Will Multitudes Turn to Christ if We Assemble Enough Medical Documentation of Miracles?
No.
I used to think that they would, but both experience and the Word prove otherwise.
Hear the conversation between the rich sinner and Abraham:
Luke 16:27-31:
Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house:
For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
I knew someone whom Jesus raised from the dead TWICE. A hospital wrote out his death certificate both times! We went out street witnessing together. I did get the high school crowd’s attention by letting them know that this man was undead. (Young people were big on “undead” stuff then.) But the fact that he could document his undying didn’t convince them that Jesus is Lord. Some actually got scared at first, but they ended up just not believing his testimony, proving the Bible passage above. I know someone else who had a phenomenal miracle of being brought back from the point of death. This person has before-and-after X-rays to prove her healing. But if you bring her testimony to a scoffer, the scoffer keeps scoffing.
If you claim that someone was raised from the dead, a scoffer will just say that he was misdiagnosed as being dead when he was really still alive. Or else he’d say that plenty of people get brought back with electric shocks to the heart, even though the medical fact is that a defibrillator cannot restart a completely stopped heart – if you think it can, you’ve watched too many movies or TV shows. See a sample conversation between you and Smart Alex at the end of the article About Opponents of Divine Healing to see what happens when you present medical proof of a miracle to someone who doesn’t believe the Bible and doesn’t want to start believing it.
I am sometimes asked by skeptics to provide “proof” of miracles that I have seen. I’ve learned that it’s a lost cause for the reasons above. I’ll just keep on laying hands on sick people and seeing them get well. My time is better spent doing that than it would be trying to line up all kinds of medical testimonials that skeptics will just find reasons to reject anyway.