Posted on 11/30/2007 7:51:42 AM PST by xzins
Actually, he isn't looking for just a "healing." What he wants is a NEW LIMB REGROWN where an old appendage had been before. I'm not real sure why the restoration of a severed limb does not qualify, but he insists that a "healing" God would also be able to "grow" a new limb.
There are stories of restored body parts.
The first is Jesus restoring the soldier's severed ear in the garden of Gethsemene. My relative rejected that as not "regrowing a new ear." I'm not sure why healing a severed ear with an entirely new ear is necessary, but those apparently are the ground rules for this current athist obsession.
There is the story of St Winifred, but it, too, is restorative rather than regrowth.
St. Winifred Feastday: November 3 According to legend, she was the daughter of a wealthy resident of Tegeingl, Flintshire, Wales, and the sister of St. Beuno. She was most impressed by Beuno, was supposedly beheaded on June 22 by one Caradog when she refused to submit to him, had her head restored by Beuno, and sometime later, became a nun of the convent of a double monastery at Gwytherin in Denbigshire. She succeeded an Abbess Tenoy, as Abbess and died there fifteen years after her miraculous restoration to life. A spring supposedly springing up where Winifred's head fell, is called Holy Well or St. Winifred's Well and became a great pilgrimage center where many cures have been reported over the centuries. She is also known as Gwenfrewi. Her feast day is November 3.
Raising Lazarus from the dead doesn't count. Healing the blind doesn't count. Healing anything doesn't count.
All that counts is "regrowth."
That got me to thinking about the perfect healing of Lepers by Jesus. These had to go show themselves to the priest. They were declared clean.
Since lepers have their appendages fall off entirely irretrievable, and since these were declared entirely "clean" by the priest, does it make sense to see a "regrowth" in these healings.
I think so, but, of course, I cannot prove it. It is rational, though.
This author suggests artificial limbs as an answer to the amputation-obsessed anti-Christian variety of atheists. (Isn't that the only variety....if WE didn't exist, they would go out of business. :>)
I see his point, and I agree with him. These folks won't accept that, though. I know my relative would argue against it.
They want an appendage regrown and they're sticking with it.
Bizarre.
Pretty much missed the point right there, didn't he?
bizarre — I agree. It is an odd obsession to want an appendage regrown.
Actually, I meant that atheists are bizarre, and this story is a vivid illustration of it. :)
He certainly did miss the point. I wonder at a pastor wallowing after pearls with swine, but I guess we've got to rationally present the faith to those who don't believe, even if only every now and then.
Those who come to faith are enlightened by the Lord. I think that's what Jesus meant when He said, "Don't cast your pearls before swine."
It's obvious that some have not yet been touched by the Holy Spirit. And some of them will always resist.
This is equivalent to a 16 year old brat telling his parents, who have provided everything for him, that unless they buy him a new Corvette they don’t love him. Tis the same with these “atheists” and God. Just as the brat does not see that his parents love is the greatest gift, but focuses on the material, so do these people.
Truth is, if an amputee did grow a limb back, they would not accept it as a sign from God, but just a scientific oddity.
Thanks. I did understand your point about atheists being bizarre. I was just adding some thoughts.
“Actually, he isn’t looking for just a “healing.”
Luke 16:24-, “And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame....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.”
Saint Padre Pio and the healing of Giovanni Savino
That is such a great insight, sample.
Wasn't that Abraham's response to the rich man....something like "Even if one came back from the dead, they still wouldn't believe."
Excellent point, b-d
Calling for redemption, in a way.
See #8 and #12. You and sample man are on the same page.
can you provide a link?
Do not tempt the Lord your God.
This fellow is heading for a warm eternity.
:)
A snowball free zone! :>)
note: Bernard Ruffin is a Lutheran minister who was initially very skeptical of Padre Pio The eye reappears More astounding still may be the thoroughly-documented cure of a construction worker named Giovanni Savino, who was severely injured on February 15, 1949, in a dynamite mishap. When Dr. Guglielmo San- guinetti, a physican, and Padre Raffaele, another Capuchin, and Father Dominic Meyer rushed to the injured man's side, “all three men noted that among Savino's numerous injuries, his right eye was gone entirely. They agreed that 'the socket was empty',” reports biographer Bernard Ruffin. Other doctors confirmed that the eye was completely annihilated and the other one badly damaged. It looked like Savino was also going to be totally blind. For three days, the worker lay on a hospital bed with his head and face bandaged. When a surgeon entered the room three days later, Savino reported that Padre Pio had visited him — something Savino recognized because he had detected the beautiful aroma so often reported around the priest. A week later, at about one a.m. on February 25, 1949, Savino felt a slap on the right side of his face — the side where the eye was completely gone. “I asked, 'Who touched me?'” testified Savino. “There was nobody. Again I smelled the aroma of Padre Pio. It was beautiful.” When later the ophthalmologist — an atheist — came to examine the remaining eye, there was a shock. “To their amazement,” writes Ruffin, “the doctors found that his shattered face was fully healed and covered with new skin. Savino, however, was most delighted at the fact that he could see. 'I can see you!' he said excitedly to the eye specialist.” And indeed, as is medically documented, the doctor saw, to his “utter astonishment”, that Savino had his right eye back. Somehow, the eye had materialized. (“Now I believe too,” exclaimed the doctor, “because of what my own hands have touched!”) As Ruffin notes, it's one thing when diseases disappear; this is exciting. It's tremendous to hear of diabetes or arthritis or even cancer leaving a person. “For a missing part of the body to be restored, however, is another matter,” noted the expert biographer.
Planting seeds. When speaking to some “that Christian made more sense than I thought he would” is a victory.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.