Miracles Or Madness?
By Danny Penman
The Daily Mail
8-26-6
News of the 'miracle' spread around the world with lightning speed.
A Jewish fish-cutter in New York was busy slaughtering a batch of carp when one of them started shouting apocalyptic warnings to him in Hebrew. 'The fish shouted that everyone needed to account for themselves because the end is near,' says Zalmen Rosen, the fish-cutter.
The fish told Zalmen to pray and study the Torah, before identifying itself as the soul of a local man who had died the previous year.
After a moment of stunned silence all hell broke loose. Mr Rosen's co-worker Louis Nivelo was convinced the talking fish was the work of Satan, and ran around screaming: 'It's the devil! The devil is here!' before collapsing into a pile of packing crates.
Zalmen panicked and tried to kill the fish with a machete-sized knife. But the carp bucked so wildly that he succeeded only in slicing a huge gash in his own thumb, and had to be rushed to hospital.
The fish flopped off the counter * still muttering in Hebrew - and was butchered by Louis Nivelo.
Word quickly spread that a miracle had occurred in New York. It sparked a heated debate around the world. Was it a genuine miracle or just the ramblings of two rather fevered imaginations? After all, to those brought up with biblical tales of Moses parting the Red Sea, the story of a talking fish hardly counts as a miracle.
Would God really reveal His presence and deliver his prophesies through a fish destined for the freezer? It seems unlikely, but many think God is choosing to reveal His presence with increasingly surreal miracles tailored for the media age.
'I believe that in a cynical and sceptical world, signposts for the human spirit must be luminous and unmistakable,' says the renowned psychic Uri Geller.
'Subtle hints to the soul go unnoticed. The message has to be delivered in lurid capitals and bellowed through a megaphone.
'If messages through a fish seem an eccentric way for God to communicate, it is important to remember the higher intelligence has been attempting to communicate with us for thousands of years through more conventional and low-key means, such as books. So a fish makes an excellent loudspeaker for a Torah reading.'
Author Irene Thompson, whose book It's A Miracle is published this month, believes these revelatory events are becoming increasingly tailored to the needs of ordinary people.
'They aren't just rare, dramatic, biblical and life-changing experiences,' she says. 'They are more likely to happen to ordinary people going about their daily lives.
'There is usually no logical explanation for why a miracle has happened, a life was saved or a patient cured. Even if an explanation can be attributed to natural phenomena, the timing and combination of factors influencing the miracle suggest the intervention of God or a higher power.'
By Danny Penman
The Daily Mail
8-26-6
News of the 'miracle' spread around the world with lightning speed.
A Jewish fish-cutter in New York was busy slaughtering a batch of carp when one of them started shouting apocalyptic warnings to him in Hebrew. 'The fish shouted that everyone needed to account for themselves because the end is near,' says Zalmen Rosen, the fish-cutter.
The fish told Zalmen to pray and study the Torah, before identifying itself as the soul of a local man who had died the previous year.
After a moment of stunned silence all hell broke loose. Mr Rosen's co-worker Louis Nivelo was convinced the talking fish was the work of Satan, and ran around screaming: 'It's the devil! The devil is here!' before collapsing into a pile of packing crates.
Zalmen panicked and tried to kill the fish with a machete-sized knife. But the carp bucked so wildly that he succeeded only in slicing a huge gash in his own thumb, and had to be rushed to hospital.
The fish flopped off the counter * still muttering in Hebrew - and was butchered by Louis Nivelo.
Word quickly spread that a miracle had occurred in New York. It sparked a heated debate around the world. Was it a genuine miracle or just the ramblings of two rather fevered imaginations? After all, to those brought up with biblical tales of Moses parting the Red Sea, the story of a talking fish hardly counts as a miracle.
Would God really reveal His presence and deliver his prophesies through a fish destined for the freezer? It seems unlikely, but many think God is choosing to reveal His presence with increasingly surreal miracles tailored for the media age.
'I believe that in a cynical and sceptical world, signposts for the human spirit must be luminous and unmistakable,' says the renowned psychic Uri Geller.
'Subtle hints to the soul go unnoticed. The message has to be delivered in lurid capitals and bellowed through a megaphone.
'If messages through a fish seem an eccentric way for God to communicate, it is important to remember the higher intelligence has been attempting to communicate with us for thousands of years through more conventional and low-key means, such as books. So a fish makes an excellent loudspeaker for a Torah reading.'
Author Irene Thompson, whose book It's A Miracle is published this month, believes these revelatory events are becoming increasingly tailored to the needs of ordinary people.
'They aren't just rare, dramatic, biblical and life-changing experiences,' she says. 'They are more likely to happen to ordinary people going about their daily lives.
'There is usually no logical explanation for why a miracle has happened, a life was saved or a patient cured. Even if an explanation can be attributed to natural phenomena, the timing and combination of factors influencing the miracle suggest the intervention of God or a higher power.'
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