Actually, miracles still happen. Ill tell you how to have your prayers answered at the bottom of my response.
Man's voice is cured on live audio
http://jeffleake.typepad.com/the_launchpad/2011/04/the-duane-miller-recording.htmlThat was someone I do not know. Things have happened to me personally - none of which do I expect you to believe, but I will detail a few below:
Working for my first company out of electrical engineering undergrad, I was asked for help with a harddrive (hdd) that had just died. Apparently the office manage had put alot of important info on it and never backed it up. He came to me and asked if I could help, he said he and one other computer tech already tried everything they knew and couldnt do it. I told him if they couldnt then I doubt there was anything i could do. I popped it into my computer desktop and turned it on. The hdd was not spinning up. I tried a few things but still nothing, shut it down and started up the computer a few more times, still nothing. i told him sorry. so he and the two other people left my desk. the hdd was still there. i prayed to God something like "God this hdd really means next to nothing to me, but if you would somehow make it work, then Ill tell everyone that I prayed to you and you made it work. " So after that, i start up the computer, and honestly to my surprise, it started working fine. I dumped all the data from it to the network for backup. Turned it off, turned it back on and it still worked. I turned it off again and went to his office. He wasnt there. I went to the company presidents office, he and all the vice pres were in there with the pres talking about things. I told them that i had just dumped the data for them. they were all silent and then the office manager asked well how did you do it. i told them all, i didnt do anything, I prayed to God, and it suddenly started working. they all looked at me like i was crazy. but that is what happend. that was in 2002.
One night i was watching my brothers wrestling match. they happened to not be wrestling this second, so i was just sitting there with my parents watching a different match. then i get this really wierd feeling to "just have faith" over and over i have that feeling. im not hearing words, but that is what is running through my mind. i have no idea why. and it was a total crazy feeling. this match im watching is surprisingly at the end of the match. i must have missed something because i thought it had jsut started. so anyways im watching this guy on the right do a quick single leg takedown to the guy on the left. he gets on his back and gets 2 points. the buzzer goes off and he wins. then i have no idea what happend but im suddenly watching this match right where i left off, in the first few seconds of the first part of it like no time had elapsed. im floored. i look at my dad and tell him i just saw this match, the guy on the right wins with a single leg takedown. that crazy feeling of "just have faith" keeps pooring over me. i sit there unable to think about anything else, watching the entire match. about 10 seconds til the end but the match is tied. this didnt look like it was going to end like i thought. then the guy on the left does a double leg takedown to the guy on the right. the crowd cheers but the ref calls out of bounds/clock stop. the crowd boos. the guys get back on their feet and the ref starts them again, and then the guy on the right does a single leg just as i had seen, gets his two points, and wins, all as i had just seen about 5 minutes earlier. i had been praying to god all that week for just a simple peek at what the bible prophets went through. i guess it was something like that. my dad looked at me kinda surprised but said nothing.
on one of our very long trips cross country by car to see my grandparents, i was bored and pondering the universe. i was about 12. i thought to myself if there is a God, why hasnt he introduced himself? So I prayed something like "God, I think you are real but You never talk to me. I worry that I may be wrong about the bible. If You are real, if You created all that there is and ever was and ever will be, all powerful, everywhere at once, all knowing, "I AM", then would you please just say hi to me, this simple little kid. Please God, just say hi. Then when the other kids at school bother me about why I believe, I can tell them that you said Hi to me." I opened my eyes. I listened hard. Nothing. Then i noticed, looking out the window in the distance, there was this giant Paul Bunyan statue that had a cloud over it like in the cartoons for it to "say" things. This time it simply said "Hello". I had see that thing as we drove by at least on three other occasions and 5 other occaisions since thing, it always had something like "$5.00 for all you can eat". It never said "Hello". Except this one time. This one time when the creator of all, all powerful, everywhere, all knowing, said "Hi" to me.
many things have happened. these are just a few. The secret to prayer that oddly few people know, is that it must be selfiess and for the Gl;ory of God. if what you want to happen is for your personal gain, then likely the prayer will not be answered. its as simple as that. Everything you do, do it for the glory of God.
Hey guys! I just stumbled upon this forum and this thread was the first one I looked up. I haven't had time to dive too deep into these types of discussions but first may I ask what the definition of an amputee is?
According to Luke 22, verses 49-53, Jesus heals a man who had his ear cut off by one of His own disciples.
Yes many miracles happen in the Bible. Miracles that if they happened today would be proof that magic, including the possibility of divine intervention, was a real force in the world.
Similarly the Quaran has similar claims, as does the Iliad, as does the Books of the Dead, as does the Arthurian Legends, as does Aesop's Fables, and Grimm's Faerie Tales.
However, none of these unambiguous miracles occur in an age where people can check on wether or not they actually happened. Magic seems conspicuously absent in the presence of TV cameras; Divine intervention shies aways from being scientifically tested.
So just because it happened in a book isn't a convincing argument. WWGHA is a shorthand way of asking, since people purport God to do wondrous things even in the here and now and we are to bow are heads in praise for these blessings...why does the unambiguous miracle no longer occur? Specifically, in all the hospitals, in all the world, in the past 100 years, has not one amputee been healed through prayer? Why didn't Manna not fallen from heaven for the Jews starving to death in concentration camps? Why couldn't a Minister raise his hand and calmed the storm before the Tsunami near Sumatra? Why couldn't a priest part the waters in New Orleans during Katrina?
The conclusion is obvious, the stories of magic in the past are made up. Thus we need to treat those stories as unreliable sources of information. If they are unreliable on such tangible this such as 40 years of Wandering in a tiny desert...how much more unreliable are they when claiming things that cannot even be detected, like an afterlife?