Fantastic & (Almost) Unbelievable Phenomena in Old Reputable Sources: Is There Anything Comparable Since Then?

Professor Erlendur Haraldsson

There are eight miracles of the non-healing type mentioned in the New Testament, while another 28 concern healing. There can be little doubt that these miracles played a crucial role in the spread of Christianity. One can question if Christianity would have become a world religion without the miracles that are so prominently described in the New Testament.

Apart from healing, we find the creation of food (feeding the multitude), changing water into wine, and production of objects (fish with the coin in his mouth), calming the storm, light shining from Jesus and the cursing of the fig tree.

One miracle concerns the controlling of gravity, namely - walking on water. It is reported in the gospels of Matthew 14:22-32, Mark 6:47-52 and John 6:16-21.

Have we in modern times experienced anything comparable to the non-healing type miracles reported about Jesus? We have some evidence for such productions / materializations in modern times in the case of Sathya Sai Baba. However, it must be added that all these phenomena can and have been duplicated by professional magicians.

That aside, we do not find in the history of psychic phenomena, any claims of direct walking on water apart from that of Jesus. On the other hand, we have abundant cases of levitations among saints such as Joseph of Copertino (see chapter on levitations of saints by Thurston) as well as among mediums (such as Indridason and Home).

Marco Polo (1254-1324) reports in his Travels about the banquets taking place at the palace of Kublai Khan, the great Emperor of China. At banquets his cups are set before him [on a great buffet] some ten paces from his table, and filled with wine, or other good spiced liquors. When the Emperor desires to drink, the Tibetan monks, by the power of their enchantments, cause the cups to move from their place without being touched by anybody, and to present themselves to the Emperor! This everyone present may witness, and there are often times more than 10,000 persons thus present. It is a truth and no lie, Marco Polo adds. Marco Polo's account of his stay with the Emperor Kublai Khan is generally considered reliable.

Comparable cases - on a much smaller scale - from the physical mediumship of Indridi Indridason will be presented, such as when Sigmundur, one of Indridi's controls, was asked to move a hat from the head of a person to a nearby table. The hat disappeared from his head and appeared immediately on the table. When Sigmundur was asked to place the hat back on the person's head, that was immediately done. This was repeated immediately thereafter.

Modern psychical research has made it quite likely - or at least possible - that the observations of the writers of the New Testament and Marco Polo may have in fact taken place.

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