Replication in Faith: A Crucial Step to Truth

The importance of replication in determining truth is discussed in the context of scientific method and biblical principles.

Replication is a crucial step in verifying the accuracy of information and separating truth from error.

The Bible concept of two or three witnesses is used to illustrate the principle of replication.

The three Synoptic Gospels provide an example of replication in the biblical account of Jesus' teachings.

The Replication Have you ever heard of something called scientific method? It's how scientists arrive at truth about almost anything. It includes a practice called replication. Many people fail to appreciate just how important this practice is. It is one of the greatest tools the world has ever known for discerning truth from error. Here is how replication works. No matter what anyone says, if it cannot be replicated, it should not be trusted. And the more consistently it can be replicated, the more it can be trusted. This reflects the Bible concept of every testimony being confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses. Hebrew courts, for example, could not execute a killer if there was only one witness. There was too much risk of an innocent man being killed in a situation like that. So they insisted on getting a second witness to verify the first before execution would take place. I said much about that principle in a video called, Two Witnesses, which you can watch by clicking the link in the description below or in the video card up above. This same principle of replication is there in the four Gospels, But especially in the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke repeatedly echoed each other, word for word, when they recorded some of the greatest teachings of Jesus. No other teacher in the Bible, or indeed in all of human history, has had such a reliable history of replication in what they taught. We have a video on this channel which explains the amazing mystery of the three Synoptic Gospels. The synoptic gospels themselves contain overwhelming evidence that they were not copied from each other, at the same time that they are amazingly exact replicas of each other, word for word the same here and there throughout each of those three gospels. You will also find a link to that video in the description below and in the video card up above. It explains why this is considered one of the greatest literary mysteries in the world. We often fail to appreciate just how important replication is in determining what to believe. At this time in human history, when fraudsters can pop up almost anywhere and with the help of such things as Photoshop and video editing skills, they can fake almost anything, we need to learn how to spot them. Now, the most reliable sources are usually going to be those who say much the same thing as what their own critics are saying. That is the highest form of replication. In scientific circles, they call that peer review, when two sides of the same argument agree on what they have learned. I want to apply this to mainstream media. The various newspaper syndicates and broadcasting corporations do a lot of unethical things. But each broadcaster stands guard over all the others, in an effort to call them out if they say things that are clearly not true. The news sources about whom we should be most wary are those who pop up out of nowhere, asking you to question the consistency in what all the others are saying, while at the same time, asking you to believe them, on the grounds that only they are telling the truth. Don't believe it. It's a thousand times harder to get ten newspapers to agree on a single fact than it is to get one loose cannon to agree with himself about any wild claim he wants to make. So, where the mainstream media tends to agree, you have a form of replication that is pretty reliable. And this principle works even when organizations and individuals are known to be unreliable in other areas. On the whole, the general public is too quick to believe things we hear just once, in preference to some of the most basic truths which have been confirmed by thousands if not millions of people over many years I want to relate all of this to one particular research study that apparently proved hydroxychloroquine to be dramatically successful in a group of hospitals run by the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit Michigan early in 2020 The study showed that mortality rates dropped by as much as 50% when patients were given doses of a malarial drug called hydroxychloroquine. Nevertheless, after a lot of excitement, the study was quietly buried by the Henry Ford people, along with an announcement that they would not be making any public comments about it. The conspiracy theory was that powerful pharmaceutical companies must have forced or bribed the Henry Ford health system into killing the study. So the research data is still being quoted by believers in hydroxychloroquine in an effort to convince us that people are dying all over the world for lack of this wonder drug. How much truth is there in that claim? Before I say anything more about the Henry Ford research, let me explain something about researchers in general. Tens of thousands of medical researchers around the world faithfully go about their jobs year after year, hunting for cures and treatments that will bring healing to the world. Every one of them must entertain hopes that they may be the one who will discover the next big thing. They all use the science available to them to come up with good theories, and then they test their theories out. Most of those theories simply do not work. It must be very depressing. But there are intervening factors which can lift research hopes even when nothing is really happening. Some patients will improve, for example, just because they are hopeful that the experimental drug will solve their problem. That is called the placebo effect. Placebos are pills or other treatments which closely resemble the actual treatment that is being tested. Part of the group of people being tested is given placebos, so that it can be determined how much of the improvement, under treatment with the experimental drug, came as a result of people just believing that they would improve. Then there are other factors that can create misleading statistics. One group may include more people who are in better health to begin with, and thus less likely to die or have adverse effects. There are many similar extenuating circumstances, and it is almost impossible to eliminate all of them. Interpreting data can also be tricky, especially if the researcher is biased towards getting proof of their hypothesis, which is true of virtually all researchers, who wouldn't want to be successful. And if the research is being sponsored by someone who stands to benefit from a certain result, that can prejudice things as well, like happened when cigarette companies sponsored research to determine whether smoking caused lung cancer. But the answer to all of this lies in replication. Change the sponsors. Change the researchers. Change the environment and all other factors which may have influenced the outcome, and see if you still get the same results from the same medication. And that is exactly what the medical fraternity did with the Henry Ford experiment. There had already been a previous hydroxychloroquine study done with 25 hospitals in New York, which the Henry Ford people referenced in their study. The previous study showed absolutely no difference after giving patients hydroxychloroquine. The only reason Henry Ford researchers could give for the difference was that they only worked with patients who were given hydroxychloroquine within two hours of arriving at the hospital, whereas the New York study counted people who had been there for as much as 48 hours before receiving treatment. But that, of course, was not enough to explain a whopping 50% drop in mortality for Henry Ford patients against a big fat zero in New York. Obviously something was not right and medical scientists everywhere started asking difficult questions The New York hospitals did not withdraw their report whereas Henry Ford did More experiments were done, and the results replicated what had been reported in New York. It was not long before the scientific community became convinced that something was seriously wrong with the Henry Ford report. It could not be replicated. No one pointed fingers or accused anyone of fraud, but they did come to ignore the study as unreliable. It was a huge source of embarrassment to the Henry Ford health system. Can you see how sensible it was for the scientific community to do that? Conspiracy theorists around the world do not like this insistence that their experiments and data must be replicable. Remember, scientists are humans too. If you had a theory that sounded really good and you could produce convincing arguments and overwhelming evidence of a correlation, your hopes of being rich and famous would shoot up dramatically. But if other scientists could not get the same results, you would feel deeply disappointed. Maybe even like you had been cheated out of something that would have dramatically changed your life. It's not theory, you might shout, as so many are doing today. It's fact. I proved it with my research project. But, in the world of science, it stays theory for a very long time. And, in this case, if it really was fact, then why weren't other scientists able to replicate it? It's all part of a conspiracy, you might further shout. They're all jealous. They're trying to suppress my findings. Drug companies, governments and the media would all be accused of conspiring to rob you of the accolades that you felt you deserved. This is what we have happening right now, with regard to a lot of other COVID studies. Many scientists are shouting that their research had reached conclusions that other scientists, many more scientists than the ones complaining, had not been able to replicate. And if the rebels cannot get the support of other scientists because their data was never replicated, then they will turn to the largely uneducated masses, and show them facts and figures that have been carefully extracted from what everyone else found. And the masses will be convinced that the government, the media, the drug companies, and all the other scientists are conspiring against these poor, misunderstood non-conformists. But it all comes down to whether or not other scientists can replicate what the complainers have done. Learning the importance of replication is a great tool in guarding against deception. Every Christian should learn to use it well, and it is one of the reasons why I, as a Christian, am pushing so heavily with regard to this understanding of scientific method. It's all about learning how to rightly divide the truth out of so much controversy. It doesn't just relate to science. Take the so-called miracle workers in a lot of churches. These are preachers who claim to be able to supernaturally heal people, like Jesus did. Is there even one of them who is willing to be tested scientifically, with before and after evidence? It's not enough to say, well Jesus did it and he said we could do it too. Can they actually replicate what Jesus did? You see, Jesus did not instruct the people to claim they were healed, when they hadn't yet been healed. He didn't go through a series of interrogations about the level of pain between 1 and 10. He did not have temporary healings that just came through emotional hype at the time when they were prayed for. In fact, there is nothing about the way that Jesus healed which can be replicated in these modern-day so-called healing ministries. It all smoke and mirrors lying signs and wonders It was not easy for me to accept that the healing ministry of Jesus is not being replicated anywhere in the world today I don say it with glee I wanted to see miracles myself and I was disappointed that it was not happening in my own life either But I looked more closely at the things that Jesus taught, and I discovered that He Himself said that evil people look for miracles. Wow! I had never heard that being taught by the Signs and Wonders crew! Perhaps there was widespread misunderstanding about what actually happened when Jesus was here, and about what Jesus actually taught. So I looked more closely. In particular, I heard Jesus telling people that miracles would follow something. His emphasis was not on telling us to do miracles. He was telling us to preach the gospel, in all the world. If miracles were going to happen, they would come later, according to Jesus. They would follow. But I could not find people who were willing to do the preaching part. We all wanted to be healed, but no one wanted to leave the comforts of life inside nice church buildings and follow Jesus out into the real world, preaching the gospel to every creature. There's a link to a video called Miracles in the description below and at the end of this video, which explains this in more detail. Jesus taught that, if we would stop working for money and start working for Him, He would feed us. That was an entirely different kind of miracle. The miracle of God's provision. Could that kind of miracle be replicated today? I found that it could, and that it did not just work for me. I found that it worked for others as well. And it worked in all sorts of situations and circumstances. There are some aspects of the experiment which need to be observed, however. We need to actually do something to contribute toward making a better world. That is, we need to be actively building the kingdom of God and His righteousness, if we want to expect provision from God. We also need to do our best not to worry, to stay calm and trust God to guide us. We need to be content with just the basics, food and clothing. In fact, I put together a list of various criteria for replicating the experience, and I called it, Living by Faith How to Do It. It's required reading if you want to replicate this experiment. There's a link to that article at the end of this video too, and in the description below. The more I experimented with this, the more my faith in the authenticity of the teachings of Jesus grew. In many cases, it was only after I started trying to follow the instructions that Jesus has given us about living by faith, that a few genuine miracles did begin to happen. But even then, I found that they were exceptional. and that we are generally supposed to keep them secret. There is yet another video that deals with that concept. It's called, Tell No Man. Check that one out too, in the description below and at the end of this video. If only professing Christians could grasp the powerful implications of replication as a way of arriving at the truth in any situation. It has so many practical applications, but overall it can help us to rightly divide the Word of Truth in a world where there is so much deception. Oh yeah, and there is a link to yet another video called, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth. Watch that one too. There will be a link in the description below and at the end of this video. 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