Protestants base all their defense of the Christian faith on what has happened 2,000 years ago. They present evidence for Jesus fulfilling Old Testament prophesy when He walked on earth, the proposition that if Jesus was not who He said He was then He must have been a liar or a lunatic, or that we have eyewitnesses who have recorded that they saw Jesus after He rose from dead. Catholics can use these same arguments to the non-Christian, but the Catholic has so much more in his arsenal. One of the greatest arguments for the Christian faith is the apparitions of Mary. But this is a specific Catholic argument. These apparitions not only validate the Christian faith, they also validate the Catholic faith in particular. So since they validate the Catholic faith, Protestants tend to reject them, using the same arguments that atheists and other skeptics toward the Christian faith have used against the miracles of Jesus. So conservative Protestants are in a pickle. On one hand they defend the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ but are skeptical about the miraculous appearances of His mother. They tell non-Christians that they need to the look at the evidence for the resurrection of Christ, and yet they reject the apparitions of Mary without ever looking at the evidence. They are trying to walk the tightrope between belief and skepticism – belief in the miracles in the Bible but skepticism in the miracles within church history. But if one looks at the evidence objectively, there is far stronger evidence for the apparitions of Christ’s mother than the evidence for Christ Himself. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not placing Mary over her Son. I am not saying that Mary’s apparitions have more theological value than Christ’s resurrection. If Christ did not rise from the dead, then we are still dead in our sins. I am only saying that Mary’s apparitions have more apologetic value, and her apparitions actually draw us back to Jesus. If these apparitions are true, then they prove that her Son is who He said He is.
There are over 25,000 documented cases of Christ’s mother appearing to people these last 2,000 years. Only a few of them have been Church-approved. This does not mean that the Church disapproves of the other apparitions. The Church will only approve of an apparition where the evidence is so compelling that the incident can only be explained as being a genuine appearance of Mary. But even when the evidence is compelling, the Church will only the declare that the incident is “worthy of belief”. The Church does not require the Catholic to believe in any of the Marian apparitions. The Catholic is only required to believe in the miracles recorded in the Bible. But still, these Mariam apparitions are worthy of belief, and I myself do believe in them, particularly those that have been approved by the Church. So I want to concentrate on only a few of the Church-approved apparitions.
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Over 500 years ago, the Spanish started to settle in Mexico. It was a very dangerous situation. The natives, called Aztecs, worshipped a god in the image of a serpent. They believed that this serpent required them to offer human sacrifices to him. They offered thousands of innocent victims a day, many of them were children. If not for the far superior weaponry of the Spanish, undoubtedly they themselves would have been sacrificed to the serpent-god. But slowly they had converts to the Catholic faith. One native who was Catholic was Juan Diego. One day he was walking to visit his sick uncle, when Mary appeared to him. She told him to tell the bishop to build a church in a certain area. As proof of her visit, she told him to take off his tilma, she collected certain rare flowers at that time of year and wrapped them in it, and she told Diego to give them to the bishop.
So he went to the bishop and gave him the flowers wrapped in a tilma. When they unwrapped the tilma, they were shocked to see an image of Mary on the tilma. News of this tilma spread throughout Mexico. The Aztecs came to see it, and were converted. In the next 10 years, over 9 million Aztecs repented of their sacrificing to the serpent god and became Catholic. If it was not for this tilma, Mexico would still be the hands of that Satanic religion.
The Church has recently allowed scientists and other experts to investigate this tilma. They found some startling things:
· The pigments on the tilma are not known to be found anywhere on earth.
· The tilma, like others, is made of cactus. Cactus tilmas only last for about 70 years. But this tilma has been over 500 years old!
· Other artists tried to recreate the image on other tilmas. But they could not without the colors running together.
· When they looked at the pupils of Mary under a microscope, they saw people in them
All this shows that the tilma could not have been a forgery. It must have been a supernatural origin. Some Protestants have argued that they agree that the tilma is supernatural, but that does not mean it is from God. They argue that this is of the devil. Jesus was accused of the very same thing. They accused Him of being able to perform miracles by the prince of demons. But Jesus responded that Satan would not cast out Satan (Mark 3:22, 23). Why would Satan work against himself by doing good? In the same way, it just does not make sense that Satan was behind this. The Aztecs were offering child sacrifices to Satan! Why would Satan want that to stop? Why would the Devil manufacture a miracle so that Aztecs would turn their backs on the serpent-god and become Christians? True, the Devil sometimes masquerades himself as an angel of light (2Cor 11:14). But his modus operandi is to make sin look harmless, and even good. He masquerades as the angel of light by trying to convince that sin is not that bad. He want us to feel good about ourselves in doing sin. It would go against his plan for us to actually turn from sin. But this what the Aztecs did. They repented from human sacrifices to become Christians. Yes, they became Catholic Christians, but they still became Christians! Only a die-hard anti-Catholic could say that the Devil would rather the Aztecs to become Catholics than to remain human-sacrificing Satan-worshippers!
Skeptics will scoff at the resurrection of Christ, saying that it happened 2,000 years ago. How can anyone know for sure what happened that long ago? But this miracle only happened 500 years ago. And we still have the evidence for that miracle – the tilma. Skeptics argue that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God (as if the almighty God would subject Himself to scientific experiments!). But here, by God’s mercy, God has given evidence for His existence that has been verified by scientists.
Lourdes
In the middle of the 1800’s, our Lady appeared to a poor, uneducated peasant girl named Bernadette at a grotto in Lourdes, France. Bernadette asked who she was, and she said “I am the Immaculate Conception”. At first the bishop for Lourdes thought the girl was lying, until she told him that the woman identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. The pope just recently declared the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. There was no way a poor, theologically uneducated peasant girl could have known this. But the French government at that time was not as accepting this. The government was atheistic, and threatened her with imprisonment unless she recanted. But she refused; fearing riots, they relented.
At one of our Lady’s appearances at the grotto to Bernadette, Mary commanded her to dig with her hands. In the presence of the crowd (who could not see Mary), Bernadette dug with her hands until water sprang up. Soon the water flooded the area, so that there is now a huge body of water. Bernadette eventually became a nun. The people of Lourdes started to realize that by bathing in this water a person can be miraculously cured.
Since then people from all over the world go to Lourdes to be healed. There are about 7,000 cases of healings there. And there are no doubt many more that were never even documented. Only about 64 of them are approved by the Church. As I said before, the lack of Church approval does not mean that the others were not genuine miracles. It just means that doctors and scientists have investigated that there are 64 healings and they could find no natural explanation for them, so the Church has declared them worthy of belief.
Did Bernadette make this whole thing up? This is unlikely. How would she have known about the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception? Also, she was threatened with imprisonment. Why would she be willing to go to prison for what she knew was a lie? She did not seek fame and fortune for this. When she became an adult, she became a nun in a convent. She told no one there that she was the one who saw Mary at Lourdes. Her fellow nuns did not know that she was the Bernadette of Lourdes until after she died. This is not what we would expect from someone who was seeking fame and fortune. And not only that, but a lie such as this would have been a grave sin. It is hard to believe that woman would dedicate her whole life to be a nun and then to risk her soul for a lie.
And, as I mentioned before, when they exhumed her body years after her death, her body had not decayed at all. Although she has been dead for over a hundred years, she still looks as if she is just sleeping. And anyone can go to France to view her body.
But above all, there are the miracles that still continue to happen at Lourdes. To see a list of the Church-approved miracles there, go to http://www.theworkofgod.org/aparitns/lourdes/Lourdes1.htm.
Also see the following:
http://www.olrl.org/stories/lourdes.shtml,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Lourdes,
http://www.archive.org/details/glorieslourdes00rousuoft
http://www.nd.edu/~wcawley/corson/lourdes.htm
Some may object to this because this seems to more magic than miracles from God. But this kind of healing is totally Biblical. In 2 Kings 5, the prophet Elisha told a leper king that if he went into the Jordan river seven times, that God would heal him. In Mark 5:28 a woman was healed just for touching Jesus’ garment. Jesus once applied mud onto a blind man’s eyes in order to heal him (John 9:6). It is not that there is any special, magical powers in these objects. The power is all from God. God is just pleased to sometimes to work His power through objects such as the Jordan river, or Jesus’ garment, or the water at Lourdes. God did not need these objects to heal people. He can just as easily heal people without them. But sometimes this is how He is pleased to display His power.
Fatima
In 1917, Mary gave several appearances to three peasant children near Fatima, Portugal. Some people may wonder why Mary seems to appear to peasants, especially children. But this is totally Biblical. Jesus said that the kingdom of God especially belongs to little children (Luke 18:16). God chooses to foolish and simple to confound the wisdom of this world (1 Cor 1:20-27).
Mary made several predictions in her visits to the children:
· The war that was going on (World War I), would soon end.
· Two of the children, Franchesca and Jacinta, would die soon.
· Another greater war would happen. It would be preceded by great lights in the North.
· After that war, Russia would spread its errors throughout the world. This will not end until the pope in union with all the bishops consecrates Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
· A pope in the future will be shot
Each one of these prophesies came true. Franchesca and Jacinta never reached adulthood. The war did end very soon after that. Another one (World War II) started, and it was immediately preceded by the Aurora Borealis that was visible throughout all of Europe. Pope John Paul II was shot on the feast day of the Fatima appearances. And Pope John Paul II along with all the bishops did consecrate Russia to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Shortly after this the Soviet Union was dissolved.
But these prophesies are not the only amazing things that happened at Fatima. Mary promised the children that a miracle would happen at her last appearance that would convince the people she was there. When that day happened, it was raining, and everyone was drenched. Suddenly, Lucia pointed to the sun and said “Look at the sun!”. The clouds disappeared, it stopped raining, and it appeared as if the sun came closer to them, and even danced in the sky. After a few minutes the sun returned. And another amazing thing is that people’s clothes were dry! There were 70,000 people witnesses to the event. This was even reported in Fatima’s secular newspaper:
“We saw the huge crowd turn toward the sun which appeared at its zenith, clear of the clouds. It resembled a flat plate of silver, and it was possible to stare at it without the least discomfort. It did not burn the eyes. It did not blind. We would say that it produced an eclipse. Then a tremendous cry rang out and the crowd nearest us were heard to shout: ‘Miracle!... Miracle!... Marvel!... Marvel!...’ Before the dazed eyes of the people, whose attitude transported us to biblical times, and who, dumbfounded, heads uncovered, contemplated the blue of the sky, the sun trembled, it made strange and abrupt movements, outside of all cosmic laws, ‘the sun danced’, according to the typical expression of the peasants.”
O Seculo
See http://www.fatimacrusader.com/aworldview/worldview1.asp
I could not find any skeptic on the internet who would actually deny this had happened. The best that they can do is to try to find a natural explanation for this phenomenon, which to me seems to be more far-fetched than seeing it as an actual miracle. See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2362685/posts, also http://wdtprs.com/blog/category/global-killer-asteroid-questions/
Akita, Japan
Go to http://www.medjugorje.ws/en/videos/marian-apparitions/?page=6
Zeitum
Go to http://www.medjugorje.ws/en/videos/photo-proof-miracles/
There are 1 billion Muslims in this country. Although only 10% are sympathetic to the radical, militant Islam, that still means 100 million Muslims who believe that they are in a Jihad with the rest of us. And many of them are interspersed within our society. Imagine what 100 million terrorists could do within our society! Thanks to our negative population growth due to birth control and abortions many more Muslims are immigrating into the West to take up the decpreciating work force. And while we have one or two babies, Muslims have three or four babies. It is estimated that by 2050 the Muslims will be a majority in Europe. And soon afterward this will also happen in the US. In the future, the Muslims will take over Western civilization without any need for violence. They will just be largest voting block. And that probably means our Constitution will be replaced with Sharia law.
Atheists such as Richard Dawkins are saying that the solution is to become a totally secular, atheistic society. But this makes no sense at all. Even if Western society became atheistic, there is no reason to believe that Muslims would follow suit. It is far more likely that atheism would push them into more extreme forms of their religion. The militant Islamists are already preaching to the other Muslims that we are too secular and sinful and should be destroyed. If we all became atheists, this would just reinforce what the militant Muslims are saying. Muslims at least have some respect for other religions, especially Judaism and Christianity. They have no respect for atheism and secularism. So the more atheistic our society became, the more disdain they would have for us.
It is hard to expect Muslims would give up religion entirely. It is more likely that they would give up their religion for a safer and more loving religion – Christianity. This is where I think our Lady comes in. Just as Mary saved Mexico from the Aztec religion by her apparitions, so too I think she will save our society from militant Islam, through our prayers.
Muslims have a great veneration toward Mary. Mary has appeared to them in Zeitum, but she has not yet spoken to them. It is my opinion that she will speak to them in the future, and will tell them that Jesus was not just prophet, but is God in the flesh. When that happens, there will be a mass conversion of Muslims to Christianity, just as it happened to the Aztecs 500 years ago. Aside from this, I see no hope for us. It is impossible for our government to fight 100 million terrorists within our society. And they will soon outnumber us because they have more babies than we do. Our only hope is for Mary to bring them to her Son. Please pray with me that this day will come soon.
Conclusion
All these miracles are very recent, except for the miracle of Guadalupe, which happened 500 years ago. Lourdes happened 150 years ago. The other three happened in the twentieth century. This is very recent. Compare this to the resurrection of Christ. That happened 2,000 years ago. Compare the eye-witnesses. After the resurrection, the apostles, the women at the tomb, and 500 people saw Jesus. But at Fatima, we have 70,000 witnesses, seeing the sun dancing in the sky! It was even reported in the newspaper! And the witnesses at Akita and Zeitum are still alive today! And the tilma and the healings at Lourdes have been open to scientific investigation!
There is definitely more solid evidence for the apparitions of Mary than for the resurrection of Christ. And yet most Protestants evangelicals find the evidence for the resurrection of Christ compelling and are skeptical towards the apparitions of Mary. Most Protestants are refusing to use the strongest weapon in their arsenal for defending the Christian faith. If the apparitions of Mary are true, then that proves that the resurrection of Christ really did happen.
