Biblical miracles： natural and supernatural - Colin Humphreys l Science for Seminaries

Well thank you very much Simon, that's a very kind introduction. Some years ago I was flying from Heathrow airport to America and it was pouring with rain outside, so torrents of rain coming down, and I got onto the plane and a man came to sit next to me and he was wearing a dog collar, so I knew he was a public church of England minister, and he leant across and he said, dreadful weather isn't it? So I nodded at the truth of this remark and then we took off and the plane went through these very dark storm clouds until we rose above the storm clouds and I could see the sun outside shining down on the clouds below, and the minister leant across again to me and he says, there now it's turned out to be a wonderful day after all, isn't that a miracle? So this morning we'll talk about miracles and I'd like to thank Simo for inviting me here and for Shelley and Andrew to pick me up when I was stranded at a railway station on my way here, and I should say it's a great pleasure to be here. I prepared this talk beforehand and I sort of prepared it with staff in mind, but after yesterday I'm going to speak with students in mind particularly because, you know, students are the future and I think this is also, I'd like to congratulate the students for choosing this place to come to because I've just realised, yes, this is such a wonderful place for students to be. These three years are going to change your lives, you know, for the better obviously, but they really will, they'll change your lives and so they'll have just a huge effect on you and you are the future leaders and the future workers in the Pentecostal church, you know, worldwide. So these three years are a fantastic opportunity for you as students. So no talk on science and religion is complete without a reference to Richard Dawkins, so here's a reference to Richard Dawkins. This is what he wrote in an article called Stake Oil and Holy Water. The resurrection, even the Old Testament miracles are all freely used for religious propaganda and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticated and children, so if you believe in miracles you know what you are. Every one of these miracles amounts to a violation of the normal running of the natural world and I've got a quotation from Wikipedia here and Dennis talked about this yesterday so I'm not going to dwell on this but Wikipedia, as Dennis said, miracles are defined as an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws and then David Hume who Dennis also talked about yesterday. So this is a view of miracles which most people hold and probably most people here today hold as well. A miracle is an event which breaks natural laws or physical laws and then by contrast this is Augustine of Hippo, Hippo's in North Africa and he was a very great early Christian scholar and so he was a very wise man. It doesn't mean he's right but he's worth listening to and this is what he said, miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature. So if he was alive today I think he'd say miracles are not contrary to science but only contrary to what we know about science and when we know more science we'll realise these miracles don't break any scientific laws. Now he said this for theological reasons, if you like, biblical reasons. He believed that God was the creator and the holder of the universe moment by moment and he was a consistent God and you see this ringing through the Bible, you know, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever or in Genesis says summer and winter, sea time and harvest shall not cease. So the message of the Bible is a consistent God and so Augustine said would he break his own laws, the laws he's established and this is something which is quite a powerful theological argument and I put down Rowan Williams on here because Rowan Williams some people will know was a previous archbishop of Canterbury and he then became head of a Cambridge College, Moreton College and I was invited there for dinner so I was a guest there and before the dinner people gathered round, they were drinking sherry and some were drinking orange juice and Rowan Williams was going round the guests, speaking to them all in a sort of masterful way and I saw him approaching me and I said what shall I say to him when he approaches? So I knew he was a prolific writer and so I said to him Rowan what are you writing at the moment and he said oh he said I'm writing a new book about Augustine and I said to him do you know what Augustine said about miracles and he said yes I do and I then said to him do you think the resurrection is consistent with what Augustine said about miracles and then the gong rang for dinner and he, so one of us was saved by the bell and he walked away and led everybody into dinner so I do not know what he meant. So let's say what are physical laws? So this is a nice description I think of physical laws by a Nobel Prize winner in physics, Richard Feynman, he said there is a rhythm and a pattern between the phenomena of nature which is not apparent to the eye but only to the eye of analysis and it is these rhythms and patterns that we call physical laws. What did he mean when he said not apparent to the eye but only to the eye of analysis? Let's give a simple example, we see the sun rising every morning in the east going around the earth and sitting and setting setting every evening and so people for many many years believed quite naturally that the sun went around the earth but it's only when scientists analyse exactly what's going on when we realise that this actually was not true, this was an apparent truth but not a real truth and it's apparent truth because the earth was rotating on its axis once every 24 hours and this rotation of the earth with the sun up here made it appear to us on earth that the earth was going around the sun but these patterns are what we call physical laws and we are astonished if we woke up one morning and the sun wasn't rising in the east, I mean it might be a cloudy sky but behind the clouds we wouldn't know the sun is rising in the east and so physical laws are based upon reproducible events and this is something which Dennis also talked about yesterday so if you have an apple as Dennis said and you release it then you'll be astonished if it went upwards or you know sideways, if it did then I'd probably put a magnet in it and I've got a magnet up there so but you know a normal apple would normally drop to the ground and be astonished if it didn't and so physical laws they describe the past, they don't tell you what must happen in the future but they do raise our expectations what will happen in the future so we raise expectations if we let release an apple it will drop to the ground and in 2019 I went to see a solar eclipse in Chile because I have a daughter who works in Chile and I planned this event about two years in advance and I had no doubt at all when booking my air flight that eclipse would occur precisely as predicted by science so science is very powerful in actually predicting some aspects of the future as well as describing the past. So I put Dawkins versus Augustus and I didn't really want to introduce a conflict but Dawkins says all miracles break scientific laws and Augustus says no miracle is contrary to nature and I'll just tell you what I think in advance is the truth of the situation I think both are right I think some miracles don't break any scientific laws and other miracles do and we'll come to that later on so and also a key question is not what can God do and at a talk yesterday and some of the talks we've discussed whether God is limited in what he can do and I'll just say one thing briefly about that one way God is limited in what he can do is because of us right so we are on earth God's hands and God's feet right and as we heard in the greater address this morning thank you very much we are partners with God in this right and as was said where God is an easy partner you know take my yoke upon you and my yoke is light and so God acts in our world partly through us largely through believers in him not totally all right so the magi weren't believers and God worked through them but largely through believers and so when God is limited it's because of us on earth not doing his will on earth and so that's quite a challenging thought so God can be limited in that way but the key question to ask when thinking about miracles is not what can God do but what does God do and if we look at miracles in the past what did God do and the biblical view of miracles as Amos Young said yesterday is the bible describes miracles as the title of this conference a very wise title signs and wonders so the bible is just a simple description signs and wonders the signs authenticating pointing to God and authenticating the miracle giver as well and the wonders being remarkable events so I've chosen two biblical miracles to talk about and they're major miracles I'm not sure you can talk about major minor miracles but if you can talk about major minor miracles these are major miracles crossing the river Jordan was the last miracle of the exodus and it was critical it was a critical event which enabled the Israelites to get to the promised land and get their freedom in the promised land and a new life in the promised land and then the other miracle the resurrection the most important miracle in the new testament and as Paul says if Christ is not risen then your faith is in vain so it's it's the one miracle I think Christians have to believe in so important let's ask the question before we start if both these miracles happened as recorded in the bible are they miracles and I think everyone everyone would say yes I think Richard Dawkins would say yes I think Richard Dawkins would say if the river Jordan really stopped like this and enabled the Israelites across it would have to be a miracle I would of course he'd go on to say these things didn't happen like that so it didn't occur but I think everyone would agree these two things are a miracle and I'm going to look at this through scientific eyes and hopefully and then hope and as well through biblical eyes and I'll ask are these different types of miracles and this is an aside the events are in a way linked and if we think of when Jesus was born before Jesus was born then both Mary and Joseph independently ones in Matthew's gospel and ones in Luke's gospel were told the name of the son that was born to Mary and in the ancient world names are very important they were chosen for a reason and we have Matthew recording that an angel in a dream appeared to Joseph so Joseph had a dream and his dream was Joseph when his dream was an angel and the angel told Joseph the name that the son should be and at about the same time independently another angel told Mary the name of the son and that name was Jesus and why was it significant well I think the angels probably did not speak to Joseph and Mary in New Testament Greek right so Joseph and Mary were Jewish people and so almost certainly they spoke to them in Hebrew or Aramaic and the gospels are in Greek many people say the original Matthew was in Hebrew Aramaic but that's another story so the angel would have spoke to them in Hebrew or Aramaic and Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua so I think what they would have heard was you are to call him Joshua and just imagine the significance of that on Joseph and Mary they think Joshua was this great Old Testament character who had led the Israelites to a new life in a new land and of course Jesus does just that he gives us new life now and then we have a new land in the future that we call heaven so this is great significance that he was called Joshua which we now in the Greek form is Jesus so that's an aside and we get back to crossing the Jordan which is the last event in the climax of the Exodus story and can science throw light on this and this is a good question to ask because scientists are seekers after truth and Christians are seekers after truth and the truth the unity even though there's different ways of looking at it and so science can help in our interpretation of the Bible and the Bible can help us with science as well so let's see what science has to say but before that let's look at what the Bible has to say so this is Joshua and it's just two verses of Joshua very simple verses but they can tell a lot of information describing this miracle and I'll read it to you now the Jordan is in flood or during harvest yet as soon as the priest who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge the water from upstream stopped flowing it's piled up in a heap a great distance away at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethon while the water flowing down to the sea of the Araba that's the dead sea was completely cut off so the people crossed over opposite Jericho so I'd like you to just picture the scene it may be a familiar story to some or not to others but just picture the scene and what's being described so the river Jordan wasn't flowing normally it was in flood right it was a huge obstacle and I'll show you a photograph later what it would have been like it was in flood a huge obstacle the Israelites were on one side and they wanted to be on the other side they'd been wandering around for about 40 years trying to get the promised land this was their last maybe opportunity and this huge barrier of the Jordanian flood stood in their way and they could see tantalizingly their promised land on the other side and the situation looked hopeless and as they were there suddenly the river stopped flowing and they could walk across on dry land and no doubt they crossed in triumph and probably sang hymns as we sang this morning so if you read out this story outside here then what would people say and they'd almost certainly say well this is a wonderful children's story or it's a fairy tale but it's a pretty good story pretty good tale and the question is can it be true can we know 3,000 years ago if this is true or not can science throw light on this and most people and most biblical scholars but I don't think even Pentecostal scholars but most other scholars have believed the story is a legend and and if some of you have doubts about this story I should say that's not a bad situation to be in doubts are not a bad thing to have and we strengthen our faith by getting through our doubts but I think doubts about this sort of incredible story are natural and so if you have doubts that's not a bad thing so let's see if I can quell your doubts so is this account historical fiction that's what lots of lots of lots of scholars say and by historical fiction it's fiction dressed up as history and so the key question always is what the writer intend and what their audience understand and there's a very strange detail in this story which I don't know if you've spotted I read this a number of times before I spotted this very odd thing about the story this very odd miracle and what's odd about this is that the miracle didn't happen where they were it happened somewhere else and it's an extraordinary story so if the story had been invented you know the writer would have said I'm sure as soon as a priest who carried out reached the Jordan their feet touched the water's edge the water piled up by the priest's feet and it didn't it piled up upstream a great distance away and the writer is at pains he emphasizes this he doesn't say it's part he says a place called Adam and in case you don't know where it is he says it's in the vicinity of Saracen he wants to pinpoint where this miracle occurred but it wasn't where they were and that's quite bizarre and strange and so look at that and say obviously scientists and others will say what happened to Adam for this to happen how did the know this happened well I think like us Joshua leading the people across we would do the same today Joshua would have said to some of his people he'd see the dried up riverbed up there and he'd say where did it dry up what's going on so I think he would have sent a team of men up there to go and have a look say walk up the Jordan walk up by the riverbed find out what happened and they walked up and they found something happened to Adam which stopped the water flowing and they came back they forced him this miracle that's where it happened can we find out about this 3,000 years later before we look at that the text of Exodus is quite remarkable because it's full of detail and we've seen this sort of detail and the writer wants to point out the precise spot where things happen so he doesn't just say the Israelites crossed the Jordan he said they crossed opposite Jericho so we know where they're crossing and then he doesn't just say the water stopped a great distance away he said Adam in vicinity of Zaretham and he said that all these places are upstream from the Dead Sea and so he's trying to root the story not just in history but in geography as well this is a real event that the writer's describing in detail and you find this throughout the Exodus and there are lots of scholars who say Exodus never happened and you know your students you'll find this out when you study here and you read other books you'll find you know really clever people say the Exodus didn't happen and they say it with authority and remind yourself of this story because it just isn't true and we'll show you how it happened so let's try and explore this so the problem is I know the first thing I did I looked on so I was involved in this and trying to sort out what happened and I looked on a map and found it's where's Adam right on the River Jordan and there's no place called Adam right and that's not surprising because names change or they don't exist Jericho hasn't changed after 3,000 years but that's unusual most places have either the names have changed or they've or they've been forgotten and and India's and recently well not some of you will remember there was a place called Bombay which is now called Mumbai right so names change but Mumbai is a bit similar to Bombay and when names change and when Jewish people were there and then Arabic people then lived there the Arabs changed the names and there are rules sort of or traditions about what happens the first thing to realize is the original Hebrew text didn't contain vowels it was just consonants right a consonantal text and of course when you read it in your mind or you read it out loud you have to add vowels to read it but when people write text messages they miss out the vowels and the word text in a text message is usually txt and in your mind you know the context so you know when you're reading your mind you know it's text and not text or text or text right and so it's the same when people read ancient Hebrew words with no vowels in they put the vowels in in their mind and so what survives when a name changes when when their Adam changes to a more modern name a more Arabic name the vowels survive so the vowels which survive are d and m right the equivalent of d and m and also the ancient Hebrew it would have been is it up here I hope it is yeah yeah so in the original letters the Hebrew text Adam was this this apostrophe sign which is a breathing sound like so and dm so it wouldn't be outside done something like that and so when it goes to Arabic that breathing sounds normally dropped the vowel the consonants remain and an Arabic heading ending is usually added so then you look on the map and say is there a place on the Jordan with consonant dm and there is and that place is Damia which is also spelled different ways people spell things as they are pronounced so modern Damia is on the east side of the River Jordan and let's get a map of this so this is a simplified map of the region and so what you see you see on the left hand side this is the Mediterranean Sea called the Great Sea there and you can see the Dead Sea and then the River Jordan and then going up to the Sea of Galilee and you can see on the map Jericho there so the Israelites the last stage of their journey they came up on the eastern side of the Dead Sea they came up through Edom and Moab and they crossed the Jordan opposite Jericho is what the Bible tells us and there you can see above that is ancient Adam and modern Damia so that's the geography of the situation and the question is what happened at ancient Adam and modern Damia and I actually was not the first person there's a there's a biblical archaeologist who did some work on this before me but I built a bit on his work and there's an expert scientist at Stanford University in America and I wrote to him and I said because he's been studying this I wrote to him I said what can you tell me about Adam and Damia and he sent me a letter which is here and I said can I quote from your letter he said yes you can so this is what he said this is before what he said so there was an earthquake in 1927 on July the 11th and I'll show you in a moment what he said about this earthquake this was an earthquake which shook Jericho buildings collapsed walls cracked and collapsed you might be interested in and this this was detected throughout the world this earthquake in Europe USA and Russia it was 6.5 on the Richter scale and by comparison there was an earthquake in New Zealand in Christchurch in 2011 that was 6.3 on the Richter scale a bit weaker and it killed 200 people so this earthquake in 1927 was a strong earthquake which occurred and it occurred at this place Adam in Damia and it was due to slippage on the Jericho fault if can go back to the map this is an earthquake rich region which is why the bible describes so many earthquakes so on one side of the river Jordan there's one tectonic plate and there's another tectonic plate on the other side and these are moving in a complex way they're moving apart and also slipping you know slipping vertically and horizontally as it were a complex movement and and and this this cause earthquakes and so this is why there are so many earthquakes in the bible so the uh the uh Matthew recalls the stone uh which which sealed the tomb of Jesus uh with there was an earthquake there and the clear implication is it was the earthquake which actually rolled away the stone a physical mechanism for that um and so but lots of earthquakes in in the bible and so uh this is the letter which professor Neer sent to me and he said uh during the 1927 earthquake several ground cracks appeared together with an outpouring of groundwater this soil liquefaction phenomena has been well observed in earthquakes elsewhere so this sort of happened what he's going to describe does happen earthquakes around the world during the earthquake mudslides occurred along the Jordan near Damia about 30 kilometers 18 miles north of Jericho these temporarily stopped the river's flow and I've got a picture here a photograph of an event in 1957 which was a weaker earthquake and it didn't stop the Jordan's flow but it almost did so there's a photograph and so you can see the mudslide produced by the earthquake and um maybe it stopped it you know temporarily but you see the river Jordan's gone around it but you can just visualize a much larger earthquake the mudslide goes right across the river and then the water either has to come over that mudslide or go around it and this takes typically one to two days right so plenty of time for the Israelites to cross and um has this happened before 1927 so back to professor Neer's letter to me Adam is now Damia is that something you're certain of the site of the 1927 mudslides which cut off a flow of the Jordan such cutoffs lasting typically one to two days have also been recorded in 1906 1834 1546 1534 1267 and 1160 when the records cease but one might add there's an earlier record at the time of uh at the time of Jericho the time of um time of Joshua he says the stoppage of this Jordan is a stoppage of the Jordan is so typical of earthquakes in this region that little doubt can be left to the reality of such events in Joshua's time so what we've done is sort of detective investigation uh analysis of this um and I think we can then ask the question was the crossing a miracle so I think we can be virtually certain this was a natural event because it's happened since then a number of times and we know the mechanism is an earthquake um we know we can identify ancient Adam with modern Damia linguistically they're the same place and so um when the Bible describes this as happening there then it's a natural event the Old Testament regards it as a major miracle of God and it's consistent with Augustine's view of miracles that it's not contrary to science it's not consistent with what um Dawkins says that all miracles are break physical laws and although um the book of Joshua doesn't actually say it was an earthquake there are hints in the Psalms for example here's Psalm 114 when Israel came out of Egypt the Jordan turned back so it's talking about the the mountains leapt like rams when the Bible talks of mountains leaping it's almost certainly talking about an earthquake it's because earthquakes shape mountains like this and so the mountains leapt like rams the hills like lambs tremble oh lord at the tremble of earth at the presence of the lord and so perhaps we're inclined to take the trembling as symbolic but actually I think the Psalm is just being literal here there's symbolism as well maybe but there's literally the earth really did tremble and then and the Psalms is telling us when um Jordan turned back that that the earth trembled there was an earthquake when that happened when uh Israel and also other nations we have to say Egypt for example they didn't distinguish between natural and supernatural events so what Egypt did they had many gods for different natural events they actually had not only a god of the sun they had a god of the rising of the sun a god of the setting of the sun a god of the moon a god of you know rising the river Nile and so they hold these many gods which control natural events and what the Exodus story tells us is that Israel had one god who replaced all these many gods of Egypt as it were and who was superior to all the many gods of Egypt because um in the story of the of the plagues for example then Israel Israel god triumphed over all these separate Egyptian gods um but they every event that occurred was due to God and so if the earthquakes caused the river Jordan to stop it'd be seen as just as much the hand of God as God sending an angel but what was the miracle about it was the timing it was amazing timing if this event had happened when the Israelites were a month later there or a month earlier there they couldn't have crossed and they wouldn't have known it happened because the Jordan would have been flowing normal as it were and let me just give quickly another example of a natural event and perhaps the best known miracle in the Old Testament which is the crossing of the Red Sea and this is how the Bible describes it then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land so the Bible's explicit that miracle was a natural event an unusual natural event the strongest wind it blew all night and science uh I will say in my book I have a I have a detailed explanation but it's a fact called wind set down so so there's a glass here if I filled up with water up to the brim and I blew across the water water would come out the other side of the glass because my my breath is forcing this water out of the other side of the glass and if you have a wind blowing along a long body of water the water is gradually forced back and the Bible says all night so it's gradually forced back all night and what happens is if you've got water on a sloping shore that shoreline is exposed and so its lights can come across and if the wind suddenly stops all that water comes back and it comes back in the form of a ball wave if you're mathematicians it's a second order differential equation right it comes back as a ball wave and uh and and it travels fast enough to knock horse riders off horses you know if you're standing there so the events of the story are just totally explicable um I will just tell you this story in passing so it makes these miracles easier to understand and they're still miracles I had a someone wrote to me a Jewish person wrote to me after I've written my exodus book and he said I'm a lapsed Jew because I could not believe the miracles of the exodus he said because now I understand them from your book I now go back to the synagogue all right he's halfway there we would say but he's gone so so that was very nice so so so um these these miracles uh perhaps easier to believe for some people but but they're miracles of timing and and the Jordan has stopped just when the Israelites were on the river bank and now this is a lovely psalm uh which really uh is the psalmist and it's just a beautifully written psalm psalm 77 you are the God who performs miracles and so he says I am going to tell you about miracles and then he said you display your power among the people your thunder was heard in the whirlwind he doesn't say thunder the thunder he says your thunder right it's God's thunder natural events you're it's God's your lightning lit up the world the there's the earthquake your path led through the sea your way through the mighty waters though your footprints were not seen you led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron so he starts by saying you're the God who performs miracles he ends by saying the hand of Moses and Aaron so specifically talking about the exodus miracles and that's people going through the sea the Red Sea and the Jordan and the phrase I love is though your footprints were not seen so God did not leave on the river bank his muddy footprints as it were he didn't live a visiting card saying God was here he worked subtly right he you know God often works subtly and we would say behind the scenes but for those people who are believers you can see the work of God in this the handiwork of God in this so let's now picture the scene with our hopefully improved understanding and the river Jordan if I went to the river Jordan some of you have right and when I went there I hadn't done this work and I thought why didn't they swim across I mean it's it's you know the river Jordan now goes from here to perhaps that screen I mean in place it's so now because what's happened is since since 1940 Israel and Jordan have both taken huge quantities of the river Jordan for irrigation so this is a photograph it's quite a rare photograph of the river Jordanian flood and it was taken in the 19th century so this is a river Jordanian flood and it's a massive barrier to cross and the water has been coming down really fast and the snow melts on Mount Herm and that's the source of the Jordan it comes rushing down in springtime and there was a British expedition in the 19th century to Jordan and they said the Jordanian flood was half a mile wide this might have been an exaggeration I'm not sure but it obviously was very wide and and to think of crossing a real barrier right so the extra story is absolutely right um Joshua's story absolutely right a real barrier to cross and this was a river that they crossed let's say just a bit more about miracles um so it's a miracle of timing this um notion of miracles of timing is not new so it goes back to at least Aristotle and Aristotle talked about miracles he said there's an official the official cause which was a natural agent right so in this case an earthquake the final cause of will of God and the miracle was revealed by the extraordinary timing of the event so God is working in with and through the nature he created and upholds moment by moment and God and Joshua I suggest work together how is the timing achieved now what I'm what I'm going to suggest and it's tentative I'm going to suggest that Joshua and God were in such a close partnership that they talked to each other and God said to Joshua slow up a bit or um these Israelites are going a bit too fast you know they're going to or go a bit quicker and and so that's how the time was achieved so so a human agent was was very much involved um and just to conclude some miracles miracles of timing God works with and through the nature that he created so God is active all the time yeah God is not just intervening when he breaks physical laws God is active all the time working with the nature um and I put here at the end let me put in an end here um God and us working together can make miracles of timing and so we heard his nice address this morning about God being a responsive God so it's a two-way two-way thing God um responds to us and we respond to God and if if if we're filled with the spirit and we're in such close contact with God then we we can do these sorts of miracles a day these miracles of timing can happen and they may look like chance events to people outside and to us but God works through these chance events and so you may meet someone in the street and have a conversation with them but the fact that you're walking down the street at that time you meet this person then God's there in the timing and um and uh we can stop miracles happening if we're not responsive to God in this way I believe so um God is a responsive of God um and uh we can work with God today to perform these miracles which involve breaking no natural laws and these miracles are just as important as miracles that break natural laws this is a major miracle we're talking about not a small miracle and this is a a nice quotation I like the scientist even when he is a believer is bound to try as far as possible to reduce miracles to regularities so if I hear about a miracle the first thing I do because I'm a scientist I'm trained to talk about the natural is to see can we reduce this to natural events and if you can't then you say maybe a physical law is being broken but the initial thing I do is to see because I think that's God's normal action in the world let's go on to the resurrection it is the most amazing event in history um and uh I think all you can say is it's true or it's a very cruel hoax and I'm not going to talk about the evidence of I just told one thing about the evidence for resurrection there's lots of evidence people your teachers will talk to you about here this is Paul speaking to the Corinthians writing about AD 55 we know that within about a year and it's about 30 years after the resurrection which in AD 33 almost certainly um so and Paul says Jesus appeared to over 500 of the brothers at the same time most of whom are still living so you think of those dates 20 years after the event 500 people living five of whom 500 people saw Jesus 20 after the event probably 300 alive right and um and these would these people you'd know who they were right because they say we saw we saw Jesus and so you could go and interrogate them you could say to them did you really see Jesus and that's what Paul's saying 500 people most are alive you can go and talk to them they'll tell you they saw them so things like this have really strong evidence because if one of them has said no no we didn't really see Jesus it's just a myth that would have destroyed destroyed um what Paul was saying and and really destroyed I think Christianity so these people that would be known always say yes we saw that's one of the evidences for the resurrection um can science explain the resurrection um Augustus said you know if you know more science I don't think it can I think the resurrection was just so extraordinary it broke so many physical laws that to think that science one day can explain I don't think that's feasible right so um I may be wrong but I don't think that's feasible um and as I said before breaking physical laws is a problem for theologians as well as scientists so if God created the universe and is consistent would he break his own natural laws so we have talked about this a bit before but let me give you a slightly different analogy which is what I call the music analogy so let's imagine there's a piano over there in the corner the pianist playing the piano and uh they're playing without music and you go behind them and you watch their fingers on the keys and you see every time they're going to play the note F they play F sharp and if you're musical if I haven't forgotten my music then you can deduce they're playing the music in a certain key and in this case I play F sharp instead of F they're playing the music in the key of G and uh and so if the music was there then the composer at the front of every line of music would have put a sharp sign against F and that's the instruction for the pianist to put when he plays F to play F sharp the black F sharp rather than the white F and so that's what scientists try and do look scientists look at the clues given by the universe and they construct physical laws from this but if you continue watching the pianist play you may find that sometimes they don't play an F sharp or they may play an A flat or a C sharp and if you're a musician you say I know what's happening these are accidentals so in the musical script the pianist would have kept the key signature but he would have put in front of the F he would have put a natural sign so you don't actually play an F sharp or he would have put a flat in front of an A sign just for that note and so you play an A flat and the composer is free to do this because he is the composer right so you don't say he's bound by his own rules who is free to do it if it's a great composer it won't be capricious he'll do it because it makes better music and occasionally you'll find a piece of music so many accidentals are put in that it's a change of key signature just maybe for one musical bar or two so so many accidents are put in this change of key signature and again great composer it makes better music and I've done this at home I've taken a great piece of piano music and I've played it without the accidentals and it's the accidentals or these occasional key signature changes which make great music it makes it so much better so let's now visit the resurrection and the analogy is obvious God is the great composer or if like the great director and he is free to break his own rules and but he is a consistent God so it actually makes more sense and if we now look at how Peter described the resurrection in his Pentecost speech just seven weeks after the event seven weeks after the crucifixion to be precise and then resurrection three days after that so very close he says God raised him that's Jesus from the dead because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him so Peter is saying if Jesus really was a son of God then the resurrection was inevitable not incredible it was inevitable death could not hold him and so this is God acting consistently to raise Jesus from the dead I'll just mention because this was mentioned in one of the talks yesterday the raising of Lazarus so Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead is this like the resurrection in one way it is because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead but when Lazarus raised from the dead he was he had exactly the same body as he had before he died and in no doubt after he was resurrected Lazarus he then suffered pain and suffering and toothache and so on and and he died again right Jesus when he was resurrected lived forevermore and is alive today and he suffers no pain and he has eternal life and not only that the bible describes the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits of those who rise from the dead so that when we die and rise again our body will be like that of Jesus so it will be recognizable people will recognize our voices just as Mary recognized the voice of Jesus but it will we will never suffer we will never have toothache and and and won't die again the resurrection of Lazarus is not the same as the resurrection of Jesus so and I think the resurrection of Jesus was so many things so many laws broken it was like a change of key signature right and and maybe healing events are probably like a you know single accidental and or Peter walking Peter and Jesus walking on water science has something to say about that I think the obvious interpretation is that gravity was suspended science don't like that idea because that has all sorts of implications so gravity wasn't suspended but there was an uplifting force and that makes more sense to science of course theologically more sense that God uplifted them as they walked on the water gravity was still operating but this is a counteracting force which held up Jesus and Peter as they walked on the water so very tentative we can sometimes speculate let me just speculate so scientists speculate I mean when I do my science I actually sometimes I can't explain and I have a theory in my mind and I test that theory and if it doesn't work then it's no good if it does work you say maybe this is true and so I think theologians can also speculate so what what was the body of Jesus like when he was resurrected what would our bodies be like no resurrected if you live forever and if you live forever more then your body cannot suffer decay and so probably it's not carbon-based anymore it's probably not DNA based anymore because that has built in you know our bodies have built in death as it were and so it will be a new body but recognizable and maybe physicists talk about multiverses maybe heaven and earth coming down a new heaven a new earth will be a different universe with different physical laws but you know will obey those different physical laws that it were but these physical laws will have death and and pain and suffering not present anymore so that's some some speculation and I'm almost finished no more disease and death analogy of multiverse so I think there are three types of miracles this is the last slide there's miracles of timing which are very important and and they've been certainly most churches have largely ignored these but I think very important and because great miracles can occur by no physical laws being broken but then some miracles like an accidental like walking on water or healing miracles and then the great resurrection miracle like really big changes change of key signature and we get a glimpse of what what our resurrected bodies will be like and scientists can and do believe in miracles and we have a key role to play as you know you know much better than I do and the Pentecostal church knows much better than other churches a key role to play in miracles today thank you very much right so that's a really good question I would say yes or no I would say that the priest's feet touching the water's edge did not cause the water to stop in the earthquake right but I would say that let me just go back a little bit right I would say the question of how does God act in our world is a very interesting question and and I've come to conclusion that there are certain fixed events in world history so Jesus came to Jesus was born at a certain time in a certain place in history and that was pre-ordained right and I think the great events in biblical history were pre-ordained to happen at that time and place between those events I suspect there's flexibility and there has to be flexibility in the system if there's no flexibility in the system then prayer doesn't mean anything right so people not obviously so I think there's flexibility so I would say that let's get back to Jordan I would say that the crossing of the Jordan was a key event in world history and so God pre-planned this before the creation of the earth if you like in the same way as the bible talks about Jesus being slain before the foundation of the earth so the salvation of God the salvation plan of God was built into the creation of the universe and so in that sense God pre-planned that when the feet of the priest touched the water's edge this would occur so it's a causality in the creation plan of God very good question yes so two earthquakes close together happens frequently right so the aftershock happens frequently and also the aftershock can be worse than the original earthquake so it's very frequent and then you see this in the gospels you see there was an earthquake around the time of the crucifixion then another one at the resurrection right and that's a sort of typical interval so yes it wouldn't surprise me at all if that happens and also scientists or atheists would not be surprised by two earthquakes happening you know close together and so that I think is fine the red sea and being forced back by strong east wind it's quite significant well I give examples in my book it's quite significant Lake Erie in America may go into Canada I forget now but a strong wind blowing like a long east Lake Erie all night has caused a height difference from one end to the other end of 16 feet it's extraordinary what can happen and shipwrecks have been exposed by on a sloping shore by this happening so it does have big effects I mean 16 feet is a record but five feet is quite common when a strong wind blows across Lake Erie and we don't know where the red sea crossing was in my book I have it at the top of the Gulf of Aqaba but I've since had second thoughts so it might be an inland lake and I'm just not sure yet so that's why I want to write another book but the other question is a good one how would they have crossed with a very strong wind and there's a number of things you can say one of which is there's something called the eye of a hurricane and the eye of a hurricane is actually a region of quietness people don't realize this so in the center of hurricane it's actually it is really quite still and then all around it there's this whirring wind and so if the Israelites have been in the eye of a hurricane and just walked with this eye as it were then that's one possibility the other thing is that wind motions can change in different ways so there are ways I think the Israelites could have got across in a strong wind blowing and the other thing is if it had grown really strongly and then a bit less strongly they could have walked then and then the strong wind came back again so when it went a bit less strongly it would just have held the water in place and then you know so it is plausible is what I'm trying to say yes thank you very much I'm just wondering going back to the Greek the word translated science I wonder if it maybe it was better translated knowledge or something because because either modern science anyway was not not known then but yes now I think Richard Dawkins in a way I mean he's worse than a closed mind because what he does if you read his books he sets up Christianity it's a caricature of Christianity he sets up right so he sets up very extreme Christians and then he knocks them down so he's puts a straw man up and knocks him down and it's extremely irresponsible way of arguing and I mean his writing style is very persuasive and very fluent and I wish I had his writing style and that's why he's he's he has been so persuasive but he's he's convinced the media and you know and a lot of people that science is nonsense and I heard he was on television with another famous scientist and they're being interviewed and at the end of the interviewer he Dawkins turns to this other famous scientist and he said I've heard that just a few scientists are Christians but I don't know any do you have you heard this and the other person said yes I've heard a few scientists are Christians and that's how interviews close and but you know but he knew full well that a lot of scientists are Christians so he's not honest and it's very misleading so don't be taken in by Richard Dawkins and his persuasive arguments and yeah a lot of famous scientists are Christians today yes and Francis Collins is very good in America you know head of a human genome product and a project and really famous biologist no I think what what what what I'm saying and what you know going back to Augustine what he was saying I think we've largely lost this and I'm trying to revive it perhaps is that there are a number of miracles in Old Testament miracles which there are natural explanations for but the time is just remarkable and I'll give you just one more example which is remarkable and that is the the plagues of Egypt the 10 plagues of Egypt and looked at through the eyes of a scientist someone called first did this one plague actually leads to another and so they're natural events but what but if you inter switch if you switch two plagues I mean if they're in right order just switch to them and that that whole argument collapses so yeah I think God God's normal way of working is with his creation and with with us right emboldened to do miracles of time I think that's God's normal way of working God also does he breaks physical laws when it is more consistent for him to do this and and healing it's the will of God who he heals and who he doesn't heal I think you have to accept this and even we do accept this yes yes so as we were saying yesterday very good people who prayed for aren't necessarily healed so God makes his rain and sun to shine on the good and on the evil yes no I wouldn't say it's harder to explain I think it's just it's just it's an extension of Jesus's healing miracles in a sense you know it's a instead of healing a broken arm you're hearing that healing a dead body as it were and which has been dead for several days I just think it's so healing a broken arm or something is maybe you know one or two physical laws are not necessarily suspended they're not necessarily suspended what's doing additional forces are being brought to bear which is the way I like to think of it so the physical laws remain and visual forces probably and then with Lazarus you know a lot of additional force are being brought to bear and with Jesus's resurrection even more are being brought to bear so that's how I would say it