Show Me, God! I AM

By John S. Carpenter MSW LCSW

Think how often you have heard these questions and negative comments:I really have doubts that there is any God at all.Is going to church every week really necessary? Maybe just going on Easter and Christmas are good enough.Prayers seem unanswered, useless, and a waste of time.Are there really miracles--or can they usually be explained when thoroughly investigated?Why do we still talk about the Shroud of Turin when carbon-14 testing proved it was a fake?Angels and heaven are just feel-good fantasies to keep us from dreading death, right?Confession just seems like a way that Catholics can wipe the slate clean so they can go out and sin again.Adoration is a waste of time just sitting there in church doing nothing for an hour. What's the point?John Carpenter returns with his fourth book to address these doubts and misinformed ideas in a dynamic and educational manner. Utilizing defiant dialogues between an informed teacher and doubting students creates a lively debate that teaches truth and brings forth facts rather than opinions. Responses to the misinformed students come from medical, scientific, professionally investigated, and well-documented events. So if you have had any of these doubts or beliefs, you need to join the classroom and follow along in these enlightening debates! The actual truth may surprise you! What you learn might brighten your own spiritual path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886543421

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Show Me, God! I AM

John S. Carpenter MSW, LCSW

Copyright © 2022 John S. Carpenter MSW, LCSW

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

The researched evidence presented in these dialogues comes from the author’s previous books approved by the Catholic Church

ISBN 979-8-88654-341-4 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88654-342-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

References

About the Author

About the Author

Chapter 1 1

Chapter 2 12

Chapter 3 21

Chapter 4 30

Chapter 5 44

Chapter 6 53

Chapter 7 62

Chapter 8 70

Chapter 9 81

Chapter 10 95

Chapter 11 106

To my Ruthie, beloved soul mate.

You inspire me every day with your gentle, thoughtful love, unwavering support, and encouragement while suffering with grace and dignity with your own pain and illness.

You quietly saved my life, showed me true love and led me back to our God.

I love you.

Introduction

We live in difficult times where an interest in God seems useless, pointless, irrelevant, and a waste of time. That may sound harsh until you hear a younger generation laugh at you if you are religious. They adamantly propose, instead, that science can and has explained everything in our world. They claim that science brings sense, facts, explanations, and comfort in trying to understand our complex world. Bible stories start feeling like fairy tales or the stuff of fantasy like legendary tall tales to simply teach us how to behave better. These present generations believe that miracles are hoaxes that can be explained; prayer is a waste of time and believing in a fanciful, joyous afterlife and beautiful angels is ridiculous. And since many adults have drifted away from religion as well, they are of little help in teaching the younger generations anything helpful or useful. The world has become ugly and defiant toward Christianity. Many churches have declining attendance or are closing. Comments on the internet suggest that there is no evidence to prove that God is real or that prayer really works.

People often ask me what I will write about next. And I usually reply, I have no idea or any plan in mind. I sincerely had no clue what to write about. And then—like a bolt of lightning—a passionate fire is lit within me by the Holy Spirit, and I am ablaze with purpose again. At those times, I cannot stop writing until that passionate fire within me is satisfied with what I have created. I do this for you—for your soul—for your growth—and for your spiritual path. When I hear these defiant statements coming from mankind today, I know it is time to respond. Not with opinions and theories but with facts, science, and amazing details that support a supernatural and heavenly presence in our world today. That's right—I did say, "Science supporting a supernatural presence."

I decided to present these defiant dialogues as a means of taking today's stubborn and uninformed attitudes and responding with educational information to enlighten and teach the truth. Using medical examinations, scientific research, professional investigations, and well-documented events, the truth is presented in response to the defiant statements. By writing this book in defiant dialogue format, it will hopefully connect with both the doubter and the uninformed and educate them with specific responses to their stubborn attitudes.

I also wanted to bring some of the best information from my three educational books into these discussions, targeting a younger population between the ages of ten and thirty. This is a time span when learning the truth is so important before some adult attitudes or other influences distract young people from the real facts, research, and amazing history of mankind. With the defiant dialogue format, these discussions could be read aloud or acted out in youth groups, church retreats, classrooms, and on college campuses to literally involve these ages in this unique learning process. Of course, the same applies to any adult seminars, groups, or church activities! Please read these discussions slowly, feeling the emotions of the students as well as the careful, thoughtful responses by the teacher. You can also imagine that you are watching a play being acted out on stage, watching the drama gradually unfold for your enjoyment. Speed-reading will not work in this book!

Last, of all, I did not entitle this book, Show Me, God! because I live in the Show Me state of Missouri. Instead, it is because God is constantly showing us his miracles and reasons to believe in Him. But so many of us have been blind, deaf, and in denial of such truths. We have not been paying attention to the important information coming from professional investigations and scientific research that supports the supernatural presence of God. I fondly nickname this wonderful collection of educational gems Heaven's Greatest Hits. I sadly expect that the reader will find many of the defiant remarks very familiar that were made by the twenty-four students in this teacher's class. It is the truth, instead, that will be very unfamiliar for most readers.

References will be listed as (Source: page number). For example: (2:236)

Chapter 1

Atheism: Why Should We Believe There's a God?

Why Should We Believe There's a God?

Brenda. I don't know why we should believe in a God today.

Teacher. What do you mean?

Brenda. Well, Grandma keeps telling me that I need to believe in God. But I don't see any reason to.

Teacher. How come?

Brenda. Well, I can't see or feel any God around me. I don't hear from any God. So why should I believe in one?

Teacher. You love your cell phone, right?

Brenda. Oh yeah, I depend upon it!

Teacher. Do you see the signals being transmitted back and forth to the cell phone tower?

Brenda. No.

Teacher. Do you see the way it transmits to your Wi-Fi in your home?

Brenda. Well, no.

Teacher. Have you seen the Internet or the Cloud that you save things to?

Brenda. No—I always wondered where all that stuff exists.

Teacher. And yet you believe in all these things that you cannot see?

Brenda. Well, yes, I would have to because I am told that's how they work.

Teacher. Yet if you are told that God, whom you cannot see, works in our lives and created this planet and all its creatures, you choose not to believe?

Brenda. Science explains all that stuff through evolution and biology. I can see and touch those things that explain how living things grow and develop.

Teacher. So you believe that man evolved from monkeys?

Brenda. Sure! It makes perfect sense when it occurs over millions of years.

Teacher. Then why do we still have monkeys? Why are they still around?

Brenda. Well, I don't really know.

Teacher. Evolution is a theory—not something you can see and touch.

Brenda. True.

Teacher. Yet you again choose to believe in something that you cannot see or touch?

Brenda. Yes—I do because it makes sense.

Teacher. So you have faith in believing in something that you cannot see?

Brenda. Well, yeah, I would have to say yes.

Teacher. So then, it would also be okay for me to believe and have faith in something that I cannot see?

Brenda. Yes—but you have no evidence for what you believe.

Teacher. You are saying that you have evidence for the evolutionary process?

Brenda. Yes, of course, you can see it all around us.

Teacher. No, you don't have evidence. You only have a theory of how things work.

Brenda. Well, you don't have any evidence either!

Teacher. If I believe that life on this planet is too complex, intricate, and amazing to have simply evolved from single cells, then I may choose to believe that a higher power, God, created and began these things. I have plenty of evidence that the complexities of living creatures, plants, and organisms are truly miraculous and would absolutely require a higher intelligence to create such a world as ours.

Brenda. But that is just your theory and your belief and your claim to evidence also.

Teacher. Yes, it is—except that I am right.

Brenda. Whoa! No way! You are going to have to prove that to me!

Teacher. According to Genesis 2:7 in the Bible, God formed man from the clay of the earth, and he breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. What if I could give you an example like this that scientists have studied?

Brenda. What? What do you mean? What kind of an example could there be?

Teacher. Where an inanimate, non-living object suddenly comes alive.

Brenda. That's not possible—no, no, no! prove this to me!

Teacher. With God, anything is possible. Statues around the world have been weeping human tears, bleeding human blood, and perspiring human sweat, as well as other human processes that indicate life is present.

Brenda. I've never heard of that. They must be fakes. Otherwise, it would become the top headline on our world news!

Teacher. You're right—it should be the top headline for the world. But the media has admitted that it has difficulty presenting such information that cannot be explained. It tends to create confusion and anxiety when unexplained.

Brenda. So then, they must be fakes that were carelessly investigated.

Teacher. Quite the contrary. As soon as this woman brought home a plaster statue of Jesus, it began shedding tears. She immediately alerted family members, neighbors, and investigators, who all witnessed the same strange phenomenon in the remote town of Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1995.

Brenda. Well, how did they investigate this?

Teacher. The authorities positioned a video surveillance camera observing the statue that would run continuously twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In this manner, they could