What happens when prayer-induced miracles happen in one of the most atheistic countries in the world? For witnesses of the miracle, there’s astonishment and bewilderment – hopefully enough of it to prompt a hard look at returning to faith.
The setting: Amsterdam University Medical Center, the Netherlands. The incident: a 50-year-old patient with advanced-stage, rapidly progressive Parkinson’s disease with major debilitating symptoms. She couldn’t form facial expressions, had difficulty swallowing, salivated profusely and uncontrollably, had a hard time concentrating, and was physically unable to converse.
Despite her severe condition or perhaps because of it, she apparently attended a Christian conference, in which others prayed for her. The result? She was completely healed. “She regained all of her capacities at work, as well as in daily life,” states the summary of the scientific study of this incident.
“This remarkable healing and its context astonished the patient, her family, and her doctors,” wrote the medical assessment team. It must have gone against everything they had ever learned about vis-a-vis this illness, and shattered their assumptions. “The clinical course was extraordinary, contradicting data from imaging studies, as well as the common understanding of this disease.” They described her recovery as “remarkable.”
Seems believers still can be found in the Netherlands after all. The patient said she had always “lived with God.” Still, she “had given up hope.” But those at the Christian conference sure hadn’t. After their admirable efforts, she said that “life was given back to her.”
The same investigative team described three cases of other apparent medical miracles in which the patients regained their hearing “immediately after Christian prayer.”
The lesson: when things look bleak, pray – and enlist the prayers of others. No guarantees, of course. Medical miracles or “spontaneous remissions” are quite rare. But there’s a larger lesson here: those undergoing spontaneous remissions are living proof of the supernatural at work, which should convince even the most hardened skeptics of the reality of God.
