Prove The Bible is the Word of God

[Timmy]

Originally Posted by mfblume

It has nothing to do with luck. It has to do with people deciding to do so or not. Everyone can, but some folks get themselves too bogged into unbelief that make it less a possibility than with those who chose to not speak so much doubt.

Everyone can, eh? So, desperate parents pleading in tears for God to save their child, if the child dies, actually chose to disbelieve? They had the ability, but they did not exercise that ability. Amazing!

I mean no demeaning or disrespect, but speak objectively here. Your words remain filled with unbelief. The more you speak like this, the deeper you will sink, T. It has nothing to do with luck. It has to do with whether or not we made decisions to doubt. The road of doubt simply brings more and more doubt the further we walk it.

When the day is done, the fact remains that each of us made our own beds. Belief in luck only excuses our parts in the picture.

Can you admit that I could be right? I certainly do admit that you could be right, as I said before. It just seems extremely unlikely (to me).

There are people who believe in miracles. They have faith. Their faith sometimes seems to "work": they ask for something to happen, and it happens! Sometimes the thing is pretty mundane, like they find a parking place. Sometimes it's totally amazing! Some witnesses of the event would say it's an undeniable miracle. (Some witnesses change their memory of the event later, so it becomes ever more amazing as time goes on. But that's another topic!) I would claim that even the most faith-filled prayer warriors sometimes have misses. They would dismiss them in various ways: not His will, hidden sin, wrong motives, etc. Someone recently posted a list of things that hinder God's work. It seems that God has a check-list, and if anything goes wrong, He ain't gonna budge.

The "undeniable" miracles are so few and far between that the only purpose they serve is to make those who are already true believers, and who happen to see such an amazing miracle, a bit more solid in their belief. Or maybe a lot more. Fine. But doubters aren't convinced, usually. Cast aspersions, if you like: they have blinded themselves to the Truth, or they don't want to believe because they prefer their sinful lives. But you don't know their hearts. They have beliefs of their own, and for their own reasons. The reasons may or may not be as virtuous as your reasons for your beliefs. But they are what they are. Any description of them as evil or selfish or ungodly would be your personal opinion, and nothing more. They may be (as in my case) merely the result of observation for many years.

Here's one problem with miracles, if they are supposed to somehow validate "God's Word": they don't validate God's Word! People from many different religions, some that have nothing to do with the Bible or that have a very different view of the Bible than most Christians, have amazing stories. Are their religions validated by them?

Amazing things happen all the time. There is the "power of positive thinking". There is placebo effect. And believe it or not, there is coincidence!

One more point: look at the fruit! What is the result of belief in miracles? What good does it do? Yes, a miracle in and of itself is a nice thing, when it happens. But given that so few have enough faith to make them work, the result of "trying" to believe in them and failing is despair and disappointment, even depression. Sometimes death. They look at a list of prerequisites and wonder which one failed? Was it doubt? Sin? Or (worse) did God actually want my child to die?

Are the successes worth it? Well, I guess if you're right and I'm wrong, that's God's business. He must know what He's doing.