Scientific Evidence for Miracles: Lee Strobel

Wise Disciple

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

There have been other studies. My favorite one was done by a PhD from Harvard who's a professor at Indiana University She heard and this is a trend that we see we see often miracles breaking out in clusters around the planet

00:12

Where the gospel is just breaking into a new place. And so there were taught there was talk of Miracles takes place in Mozambique.

00:22

So she said I'm gonna study this so she did a study that really makes sense

00:27

Scientifically, she sent a team of researchers to Mozambique. They went into the remote villages

00:33

They said bring us your deaf and blind So they brought people who were deaf and blind and a very significant hearing loss and vision loss first thing this team did is they

00:44

Scientifically tested them to determine what is their level of vision? What is their level of of hearing?

00:51

And so they they did scientific tests to determine that then Immediately they were prayed for by people who have a track record of God using them in this area

01:01

Hands were laid on them. They were prayed for in the name of Jesus and then immediately

01:06

Afterwards they were tested again to see is there any difference in Their vision or their hearing and guess what they found in virtually every case there was improvement

01:19

In fact, the average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold

01:25

There was a woman named Martine as an example Martine was so hard of hearing that when they tested her they found

01:33

Scientifically that she could not hear the equivalent of a jackhammer next to her

01:39

Oh, wow after prayer in the name of Jesus she could now hear normal conversations

01:44

Well, they were so blown away by the this result that they said we've got to see if they we can replicate this

01:51

They went to another place where there is where the gospel is now breaking in which is areas of Brazil They did the same experiment.

01:59

Guess what? They found the same results. Now. This is a Scientifically rigorous study that it was accepted for publication in a secular scientific peer -reviewed medical journal the

02:13

Southern Medical Journal and I'll read to you if I can find it here the quote from the professor from Indiana University She said quote our study shows that something is going on.

02:29

This is more than just wishful thinking It's not fakery. It's not fraud. It's not some

02:34

Televangelist trying to get widows to send in their money. It is not a highly charged atmosphere that plays on people's emotions

02:42

Something she said is going on now as a social science researcher. She couldn't

02:48

Declare that it was a miracle, right? But I'm willing to say I think something supernatural is going on and then another kind of test

02:58

Our scientific study that's being done They're being published in again peer -reviewed medical journals that take a different approach

03:08

They're called case studies and what these case studies do is they document scientifically the evidence prior to prayer and the

03:17

I and the and then the way they document the prayer itself and then they Document the evidence after the prayer to show that something apparently took place now

03:26

I'll give you the one that was just published recently this within the last few weeks in a peer -reviewed medical journal

03:32

This is a study of a woman who for over a dozen years was blind.

03:37

She had juvenile macular degeneration She was educated in a school for the blind.

03:43

She walked with a white cane and she read Braille now she married a Baptist pastor and One night they were in their room at night and he

03:54

They got very emotional and they started to cry and he prayed and he laid hands on her and he prayed and he said

04:00

God I know you have the power to heal her right now to heal her tonight I pray that you will and she opened her eyes and and I'll read you her quote.

04:09

She said I was blind when my husband prayed for me then just like this in a moment after years of darkness

04:17

I could see perfectly it was miraculous within seconds My life had radically changed and I could see

04:24

I could see now. This has been 47 years Since this incident happened and her vision remains a great to this day so here we have a case study published as I say in a peer -reviewed medical journal that Documents what happened the medical evidence before and the medical evidence afterward now

04:49

Can you say it's a coincidence? Yeah, I suppose you could make that claim. But golly, that's kind of a hard claim to maintain

04:57

In the life of the evidence and then there's another one that happened that was published in another peer -reviewed medical journal recently another case study of a man who had

05:08

Gastroparesis which meant that for a period of 16 years He had two feeding tubes

05:15

Inserted into him so he could eat Of course, it's a very disruptive to his life.

05:20

This is since childhood since he was an infant and He went for church a prayer in a church hands were laid on him

05:28

He was prayed for he said he felt an electric shock go through his body and he was instantly healed

05:33

This is by the way a condition like the juvenile macular degeneration For which there are no cases that I can find in any medical journal of any spontaneous healing of these illnesses and yet he was

05:45

Spontaneously healed the feeding tubes have been removed and now it's been seven years and he's still perfectly healthy so again

05:54

Scientists are trying to address these issues by trying to investigate Claims of miracles and try to document them

06:04

And we're seeing more and more of this and I think there's a very positive trend and your book the case for miracles