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Many Christians, of all denominations, place a great deal of importance on the Witness List in the Early Creed found in First Corinthians 15 as the best evidence for the supernatural claim of the Resurrection of Jesus. Christians proclaim: "This witness list must be treated as we would treat eyewitness testimony to a traffic accident in a court of law. If so many eyewitnesses claimed to have seen the same car accident, that is excellent proof of the validity of the claim that the accident really had occurred."
But we aren't talking about a car accident. We are talking about a supernatural event. Just because multiple persons claim to have seen alien abductions, should we believe them? Just because thousands of people claim to have seen, talked to, and touched their recently departed loved one---should we believe them?
Here is something for Protestant Christians to think about. If the Apostle Paul had included a Marian Creed in one of his epistles, would you believe the eyewitness claims in that passage? Let's look at a hypothetical example:
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received:
That the Holy Virgin Mother intercedes for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that she was buried in Jerusalem, but when her grave was later opened, it was empty, and only her grave clothes remained.
She then appeared to Juan Diego on a hill in Mexico.
Then to Sister Catherine Luboure in Paris, to the Jewish convert Alphonse Ratisbonne in Rome, to Melanie Calvat and Maximim Giraud in France, eighteen times to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, and to Francisco Marto, Jacinta Marto, and Lucia Dos Santos in Fatima, Portugal.
In her final apparition to the children of Fatima, she caused many tens of thousands to see the sun appear to fall and spin like a wheel of fire, several times, as proof of her presence among them. In 1942, most of these eyewitnesses were still alive, though some had died.
Then she appeared in Beuaraing, Banneux, and Syracuse to more devout Catholics.
Last of all, as to one untimely born, she appeared also to me.
Virgin Mary apparition in Underpass.jpg
Superstitious people see what they want to see.
You see the Virgin Mary...I see a water stain.
But we aren't talking about a car accident. We are talking about a supernatural event. Just because multiple persons claim to have seen alien abductions, should we believe them? Just because thousands of people claim to have seen, talked to, and touched their recently departed loved one---should we believe them?
Here is something for Protestant Christians to think about. If the Apostle Paul had included a Marian Creed in one of his epistles, would you believe the eyewitness claims in that passage? Let's look at a hypothetical example:
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received:
That the Holy Virgin Mother intercedes for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that she was buried in Jerusalem, but when her grave was later opened, it was empty, and only her grave clothes remained.
She then appeared to Juan Diego on a hill in Mexico.
Then to Sister Catherine Luboure in Paris, to the Jewish convert Alphonse Ratisbonne in Rome, to Melanie Calvat and Maximim Giraud in France, eighteen times to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, and to Francisco Marto, Jacinta Marto, and Lucia Dos Santos in Fatima, Portugal.
In her final apparition to the children of Fatima, she caused many tens of thousands to see the sun appear to fall and spin like a wheel of fire, several times, as proof of her presence among them. In 1942, most of these eyewitnesses were still alive, though some had died.
Then she appeared in Beuaraing, Banneux, and Syracuse to more devout Catholics.
Last of all, as to one untimely born, she appeared also to me.
Virgin Mary apparition in Underpass.jpg
Superstitious people see what they want to see.
You see the Virgin Mary...I see a water stain.
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