One would think that. But it seems as though the assumption is that divinity demands worship and obedience, rather than the following-of-advice. I don’t know why gods would need worship or obedience, but I do know why it might be that they could give good advice.
The thing is: the best of that advice is humanistic advice. It’s advice that doesn’t even require a belief in paranormal propositions. After reading Matthew 25:35-40, I could almost call myself a Christian, were that expression not freighted with a bunch of things I do not believe (including,sadly, Matthew 25:41-46, which I hope was simply the work of some job-security-seeking cleric).
Puck, your presentation of the themes of worship, obedience and judgement don’t fit what the balance of the Bible teaches about those major themes. It’s possible that you could find how the Bible portrays these things and still not like it, but then, you’d be speaking against what it actually portrays rather than something that it doesn’t portray.
All three of these themes are Genesis to Revelation themes. The Bible doesn’t present God as needing worship. Worship is shown as a way to love and honor God as part of this love relationship that he invites us in to. Obedience isn’t seen in the Bible as something God needs. It is shown in the Bible as God instructing humanity on things for the benefit of humanity, including for the benefit of people who might be hurt by someone going against what God says. Judgement is presented in the Bible as a part of God’s justice. God makes things right. Some people and nations hurt and oppress others, and they are answerable to God for that.
A mentor of mine for about 15 years was a missionary who spent time training pastors in Africa. One of his co-workers is a man from Ghana who I became friends with. They told stories of deformed limbs being completely healed, an impartial arm being made into a full arm, blindness being healed, and other extrodinary occurances like this. Unfortunately for your purposes, my mentor passed away about a decade ago, and I haven’t spoken to my friend from Ghanna for about six years. Their stories seem to fit a common theme. People who pray for the sick or injured see more healings in less developed countries.
I’ve spoken on the phone and emailed with a man named Jordan Seng who pastors a church in Hawaii called Blue Water Mission. I don’t think he’d remember me. He wrote a book called MIracle Work. He documents healings in that book and talks about them in some of his speaking engagements. Not sure his book would be a good fit for you because you’d have to sort through his treaching about healing. But the book is short.
A friend of mine named Michael Rowntree is a pastor and does a podcast called Remnant Radio. He works with a man named Dr. Jack Deere. They both have testimonies about miraculous healings. Dr. Deere wrote a book called Surprised by the Power of the Spirit that documents micracles.
But the most comprehensive documentation you could look at is by Dr. Craig Keener. I do not know him, but my friend Michael (above) does. He is a PHD, New Testament Scholar and is at Asbury Theological Seminary. He produced a scholarly work on healing that includes documentation. His work (two volumes) is called Miracles.
You might prefer that I tell you detailed stores, but the problem is, they aren’t my stories and I’m going by memory. The best resource I mention above is Dr. Keener’s work, who is a respected scholar.
By balance, I mean Genesis to Revelation. I find s helpful way to study the Bible is to become familiar with the big themes that drive the main story and then trace those themese through the story, from Genesis to Revelation. Bible battles that involve throwing single verses or even passages at each other don’t interest me much.
I specifically mentioned regrowing a missing leg because that’s technically impossible. You appear not to differentiate between mysterious cures and impossible ones, and that’s impeding communication. What do you have that’s impossible? How well is it documented?
Or perhaps in countries where there’s less ability to document events and legends can arise more easily?
God called Abraham out of Babylon to be a part of his plan to redeem humanity, his creation and to restore humanity to their original vocation to steward God’s world as God’s partners. God starting small and then expanding seems to be a major theme (Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Israel)
He told Abraham that he’d bless the nations through his offspring. Abraham spent quite a bit of time stumbling around and causing problems that stemmed primarily from not trusting God. One major problem that he causes resulted from a lack of trust of God’s promise to give him offspring. He took matters into his own hands and had a child with an Egyptian slave named Hagar. Abraham had picked up a slave (at least one) when in Egypt, and he had been in Egypt because he wasn’t trusting God.
Abraham and Sarah mistreated Hagar in several ways, the last of which was to send Hagar and Ishmael (Abraham’s son) away to the wilderness with a bottle of water because Isaac had been born. This would be a death sentence, except that God showed up and saved Hagar and Ishmael. So Abraham, called to be a blessing to the nations, is being anything but at this point.
After Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away with a bottle of water, we get the story of God testing Abraham. It looks to me that three things are happening. God is training Abraham to trust him, which Abraham has had trouble with so far, and which is necessary for Abraham to fulfill his calling. God is doing this by making reference to Abraham’s sin of mistreating Hagar and Ishmael. And God is foreshadowing that his ultimate plan involves the death of his own son for the sins of mankind.
The passage seems to present that God had no intention of allowing Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. And the author of Hebrews mentions that Abraham reasoned in his heart that God could raise Isaac from the dead.
I will also say that this test that God gave to Abraham is something that he never did again in the scripture. It appears to be a one-off test specific to Abraham, his calling, and his sin towards Hagar and Ishmael.
To be clear, however, I was not speaking about what the Bible teaches about those things. I was speaking about American churches and their own particular proclivities.
No, that’s probably good enough. But is it true? If prayer really was effective in accomplishing such things, shouldn’t there be plenty of well-documented cases?
I believed the stories because I trusted my friend and mentor who I knew for 20 years. But if you really want to find documentation I think you should check out Dr. Keener’s work.
I’m dubious that there is any documentation (for any “impossible” events), including in Dr. Keener’s work. Friend of a friend stories are notoriously useless.
I’m sure it would be quite easy to compile a list thousands of pages long of miraculous events someone somewhere had claimed to have happened. It would take a lot of time and legwork, of course, but that is all it would require.
Compiling such a list would not, by itself, mean even a single thing on it actually was a miraculous event, of course. But, if a significant number were miraculous, I would expect we would have sufficient documentation of at least a few of them that could not be reasonably denied. So could you perhaps give us a few examples of these?
A Mormon nephew of mine once testified to the miraculous return of a wallet he had left in the restroom at a department store. He and his mother prayed for its return, and Heavenly Father compelled some other person who needed to pee to hand it to a clerk and say he’d found it in the restroom. I think we can all agree that without divine intervention, no such thing could possibly have happened.
