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Rubbish! All I said expressed was a natural anger at God for not helping Nick when the church abandoned him in his hour of greatest need. I didn't blame God, but I was forced to battle doubts and a loss of confidence in Paul's promise: "My God will fully satisfy your every need according to...

(13) THE GEOGRAPHY OF PARADISE: At age 5 Margaret Sauro was misdiagnosed with scarlet fever and was on the verge of death as a result of a ruptured appendix. She suddenly found herself walking hand in hand down a path with a beautiful young woman in a Roman toga. The path was lined with massive...

(1c) HEALING MARIAN SPRINGS An important variant of Holy Water is the healing Marian spring. If you want to experience awe, wonder, and a profound sense of the sacred watch this famous old movie ("The Song of Bernadette" [1943]) about Bernadette, the simple young girl whose visions of the...

(12) My friend Gord, a chaplain in British Columbia, shared this experience of Annie and her family. Gord visited Annie in her nursing home and noticed an unopened bottle of lilac cologne on a table next to her bed. He asked her is she’d like an application of the cologne and when she said Yes...

Consider the case of Chuck Templeton, an evangelist far more famous in his day than Ravi Zacharias. In fact, in the late 1940s Chuck was considered a more promising evangelist than his close friend, Billy Graham. But then he attended my alma mater, Princeton Seminary and concluded that he...

(1a) A few years ago, I received a call from friends at a UMC church I used to pastor. Their son in his late teens was secretly addicted to opioids. Then one night he went reluctantly to a horror movie with friends. The combined effect of created fear and opioids left him vulnerable to spirit...

God forces Jacob to wrestle with Him in a vision and then changes Jacob's name to Israel, which means "one who wrestles with God." Jesus and Paul teach that Jesus' followers represent the True or Spiritual Israel. So, of course, theological debate is an essential aspect of living out our...

(1) THE BIBLICAL INSPIRATION FOR THE USE OF HOLY WATER: The underlying principles for Catholic sprinkling with Holy Water are the various uses of sacred water in God's Word to bless, purify, heal, or establish innocence. The Apostolic Constitutions (c. 400 AD) trace the priestly use of Holy...

I am an evangelical Methodist who grew up Pentecostal. But for 12 years I was a Theology Professor at a Catholic university. I have a positive perspective on Catholic spirituality, despite the fact that I have even won a lawsuit against Catholics! Despite this, I believe there is no Christian...

(11) Lesson 5 from the Guideposts article posted by Holy Fool refers to I heard Bruce Van Natta testify about his NDE and his miraculous healing from the destruction of his intestines when the jack of a large truck collapsed on his chest. I asked him questions afterwards. His testimony is all...

Don't pontificate when unliike myself, you don't know the original languages Aramaic and Greek). In Aramaic the pun is "Cephas"/ Cepha"). The evangelical scholarly consensus rightly recognizes Peter as the foundational "rock." Jesus is the builder. Builer on what? On the missionary efforts...

LOL, you just gave the best reason not to nickname Peter "the rock!" What you don't get is this: the issue is how Jesus refers to Himself in the Gospels. He refers to Himself as "the cornerstone" (Mark 12:10) and reserves the "Rock" designation for Peter. "Rock" (Aramaic "kepha") mnever means...

The various meanings of "rock" elsewhere are irrelevant to its meaning in Matthew 16, that Peter, not Jesus, is Jesus' rock.

(1) Fundamentalists here overlook the most decisive phrase proving that Peter is the Rock on which Christ will build His church: "You are Peter (= "Rock")..." Jesus would not have used this phrase to set up His announcement about the Rock, if He meant that He Himself was the foundational rock...

(10) Our small city’s former school superintendent shared with me this ADC involving his niece Tami. Tami died at age 19 from an unspecified illness while a student at Washington State U. Then she often appeared in full-bodied ADCs to her Mom until one day she appeared only from the waist up...

The Holy Spirit can be "grieved" and the flame of the Spirit can be "extinguished" (Eph. 4:40; 1 Thess. 5:19). And the line between honest doubt and sinful irritation and disillusionment with God can be elusive. Consider Jesus' question about counterfeit spirituality: "Are grapes gathered from...

(9) NDEs Supporting Claims that the Dead Monitor the Living: I had just performed a wedding at my church in Buffalo, NY, and was now attending the reception at a country club. I happened to sit next to Phyllis, a rather aloof but attractive blonde doctor and medical researcher. She shared her 2...

WHERE WAS THE HOLY SPIRIT IN RAVI'S LIFE? This important question gains sharper focus with the story of Nick, the greatest saint I ever knew. Nick was a bachelor and a chemist. I recall the day our pastor introduced him as a new member. He was the most passionate seeker of God's face and...

You evidently delight in creating a simple-minded strawman caricature that trivializes the power of Spirit-anointed witnessing. When I was 19, I witnessed door-to-door and in the streets in cities across Canada. I was fortunate enough to be paired with a godly man, Ken K (age 35). At first I...

Our task as Christians is not to communicate the truth, but to find the way of communicating the truth that makes the decisive difference. To judge by the inept replies of your respondents, I'd wager that none of them has personally led anyone to the Lord.