A pastor whose denomination
advocates for prophesy, speaking in tongues and faith healing told the audience
that although believers major in one spiritual gift, everyone is equipped with
all of the spiritual gifts. He said, “If I only have the gift of prophesy, what
happens if someone comes to me who needs healing? Do I send him to the house
down the road [to someone who has the gift of healing]?” I don’t completely
agree with the preacher’s interpretation on gifts today, however, I was
reminded of the disciples who were unable to drive a demon out of a young boy. Jesus
then drove the demon out and later the disciples came to Him privately and ask
why their attempts were unsuccessful. Jesus replied, “Because you have so
little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard
seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt 17:20-21 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----How much time have any of us spent listening to Grandpa tell the stories of his life? A few of us have spent a lot of time doing that. How much time have any of us spent listening to Great Grandpa tell us the stories of his life? Very few, I suppose, and they would have been very young indeed to listen to him. I am sure none of us spent any time listening to Great, Great Grandpa tell his stories. Yet what good would it have done to listen to these stories? It seems the great twenty-first century wisdom is to disbelieve any story containing elements outside normal, scientific possibilities, although that is to outright call anyone expressing such a story of their own a liar. And by what audacity would one human do this intolerable insult to another? Well, by the almighty fact that they themselves have never seen such a thing. Dare I ask the next question? Yah, I think I dare.
-----Just what percentage of all the experiences of all humans ever lived has just one human experienced first-hand? Let’s say all humans lived the exact same number of years. Then we could just do a simple estimation and some simple division. I once heard that as many people are alive in the world today as have lived in all generations before us. I would have thought more lived before us, but I guess what I heard might be plausible (there’s that word again.) So let’s conservatively say fourteen billion souls have lived so far. That means you, with your own firsthand experiences have sampled just 1/14,000,000,000th of all the world’s experiences. That is a sample size of .000000007% of all things experienced. Knowing there have been no miracles according to a sample of that size is equivalent to knowing there are no miracles in 18,400 Bibles by picking from them and reading just one word. I won’t even bother going to my statistics book to demonstrate how inadequate that sample size is. It would be like trying to estimate the knowledge of a library by just one word in it. So, the tenet of today’s “science” is that no miracles have happened because no "scientist" has experienced experienced one.
-----“Well, Steve, why don’t you give them credit for their collective experience?” Because they don’t give us credit for our collective experience. Many of us haven’t experienced the supernatural. But many have, and they do tell their stories. Yet “scientists” pooh-pooh their samples with a variety of accusations. I dare say “scientists” are wrong to not believe the stories of those who’ve experienced miracles because I am one who has experienced a tiny touch of the supernatural myself. I tell precious few people about it, because in accord with their generous .00000007% sample sizes, they would also not be willing to believe what I would say.
-----Jesus indicates that, somehow, miracles have to do with faith. How much faith is involved in rejecting a possibility because evidence of it was not found in one word, or more generously one book, or even a shelf of books of an entire library? Moreover half the library’s books are now closed to sampling, because each life each word of those books represent has passed away and can no longer testify of its experience, unless you read what they wrote, like the Bible. Oops. There’s an affirmative sample from bygone years. But then, the tenet of “science” is to disbelieve the Bible simply because “scientists“ have never seen such things. How can they see? They don’t have any eyes to see with.
-----This matter is worse than basing a conclusion drawn from a sample size of seven billionths of a percent. It is that the “scientist” has been given many, many, many, many stories of miracles turning up in other people’s seven billionths of a percent samplings of life. Yet “scientists” choose to discredit those experiences upon the basis of only their own, subjective experiences. Such is not science.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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