Interesting newsclips from the past that have fascinated Christians.
These interesting news items are selected from many that have appeared over more than a decade. For up-to-date news items on topics of interest to Bible-believing Christians, visit our Newsdesk.
News that fascinated!
Tests show prayer cures illness
Scientists seem to have shown what Christians have always known — that praying to God to heal someone may get that person cured. Dr. Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist from the British Institute of Psychiatry, told 400 top scientists at the University of Salford in England about studies that showed that patients who were prayed for had much better recovery rates, even though they didn't know they were being prayed for.
One study looked at the effects of prayer on almost 400 cardiac patients. Patients were not told whether they were being prayed for. Half were prayed for by strangers who had only the patients' names. Those prayed for had fewer complications, fewer cases of pneumonia, needed less drug treatment, and left hospital earlier.
A study at Columbia University in New York asked people in
Australia, Canada, and the United States to pray for IVF patients
in Korea. Among the half who were prayed for, the success rate
doubled. Dr. Fenwick said, “These are very good studies,
properly done. Subjects who are unaware they are being prayed for
can be significantly helped.”
(The Sunday Mail, September 21, 2003
(p. 47).)
Love thy neighbor: You'll live longer
Giving can help you live longer, according to research from the University of Michigan.
Psychologist Stephanie Brown of the university's Institute for Social Research studied 423 older couples for five years. She found that older people who lend a hand to friends, neighbors or relatives, even if it is only helping around the house, reduce their risk of dying by nearly 60 per cent compared to those who never offer help to anyone.
“Our results strongly suggest that giving makes a difference in terms of health,” Brown said. But what she found most astonishing was that one person in four said they had done nothing to help anyone else during the entire year. They hadn't offered to feed anyone's goldfish, water someone else's potplants while they were away, or help a friend or relative. Even a simple act like picking up their neighbor's newspaper would have allowed them to answer in the affirmative, Brown said.
Jesus said the second great commandment was, “love thy neighbour as thyself.” There seems to be no end to the benefits of following biblical advice.
( www.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DyeHard/dyehard.html 2002)
Religious teens get into less trouble
Teens who attend religious services at least once a week, or who said they have deeply help spiritual values, get into less legal and other trouble than other adolescents, a new study has found.
The findings come from the National Study of Youth and Religion by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. They support earlier research, even though most academics have ignored the religious connection. Study director, Dr. Christian Smith, said: "We found that kids who go to church regularly or who say that religion is important in their lives are much less likely to be involved in various forms of substance abuse, get into trouble, commit crimes, are less involved in violence."
They have fewer school problems and fewer difficulties with their parents. Dr. Smith also said they are "more likely to behave safely, try to stay healthy, and be involved in volunteering, sports, and community activities."
(www.youthandreligion.org, October 2002)
New evidence for Christ's Resurrection
A professor of philosophy has used a probability formula to weigh evidence for and against Jesus Christ's Resurrection, and says the probability of the Resurrection comes out to be a whopping 97 per cent!
At a conference on ethics and belief at Yale University in April 2002, a Greek Orthodox professor of philosophy from Oxford University, Richard Swinburne, used a probability formula known as Bayes's theorem to assign values to factors like the probability that there is a God, the nature of Jesus' behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after his death.
Professor Swinburne's calculations allegedly show that the probability that the Resurrection really happened is a staggeringly high 97 per cent. Many other academics have weighed into the defence of the Christian faith, The New York Times said. Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, noted, "It would be accurate to say that it's a growth movement."
Christians of course do not need probability theory to convince them of the Resurrection. But this certainly is a good point to throw back at atheists and skeptics who say there is no chance that the Resurrection took place.
(The New York Times, May 11, 2002.)
Add years to your life: Go to church!
It's official! If you regularly attend church you are 29 per
cent more likely to live longer. An analysis of dozens of
previous studies that suggested longer lifespans for churchgoers
was done by Michael McCullough of the National Institute for
Healthcare Research. The studies he analyzed covered nearly
126,000 people. Following his report published in Health
Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological
Association, McCullough said: “We think this analysis
pretty much establishes that this correlation of religious
involvement and mortality exists, but also points to the need for
a lot more research to determine just how and why it has an
effect.”
(The Washington Times, June 5, 2000.)
Churchgoers live longer
Churchgoers live up to seven years longer than non-attenders,
a University of Texas study has found. Researchers found that
life expectancy rose when the number of church services attended
increased. Those who attended every week had a life expectancy of
82 years. This dropped to 79 years for those who attended less
than once a week, and for non-attenders it dropped to about 75
years.
(The Sunday Mail, September 26, 1999 (p.
55).)
Search for living dinosaur
A British-led team is setting off to the Congo in Africa in
search of a creature that may be a dinosaur. Stories of the
animal, which local tribes call Mokele-mbembe, have been known
for many years. The creature is described as a reddish-brown
part-elephant part-dragon with a snake-like neck. It is said to
live in jungle swamps. Local pigmies reportedly caught and ate a
Mokele-mbembe in 1956. Expedition member Adam Davies admitted
that Mokele-mbembe may take some finding. “The jungle is so
dense a man can trek for miles and be lucky to see a bird. But
there is just too much evidence for everyone to be
wrong.”
(The Sunday Mail, June 20, 1999.)
Church attendance lowers blood pressure
Regular churchgoers who also prayed daily or studied the Bible
daily were 40 per cent less likely to have high blood pressure
than those who did not, researchers at Duke University in North
Carolina found. The team did a six-year study on 2391 people who
were aged at least 65 years. David Larson, of the US National
Institute for Healthcare Research, said: “It shows church
attendance is better for your health. If they relied on TV or
radio it isn't as beneficial.” The study also revealed that
elderly churchgoers had better mental health and were less likely
to have high degrees of a protein associated with age-related
illness.
(The Courier-Mail, August 13, 1998 (p.
3).)
Bible influences US company heads
A survey of leading American company heads and university
presidents found that the book that most influenced them was the
Bible. The survey invited 1200 university presidents and 1000
heads of prominent companies to say which book had most affected
their lives. One in four said the Bible, one in 25 said Charles
Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and one in 50 said the
Book of Mormon. No other books were mentioned twice.
(The Cairns Post, June 7, 1990 (p.
11).)
Atheist’s “obscene Bible” ban disputed
An atheist in Brooklyn tried to have the Bible banned from
school libraries because he said it was “obscene”.
The atheist said the Bible was “lewd, indecent, and
violent” and it should not be allowed in school libraries.
He said it contains material on subjects such as wine, incest,
nakedness, and concubines. The assistant superintendent of the
Brooklyn Center district at the time agreed that the Bible does
depict some poor human conditions, but he added, “just as
the newspaper attempts to accurately report the evils of
humankind as well as the good, the Bible apears to report about
real people, real problems, and real history.”
(The Christian News, October 5, 1992 (p.
2).)
Secret music code in Bible?
The melodies of the psalms and prose texts that were sung at
the temple in Jerusalem have been preserved in the accents of the
Hebrew Old Testament text, a French composer has claimed. Music
theorist Suzanne Haik-Vantoura said there is much textual,
musical, and historical evidence to indicate that the melodies of
the psalms have been preserved in the Masoretic Text. Others have
suggested this in the past, but Haik-Vantoura has come up with
the first decipherment to account fully for all the notation in
every verse. Today's manuscripts are said to have preserved the
musical tradition so faithfully that no anomaly had been found in
the thousands of verses deciphered.
(Archaeology and Biblical Research, Autumn 1989
(pp. 113–122).)
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