepsy this severe is highly unusual.
• Matthew Dawson was hospitalized in Australia with confirmed meningitis in April 2007. He was told he would have to remain under hospital care for weeks or months. But he was abruptly healed at the exact moment his father, on another continent, offered prayers for him.
• Mirtha Venero Boza, a medical doctor in Cuba, reports that her baby granddaughter’s hand was severely burned by a hot iron, resulting in swelling and skin peeling off. Less than half an hour after prayer, however, the hand was completely healed without medical intervention, as if it had never been burned.
• Cambridge University professor John Polkinghorne, one of the world’s foremost scholars on the intersection of science and faith, provides the account of a woman whose left leg was paralyzed in an injury. Doctors gave up trying to treat her, saying she would be an invalid for life. In 1980, she reluctantly agreed to prayer from an Anglican priest. Though she had no expectation of healing, she had a vision in which she was commanded to rise and walk. Said Polkinghorne, who has doctorates in both science and theology, “From that moment, she was able to walk, jump, and bend down, completely without pain.”
• Physician John White reports that a woman with a confirmed diagnosis of tuberculosis of the cervical spine had been unable to walk, but she was instantaneously healed after prayer. He said her doctor “was bewildered to find there was no evidence of disease in her body.” Said Keener, “Her illness was certain, her cure permanent, and the witness virtually incontrovertible.” Not only was White the doctor who prayed for her, but he later married her.
• Joy Wahnefried, a student at Taylor University in Indiana, suffered from vertical heterophoria, where one eye viewed images at a higher level than the other. This triggered debilitating migraines that could last up to a week. A professor and students prayed for her during three consecutive prayer meetings, and Joy was suddenly healed—her eyesight now 20/20 and her incurable medical condition gone. Her eye doctor said she “can’t explain it” and has never seen anything like it in four thousand patients. Keener, who has copies of her before-and-after medical reports, confirmed that she no longer even needs corrective lenses.
• A grapefruit-sized flesh-eating ulcer, with the wound going to the bone, was boring through the calf muscle of a seventy-year-old Florida man. After treatments failed, doctors declared the wound incurable and amputation was scheduled. However, one physician laid his hands on the oozing wound and prayed for healing. Recovery began immediately; within four days, the ulcer was melting away and new skin forming. By the following week, the leg was restored to normal. The doctor’s opinion: “It can’t happen on its own. Impossible.” The patient’s wife summed it up: “God’s real. God healed his leg.”10
• University professor Robert Larmer reports that Mary Ellen Fitch was hospitalized with hepatitis B. She was turning yellow; her abdomen bulged with her swollen liver. She was told she would remain in the hospital for months. After a week, though, she had a deep experience with God and committed her condition to him. The next morning, her blood tests were normal. Bewildered doctors repeatedly tested her, with the same results. Years have now passed, and she remains healed.11
• The director of a clinic for voice and swallowing disorders reports the case of a fifty-two-year-old man who suffered a severe brain stem stroke in the region of the medulla. Strokes in this location irreversibly damage the ability to swallow. After prayer, though, the man regained his ability to eat and swallow normally. The patient told the startled experts, “I know, it’s a miracle.” This was the only such recovery the clinic’s director had seen in fifteen years.
“A Tide of Miracles”
Page after page, Keener unfolds so many miracle claims that after a while, it’s easy to become numb to them. Many of them come from his own circle of acquaintances, which means he’s only scratching the surface of the number of supernatural accounts out there. Although the amount of witnesses and documentation varies in the different cases, many of them seem to exceed even the stringent standards suggested by skeptics.
As impressive as those reports are, though, I decided to change the direction of the conversation by bringing up Michael Shermer’s question about why we don’t see reports of God miraculously regrowing the limbs of amputees. When I posed the challenge to Keener, he considered the issue for a few moments before responding.
“Interestingly, we see many amazing miracles performed by Jesus, including the healing of a withered hand,12 but we don’t see amputated limbs restored,” he replied. “While I’ve heard stories of limbs growing back, I haven’t verified or personally examined any of them at this point.”
He searched his memory and adde
d, “Douglas Norwood, a pastor in Suriname at the time, does tell of a Christian gathering that was attended by an opponent of the church who had a shriveled arm, paralyzed his whole life. He shouted, ‘I defy this Christian God!’ With that, suddenly his arm shot up into the air, fully healed. He looked at it and was instantly converted. In fact, this was the beginning of a movement where tens of thousands of people came to faith in Christ in Suriname.
“There’s also the case of a Wisconsin man crushed under a semitrailer, destroying most of his small intestine,” Keener continued. “He was slowly starving to death because he couldn’t digest food. He dropped to 125 pounds from 180. A friend felt God was leading him to fly from New York just to pray for him. When he prayed, the man felt something like an electric jolt go through his body. He was healed; in fact, a medical report says his small intestine had more than doubled in length. A small intestine in an adult can get wider, but it can’t get longer.”
“That’s an example of a body part growing back, but I’m not sure that’s what Shermer was getting at,” I said. “I think he was saying that he needs to see a more visible healing—something irrefutable.”
“We’ve got plenty of those,” Keener said. “For instance, totally blind eyes, white from cataracts, changing color and becoming normal and healthy. That’s hard to explain away.”
“Still,” I said, “a lot of your stories are from Africa, Asia, and other faraway places. Why do so many of these dramatic miracles happen in distant and underdeveloped countries where documentation is particularly difficult?”
“In America, we have a lot of sophisticated medical technology, which is God’s gift to us, and we should use it. That’s the way he typically brings healing,” Keener said. “But in many other places around the world, that’s not available, and perhaps God’s intervention is the only hope in a lot of instances.”
I noted that philosopher J. P. Moreland explained that outbreakings of the supernatural tend to occur in areas where there’s leading-edge evangelism into new cultures. In his book Kingdom Triangle, Moreland writes, “A major factor in the current revival in the Third World—by some estimates, up to 70 percent of it—is intimately connected to signs and wonders as expressions of the love of the Christian Father-God, the lordship of his Son, and the power of his Spirit and his Kingdom.”13
Keener agreed. “We’ve got lots of instances like this,” he said. “Some estimate that 90 percent of the growth of the church in China is being fueled by healings. Edmond Tang at the University of Birmingham said, ‘This is especially true in the countryside, where medical facilities are often inadequate or non-existent.’”14
Intrigued, I asked Keener if he had other examples, which he readily offered.
“Dr. Julia Ma at the Oxford Center for Mission Studies said most converts among the Kankanaey in the northern Philippines came to Christ through the experience of miraculous healings,” he said. “A Baptist church in India grew from six members to more than six hundred in just over a year because of healings. In Ethiopia, more than 80 percent of believers surveyed in a Lutheran church attributed their conversions to healings and exorcisms.
“In Brazil, many poor people lack adequate health care, and they’re attracted to Christianity when they see healings. Eighty-six percent of Brazilian Pentecostals said they had an experience of divine healing,” he added. “In Argentina, healing is by far the primary tool for evangelism and church growth.”
I thought of comments by the late Jim Rutz, who used to live close to me when I resided in Colorado. He documented the recent growth of the Christian church worldwide, taking special note of God’s supernatural intervention, including accounts of people being brought back from the dead in fifty-two countries.
“Since about the mid-1980s, a tide of miracles has begun to engulf the entire planet,” he wrote in his book Megashift. “As time goes on, miracles are multiplying like loaves and fishes.”15
The Miracle Business
Pretty soon, Keener and I began hearing some noises coming from upstairs. “Sounds like Médine has come home from teaching her French class,” Keener said. “I’d like for you to meet her.”
“Absolutely, I’d love to meet her. Je voudrais utiliser mon français rudimentaire en parlant avec elle,”16 I replied, my accent awkward as usual. “But before we go, let me ask you something else. You set out to accomplish two things with your book. Did you achieve what you had hoped?”
“My first goal involved the New Testament,” he replied. “I wanted to show that it’s not necessary to dismiss these writings as legendary, fanciful, or inaccurate, just because they report miracles. Today’s world is full of firsthand claims from people who say they have witnessed miracles, and there’s no reason to suppose the ancient world was any different. If today’s accounts can stem from eyewitnesses and potentially report what really happened, then the same is true of the gospels.”
Clearly, that goal had been achieved.
“And what was your second goal?” I asked.
“To show that it’s rational to consider the possibility of supernatural causation for many of these miracle claims.”
“Well, Professor, that’s very academic sounding,” I said with a grin.
“Okay, let me rephrase it,” he said, clearing his throat. “It looks like God is still in the miracle business!”
He stopped for a moment to let that simple declarative sentence hang in the air. Then he added, “At least, that’s an entirely reasonable hypothesis from the evidence. Often, the best explanation for what occurred is supernatural, not natural.”
“What are some of the implications of this?” I asked.
“Anti-supernaturalism has reigned as an inflexible Western academic premise for far too long. In light of the millions of people around the globe who say they’ve experienced the miraculous, it’s time to take these claims seriously. Let’s investigate them and follow the evidence wherever it leads. If even a small fraction prove to be genuine, we have to consider whether God is still divinely intervening in his creation.”
I closed my notebook and put my pen in my shirt pocket.
“And you believe he is?” I asked.
Keener’s voice was unwavering. This time he answered not merely as a scholar, but also as a relative of the healed Thérèse.
“Yes, I believe he is.”
PART 3
Science, Dreams, and Visions
CHAPTER 7
The Science of Miracles
An Interview with Dr. Candy Gunther Brown
That’s not good for your side, Lee.”
That taunt from skeptic Michael Shermer played in my mind as I drove northward on Interstate 65 the day after my interview with Craig Keener in rural Kentucky.
Shermer was referring to a scientific analysis of prayer’s impact on the recovery of cardiac bypass patients. Conducted by the founder of Harvard Medical School’s Mind/Body Medical Institute and known as STEP (Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer), the decade-long research certainly seemed to have impressive credentials.
Technically, it was a “prospective, randomized, double-blind, parallel group controlled trial”—a so-called “gold standard” in research. It cost $2.4 million and was published in the peer-reviewed American Heart Journal.
However, the results were deflating to those who expected confirmation of prayer’s miraculous healing power. The study’s conclusion: prayer recipients fared no better than those who weren’t prayed for.
“Zero. Nothing,” was how Shermer crisply summarized what STEP concluded about the effects of prayer. “This is the best prayer study we have,” he said. “So when you get beyond anecdotes and use the scientific method, there’s no evidence for the miraculous.”
When he added, “That’s not good for your side, Lee,” it was easy to detect a whiff of triumphalism in his voice.
Science, of course, is not the only route to certainty. Believing that science is the sole arbiter of truth is called scientism,1
which is self-refuting. In other words, the sentence, “Science is the only way to know if something is true,” is itself not a claim that can be proven by science.
Science aside, my interview with Keener illustrated that corroborated eyewitness testimony, especially when coming from multiple and independent observers who have unquestioned integrity, can go a long way in establishing whether a miracle claim is credible.
Still, there are ways that science and medicine can contribute to the investigation of the supernatural. It’s true that miracles can’t be analyzed in a test tube; however, it’s also true that test tubes can be used to determine whether a virus has suddenly disappeared from the blood of a hepatitis patient immediately after prayer—important corroboration for a claim of a supernatural healing.
In 1997, Harvard paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, a self-described agnostic, wrote that science and faith occupy “nonoverlapping magisteria.” By that, he meant that science deals with the empirical universe, facts, and theories, while religion focuses on questions of moral meaning and value.2
Gould’s vision was that there ought to be “respectful discourse” and “constant input from both magisteria toward the common goal of wisdom.”3 In other words, science and faith, working side by side, can bring new understandings about our life and world.
While that’s a laudable goal, Gould’s rigid delineation of the roles of science and faith has been hotly debated. For example, Christianity isn’t merely concerned with moral meaning and value; it makes specific factual claims about events—including miracles such as the resurrection—that occurred in history. If those claims aren’t actually true, the faith collapses and its moral authority evaporates.
Certainly the use of scientific expertise can help in investigating whether claims of the miraculous are valid or not. Even if science cannot definitively prove God exists or that something supernatural has occurred, it can provide empirical evidence that either supports or undermines miracle accounts.