Several months ago, a documentary featuring NYU Professor Elijah Stephens, regarding modern 21st century medicine and the evidence surrounding miracles, and whether miracles can be scientifically proven.
The professor wanted to explore the natural tension that exists between the scientific and medical communities and individuals of faith, who have personally experienced God’s divine intervention.
“I want to shift the culture of the charismatic movement,” Stephens told Fox News in an interview in September. “The whole movie is called Send Proof because I want people to send in their evidence. That’s not occurring and there’s lots of little cultural issues that pop up. I can’t tell you how many people I talk to who testified of having a miracle and just never went back to the doctor.”
The documentary drew from a broad base of data and research, along with a number of individuals on both sides of the cultural divide.
Professor Stephens in particular wanted to interview Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, a confirmed atheist who assisted the Vatican in investigating a purported miracle and wrote Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World.
While the documentary featured both skeptics and those that had experienced the hand of God, the end result, was exactly as predicted, those that believe in “divine intervention” and those that seek to disprove God’s handiwork, are still divided in their beliefs.
However, what was actually revealed during the documentary weren’t the predictable divisions that exist, but the vast majority of individuals who came forward to testify that miracles are indeed real.
Here’s a few of their stories;
Professor Stephens reviews the case of Bruce Van Natta, who was involved in a horrific life threatening accident, which required immediate emergency surgery and the removal of nearly his entire small intestine. Van Natta, a devout Christian, received prayers from evangelist Bruce Carlson, who subsequently asked for God’s divine intervention which was granted. Van Natta’s small intestine miraculously grew back, which according to the scientific community, is a medical impossibility.
The documentary later chronicles another individual named Chris Gunderson, who was born with a paralyzed stomach and had to receive nutrition through a feeding tube attached to his small intestine. Upon hearing of Gunderson’s dreadful condition, Bruce Van Natta, the same individual who received God’s divine intervention, prayed for a miracle that Gunderson’s paralyzed stomach would be healed.
According to Gunderson’s mother, after receiving a series of healing prayers from Van Natta, her son suddenly felt an electric shock throughout his body and the paralysis within his stomach he had lived with all of his life vanished!
Referring to Van Natta, Professor Stephens told Fox News: “I thought that was one of the more profound cases I ran across.”
DR MARY NEAL, BRICE VAN NATTA, and MANY OTHERS!!
I rather talk about Dr Mary Neal and Bruce Van Natta considering their experiences with heaven and angels and miracles and God and The Holy Spirit. pic.twitter.com/2pBdPEC28Z— Goldon Singh Sandhu (@GoldonSingh) August 5, 2021
Stephens asserts that skeptics may question whether Van Natta’s intestine was measured properly by medical professionals before the surgery. However, quickly adds; “But then the fact that he’s the guy that prays for Chris Gunderson, and putting all of that together makes the case way more powerful in my mind … I don’t have a grid for that because that would just be anomaly upon anomaly upon anomaly if it’s not a miracle.”
Then there’s the case of Doctor Eben Alexander, an accomplished neurosurgeon, who believed that “science was the pathway to truth.”
He didn’t believe in God, because his scientific training offered no evidence of his existence. Until the wee hours of November 10th, 2008, when the good doctor experienced a sudden, horrific back pain and collapsed, writhing in agony. He was immediately rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with E-Coli Meningitis, a debilitating and life threatening disease.
Within a matter of hours a healthy and vibrant Eben Alexander, suddenly fell into a coma with only a 2% chance of survival. After 4 days in a coma, medical data reported that Doctor Alexander was essentially brain-dead to the medical profession, however, he was somehow still consciously alive
“This slowly-spinning light came toward me with a perfect musical melody, and that opened up a wormhole or a portal into this higher realm,” Dr. Alexander would later explain. “It was absolutely beautiful beyond description.”
Dr. Alexander explains that there’s no rational medical explanation for his survival, other than the fact he was instructed to share his experience of what he saw, who he encountered and the message he was told to bring back and share, in that heaven is real.
This story syndicated with permission from My Faith News