|
News of the ‘miracle' spread around the world with lightning speed. A
Jewish fish cutter in New York was busily slaughtering a batch of carp
when one of them started shouting apocalyptic warnings to him in Hebrew.
"The fish shouted that everyone needed to account for themselves because the end is near," says Zalmen Rosen, the fish cutter.
The fish then commanded Mr Rosen to start praying and begin studying
the Torah before identifying itself as the soul of a local man who had
died the previous year.
After a moment of stunned silence all hell broke loose. Mr Rosen's
co-worker Louis Nivelo became convinced that the talking fish was the
work of Satan and ran around screaming: "It's the devil! The devil is
here!" before finally collapsing into a pile of packing crates.
Mr Rosen then began to panic and tried to kill the fish with a
machete-sized knife. But the carp bucked so wildly that Mr Rosen
succeeded only in slicing a huge gash in his own thumb and had to be
rushed to hospital. After an exhaustive struggle, the fish flopped off
the counter - still muttering in Hebrew - and was finally butchered by
Mr Nivelo.
Word quickly spread that a ‘miracle' had occurred in New York and it
sparked a heated debate around the world. Was it a genuine miracle or
just the ramblings of a fevered imagination? After all, to those
brought up with biblical tales of Moses parting the Red Sea and Jesus
feeding the 5,000, the story of a talking fish hardly counts as a
miracle.
Would God really reveal His presence and deliver His prophesies through
a fish destined for the freezer? It seems unlikely but many now think
that God is choosing to reveal His presence with increasingly surreal
miracles tailored specifically for the media age.
"I believe that in a cynical and sceptical world, signposts for the
human spirit must be luminous and unmistakable," says the renowned
psychic Uri Geller.
"Subtle hints to the soul go unnoticed. If we are to sit up and take
notice, the message has to be delivered in DayGlo capitals and bellowed
through a megaphone.
"So if messages through a fish seem an eccentric way for God to
communicate, it is important to remember that the Higher Intelligence
has been attempting to communicate with us for thousands of years
through more conventional and low-key means, such as books. So a fish
makes an excellent loudspeaker for a Torah reading."
And author Irene Thompson, whose book It's a Miracle, is published this
month, believes that they are becoming increasingly tailored to the
needs of ordinary people.
"They aren't just rare, dramatic, biblical and life-changing
experiences," she says. "They are more likely to happen to ordinary
people going about their daily lives.
"There is usually no logical explanation for why a miracle has
happened, why a life was saved or a patient cured. Even if an
explanation can be attributed to natural phenomena, the timing and
combination of factors influencing the miracle suggest the intervention
of God or a higher power."
The past decade has seen an increase in the number of claimed miracles.
Some, admittedly, stretch credulity, sometimes to breaking point.
Religious inscriptions and symbols have apparently been found inside
freshly sliced aubergines in Bolton and tomatoes in Bradford. Then
there's the miracle of the milk-drinking Hindu statues. This, you may
recall, involved the statues of the Hindu God Ganesh apparently
imbibing spoonfuls of fresh milk in temples across the UK and India.
Dozens of ‘miraculous' sightings of the Virgin Mary have been reported,
perhaps the most well-known being at Medjugorje in Bosnia. It was here
that the Holy Mother was repeatedly seen by numerous local teenagers.
Mind you, she has also been seen in a Mexican puddle, plastered across
a Florida skyscraper, and even in a pork scratching found in a pub in
Hull.
Although many so called miracles can be reasonably dismissed as
delusions, hoaxes or mere coincidences, does this mean that all of them
can be written off? Absolutely not. And for one simple reason: there
remains a hard core of mysteries that simply cannot be explained by any
conventional means.
One of the strangest and most inexplicable of these was reported in the
respected British Medical Journal in 1997 and was uncovered by the
esteemed consultant psychiatrist Dr Ikechukwu Azuonye. At that time he
practiced at Lambeth Hospital, lectured at the University of London,
and worked for the research unit of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
The story begins in 1984 when a married woman in her 40s was referred
to him apparently suffering from a psychiatric illness. Her ‘symptoms'
first appeared when she was at home in London quietly reading a book
when a distinct voice appeared in her head.
"Please don't be afraid," the voice said in a firm but soothing tone.
"I know it must be shocking for you to hear me speaking to you like
this, but this is the easiest way I could think of. My friend and I
used to work at the Children's Hospital, Great Ormond Street, and we
would like to help you."
She was understandably shocked but was initially able to dismiss the
voice. But it refused to go away and claimed that she was physically
ill and would soon need help.
The voice realised that he was causing her a lot of distress and tried
to reassure her: "To help you see that we are sincere, we would like
you to check out the following- " the voice said.
The voice then gave her three separate mundane pieces of information,
which she did not possess at the time. She checked them out, and they
proved to be true, but this failed to help because she had already
decided that she'd "gone mad." In a state of panic, she went to see her
doctor, who immediately referred her to the mental health unit of the
Royal Free Hospital in London.
Dr Azuonye came to the conclusion that she was indeed suffering from a
mental illness and prescribed a course of anti-psychotic drugs. The
voice soon disappeared and she felt able to go on holiday with her
husband. Whilst there, the voice returned but this time it was more
insistent than ever. And to make matters even worse, it had also
brought along a medical colleague from the spirit world.
They told her to return to England immediately as she now needed urgent
medical treatment. They then gave her an address to report to. When she
arrived, it turned out to be the brain scan department of the Royal
Free Hospital.
"The voices then told her to go in and ask to have a brain scan," says
Dr Azuonye. "This was apparently for two reasons. She had a tumour in
her brain and her brain stem was inflamed. Because the voices had told
her things in the past that had turned out to be true, she believed
them when they said that she had a tumour.
"So in order to reassure her, I requested a brain scan," he says.
It turned out that the diagnosis made by the voices was indeed correct.
Interestingly, says Dr Azuonye, there were no clinical signs that would
have alerted anyone - including the patient - to the tumour.
The surgeon then suggested an immediate operation to remove the tumour,
a decision the voices were in agreement with. They did, however, have
one caveat says Dr Azuonye.
"They said they would have preferred the operation to be done at
Queen's Square Hospital because they specialised in neurological
diseases. But as she was already at the Royal Free Hospital they told
her to have the procedure done there as it was urgent," he says.
After the operation, and when she'd recovered consciousness, the voices returned one last time to bid her farewell.
"We are pleased to have helped you," they said before bidding her goodbye.
"It is a true miracle," says Dr Azuonye. "The patient regards herself as being helped by a guardian angel."
Remarkable though this story is, it could be dismissed as a one-off
were it not for similarly miraculous cases that have come to light
since the paper was published in the British Medical Journal. Dr
Azuonye was subsequently contacted by numerous other psychiatrists who
had treated patients with similarly miraculous experiences. These
doctors feared for their careers if they went public with cases that
defied all conventional medical explanation.
"Can you imagine what would happen if they told their clinical team
that a patient had been possessed by 'demons'?" says Dr Azuonye.
"They'd be laughed out of court."
One of the few types of miracle that can be investigated by science is
the effect of prayer. And amazing as it sounds, prayer might just help
heal the sick. In a paper published in the scientific journal Annals of
Internal Medicine in 2000, researchers reported on 23 studies on
various distant healing techniques, including prayer. Thirteen of the
23 studies indicated a positive impact, nine found no benefit and one
revealed a modest negative effect. The US National Institutes of
Health, the equivalent of the UK's Medical Research Council, is now
funding a huge trial to try and discover whether prayer does indeed
work.
Dr Mary Self from Cardiff is in no doubt that prayer can miraculously
heal the sick. In 1999 she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer when
she was just 34.
‘‘I was devastated," she says. "I was told that there was no treatment
that would cure it and that my illness was terminal. The bottom fell
out of my world.''
Mary is a devout Christian and the congregation of her Baptist church
began praying for her. But her condition continued to worsen. For five
long months her health became increasingly parlous and she was forced
to begin planning her own funeral. She even wrote letters to her two
children to be opened after her death.
Day by day hope evaporated for her but more and more people joined her
congregation in praying for a cure. Word of her struggle spread
worldwide but still Mary's condition continued to worsen. Her doctor
finally gave her three weeks to live but then a miracle seemed to
happen. A routine scan revealed that the tumour had begun to shrink.
Within three weeks it had disappeared completely.
Robert Grimer, her surgeon at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in
Birmingham, was stunned by the turn of events and asked Mary how she
thought it could have happened.
"I believe it is possible for God to heal people, and the only explanation I have is that it's a miracle," she told him.
"Yes, I'll buy that," he said "There is no other answer."
It is not just Mary Self who claims that prayers have been miraculously
answered. Jean Neil was cured of 27 years of paralysis when she
attended a Pentecostal rally at the Birmingham NEC in 1988. When the
pastor told her to get up and walk she literally ran from her
wheelchair towards the stage with tears running down her face. Doctors
and surgeons were at a complete loss to explain it.
And then there's the 7,000 who claim to have been healed at Lourdes, 66
of which have been officially declared as miraculous by the Vatican.
Of course, if God really is answering prayers and altering the natural
course of events through miracles then it raises a host of questions.
Why are some helped but not others? Why do the virtuous suffer whilst
the wicked are rewarded? These questions are as old as religion itself
and today we are no closer to answering them than philosophers of old.
Perhaps it's wise to heed the soothing words of Albert Einstein: "There
are only two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a
miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle."
Does the medium Sally Morgan really talk to the dead?
|
