WHEN MIRACLE STORIES COLLAPSE UNDER SCRUTINY (PART I)

“Before We Start Printing Resurrection Certificates”

By Akin Ojumu

In the famous words of Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), the English writer and polymath:

“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Or, as the saying is sometimes rendered in modern form:

“Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of an impending hanging.”

Extreme urgency has a remarkable way of concentrating the human mind. As I have grown older, I have become increasingly conscious of the brevity of life. I know that I do not have forever on this earth. Every morning I wake up still breathing, I count it as another blessing from God.

And, to the best of my ability, I want to spend whatever time I have left concentrating on what I consider to be of ultimate importance:

Our eternal destiny.

That realization is what informs much of what I write.

My desire is not only to live in a manner that pleases the One who saved and redeemed me, but also, within the small sphere of influence God has given me, to help others do the same.

And I know of no better way to do that than to devote myself to understanding the Word of God and sharing whatever knowledge I have gained with others.

This is particularly urgent in our day because the Church is overflowing with biblically uninformed people who have been sold a bill of goods by charlatans, religious entrepreneurs, and Gospel hucksters who exploit biblical ignorance for personal enrichment and spiritual influence.

Apart from writing these commentaries, one of the ways I try to engage this problem is by interacting with people on social media—challenging and critiquing the teachings of false teachers who exercise enormous influence over their followers.

Naturally, I receive considerable pushback.

Ironically, much of it comes from the very people I am trying to help. They insult me. They curse me. They mock me. They accuse me of attacking their “man of God.”

But every so often, amid all the hostility, someone reaches out who is genuinely curious, genuinely concerned, and genuinely searching for the truth.

This commentary grew out of one such encounter.

The exchange began after I commented on an Instagram video in which Paul Enenche—Mr. Crutches himself—was receiving the testimony of a young man who claimed that he died after drinking cold water following a seven-day dry fast.

A man who read my comment subsequently contacted me privately. For the purpose of this commentary, we shall call him Sopater, son of Pyrrhus from Berea.

Before getting to his question, however, let me reproduce the comment that prompted him to contact me.

I wrote:

“So, according to this testimony, the young man died.

“Dead.

“Then, somehow, he saw Paul Enenche—eyes red, microphone in hand—calling him back to life.

“Really?

“Before we start printing resurrection certificates, perhaps we could ask a few embarrassingly ordinary questions.

“Where are the witnesses who confirmed that this young man was actually dead? “Who examined him? “Which doctor certified his death? “At what hospital? “What were his vital signs? “How long was he supposedly dead?

“Where is the medical documentation establishing that this was actually a death followed by a resurrection rather than a medical episode subsequently embellished into a miracle testimony?

“These are not unreasonable questions. They are the bare minimum when someone publicly claims that a human being died and was raised from the dead.

“And then there is the medical explanation.

“Paul Enenche is himself medically trained. So, one would like to know: in which medical school class was he taught that drinking cold water after a seven-day fast can simply ‘shut down the body system’ and cause death?

“Physiology? “Biochemistry? “Pathology? “Internal Medicine? “Or was this particular medical principle revealed in a course unavailable to the rest of the medical profession?

“Extraordinary claims do not become credible merely because they are delivered from a Church platform with dramatic music, emotional narration, and an enthusiastic congregation.

“A resurrection claim requires evidence. If the man was clinically dead, establish it. Produce the records. Identify the medical personnel. Provide independent witnesses. Allow the claim to be investigated.

“Otherwise, what we have is not a verified resurrection. We have a story. And this is precisely the problem with the miracle culture surrounding celebrity preachers like Paul Enenche.

“Spectacular testimonies are proclaimed before enormous audiences, yet the evidence necessary to substantiate them somehow never receives the same publicity.

“The microphone is available. The cameras are available. The testimony is available. The dramatic details are available. But independent corroboration?

“Suddenly everybody becomes shy.

 

“This is how religious credulity is cultivated. The congregation is conditioned to treat questioning as unbelief, skepticism as rebellion, and verification as an insult to God.

“And once that mentality takes hold, virtually any story can be presented as supernatural proof.

“Someone collapsed? Resurrection. Someone recovered? Miracle. Someone dreamed about the preacher? Divine confirmation.

“No documentation required. No independent investigation permitted. Just believe.

But Christianity does not require Christians to switch off their brains at the church door.

“If you tell the world that a dead man came back to life, do not become offended when the world asks the most obvious question:

“How do you know he was dead?

“Until that question is answered with credible evidence, spare us the resurrection victory lap.

“A microphone is not a defibrillator. A testimony is not a death certificate. And an extraordinary story repeated from a pulpit does not magically become an established fact.

“If you swallow such claims merely because your favorite preacher said them, the problem is no longer lack of evidence. It is that you have decided evidence does not matter.

“So, the young man died, and then he saw Paul Enenche with his eyes red and holding a microphone call back to life.

“Really? Where are the witnesses of the young man's death. Who was the doctor who certified him dead?

“As someone who graduated from Medical School, in which class was Paul Enenche taught that drinking cold water after a 7-day fast cam shutdown the body system and lead to death? Did he learn that in the Physiology or Biochemistry class?

“It is by staging testimonies like this one that Gospel hucksters like Enenche reveal their true colors. To keep their congregations and followers in a perpetual state of mesmerism, they have to continue to manufacture miracles that cannot be corroborated or verified.

“And if you believe this cock and bull story, you are of all people most to be pitied.”

It was that comment that prompted Sopater, son of Pyrrhus from Berea, to contact me.

He wrote:

“Hi, I saw your reply to Dr Enenche testimony of the guy that fasted dry seven days and then drank cold water. I am really scared for the Church sha.”

I replied:

“Yes, we should be deeply concerned for biblically uninformed Christians who entrust themselves to the spiritual leadership of men like Paul Enenche.

“This is not a trivial disagreement over preaching styles, Church traditions, or denominational preferences.

“When people lack sufficient knowledge of Scripture to test what they are being taught, they become vulnerable to error dressed up as revelation and falsehood delivered with spiritual authority.

“Souls are at stake. When a preacher repeatedly distorts Scripture and his followers accept his words without examining them against the Word of God, the consequences can be eternally serious.

“That is precisely why Scripture commands believers to test what they hear rather than surrender their discernment to any preacher, prophet, apostle, bishop, Daddy G.O., or ‘man of God.’

“Your eternal destiny is far too important to outsource your biblical discernment to another man.”

Sopater then raised another question.

He wondered whether perhaps the testimony could still be true because, as people often say:

“God works in mysterious ways.”

He wrote:

“Okay, Sir. But could it be true since God works in mysterious ways? He says our ways are not his ways, abi?”

That question gets us to the heart of the matter. Because whenever sensational religious claims are subjected to scrutiny, this is often where the conversation ends up.

Someone asks for evidence. And somebody else responds: “But God can do anything.”

Of course He can. But that is not the question.

In Part II, we will examine the crucial difference between believing in an omnipotent God and believing every miracle story told from a Church platform.

And then we will come to one rather awkward detail about this particular resurrection testimony. A detail involving the mysterious multiplication of fasting days.