This question always interests me. There were some times, like in Mozambique, when an entire village “verifying” that the person was deaf was pretty much enough for me. After all, why would they lie to perfect strangers? The more practical answer, though, lies in the understanding that I made this entire film by myself, with little to no money. I basically had enough money to get somewhere and get a cheap hotel room. I didn’t have the luxury of follow up interviews, figuring out where local hospitals were, getting translators to talk to the doctors, etc… Sometimes, I just had a few minutes with someone, as was the case with Francis (the dead guy). So quite often, I simply didn’t have the ability to do so. I had to take their word for it, and I only included people in my film who I honestly believed. I talked to some who I didn’t believe. God gave us discernment for a reason! The truth is, I have no problem with people wrestling with this stuff—I did. There have been many people who have documented these things, but I have found that for the truly skeptical (and by that I mean, people who come into this debate with hostile preconceptions), no amount of “documentation” is going to be enough. If this is real, it changes everything, and many people don’t want everything to change in their lives, so they put up walls in the guise of “healthy skepticism”. I did. Unfortunately, the only instance of skepticism accounted in the Bible (Thomas) wasn’t deemed very “healthy” by Jesus. Are there wolves in sheep’s clothing? Of course. But there are also many, many sheep in God’s clothing. There is a difference between skepticism and discernment.
-Darren Wilson
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