The Dartmouth Miracle: Proof God Still Heals Today Ep 16

I waited two weeks and I was speaking during the senior speaker series. And I just remember as I was sharing my testimony, I'm just looking at the crowd and I just see mouths dropping, eyes wide. Welcome to the Bennett Broadcast. I'm Matt Bennett. Thanks for joining me as we explore what it means to seek the Lord wholeheartedly, to grow strong in faith, and to be fully devoted to God in today's world. When we do, He will pour out His Spirit and bring revival like never before. All right, Matt Bennett with the Bennett Broadcast, and we got a special guest today. And this is about a miracle at Dartmouth. And I'm thrilled to have Nathaniel Miller with me. Welcome, Nathaniel. Hello. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, really, really appreciate it. And I will ask Nathaniel if he'd be on the broadcast because he had an amazing healing that happened to him. And it contributed to his coming to faith in Christ. He now lives in New York City. He grew up here and is now here in New York City. Back. And this happened just a number of months ago while he was still a student at Dartmouth. And the Lord gives us the chance to testify to his grace, to his power. I want to read a couple of verses on this as Nathaniel then tells aspects of a story. Because it says, for instance, in John 20, 30 to 31, Jesus says, or it says of Jesus, Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name. This is the very thing that's happened here by the grace of God. And there are other examples outside the Gospels of this happening. Take, for instance, Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. They're in Iconium and it says, God bore witness. This is 14.3. God bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. And so God is testifying that the gospel message is true by performing miracles. There's also the vivid example in Acts chapter three, when Peter healing the lame beggar and it causes a big stir, people gather around, he presents the gospel there. Also, there's Acts, I mean, Hebrews 2, 4, where it says, God, by signs and wonders and various miracles, Jesus' life, the gospel was testified as genuine as real. So this is part of how God brings people to faith. It's not the only means. It's not how I came to faith in Christ and a lot of others. It's not through faith. seeing miracles happen, getting our attention, and turning our attention to the Gospel and the Lord. But for some it is, and it's testified in the Bible. And we live in a skeptical age, and I think it's really helpful to put out examples from time to time of God doing extraordinary work so we can know and we can believe that this is real. I also want to say too, as a disclaimer, of course there are fakes out there, and we have to realize that. This is even prophesied in the New Testament. that there will people come forward with false signs, false wonders, in order to lure people astray. So we've got to be discerning and see if miracles really are true, especially if someone puts them as an authority figure in your life as well. These miracles happen to me, therefore you need to listen to me. Now watch out on that for sure and test all things the scriptures teach. But that being said, there are real miracles, which is really, really great. Again, Nathaniel, maybe tell us just a minute or two about your growing up in New York City. So I grew up in New York City and I attended a church. And it was a church that was not particularly deep in the word. And we did not follow the Bible as closely as we should have. And so then I arrived at Christian Union at Dartmouth. I arrived at Dartmouth before Christian Union was established, actually. Well, it was being reformed. But, yeah, that's right. It had been there for some years, and there was a little problem. But it was being reconstituted. But we never left. Yeah. And I lost my faith. in my freshman and sophomore year. And at one point I actually said that I was 80% sure that God did not exist. And I considered myself an atheist. And now fast forward to today, I've just experienced this really special miracle, which has been really incredible for me. Right, and we've talked about this too, and people use different language for where they are and how they see the world. And the church that you grew up in in New York City, I know this church, and I think you give it some generous terms, that's my view, I would call it a non-church, given the doctrines that they teach and don't teach. I don't see it that way, but that's fine. And then also too, I would say that you believed in the doctrines of the faith growing up, some key doctrines, but I don't think you would say you experienced a new birth or were born again. And that happened here within the last year. And so at least by New Testament terms, you believed in Christian doctrines before you went to some Christian doctrines before you went to Dartmouth, but you weren't born again and therefore, weren't what the Bible would call a full Christian those ways. But having some teaching before you heard the full gospel and had a chance is very, very valuable and very glad you had that as a formation and the ability to consider as you then walked out. your growth towards the Lord and seeking Him. So we may ask a little bit more about that later. But so you started getting involved in the ministry there, Christian Union, and you have a good friend, my Godson who's there, and you're a good friend there, invited you to meetings. And so you went and they had a couple visiting who, Every week there are meetings there where people present and teach on the gospel or pray for people for healing. And this couple decided that they were going to pray for healing for people. Is that right? Yep, that's exactly right. And how'd that go? It went really well. To give you a little bit more context, I was born with a left leg that is slightly longer than my right leg. And if you think about physics, work is equal to force times distance. And so whenever I would walk, because my right leg would cover less distance than my left leg, it needed to exert a lot more force than my left leg. And because of that, whenever I was walking or running, my right leg would pretty quickly get to be really tight, like it needed to be stretched out. And my right leg also became stronger than my left leg. So when I would do split squats in the gym, I could do them with an extra five pounds on my right leg when compared to my left leg. And because my leg was so tight, whenever I would sit at a dinner table or fly on a plane or anything like that, I'd always try to sit in a way where my right leg was fully extended. That way I can kind of ease the tension that existed in my right leg because it was a little bit shorter than my left leg. And also about eight weeks before the miracle occurred, I actually went to see a doctor who specializes in helping people who were born with one leg longer than the other leg. And I walk in and she looks at me. And just from looking at me, she can tell, she says to me, your left leg is longer than your right leg. And I say, yeah, it is. And she says, here, use this. And so she gives me kind of a pad that I can put in my right leg that eased the pain a little bit, but it was not sufficient to complete. What, in a shoe or something? Yes, exactly. Yeah. A pad that I can put in my shoe to make it feel a little bit better. Uh-huh. Interesting. And so how did it affect you? How long did you feel like you had noticed that this was the case for you? Like how many years were you aware of this? I first became aware of this probably when I experienced my last growth spurt, which was around 10th or 11th grade of high school. So easily a good five to six years. Okay, all right, so you really noticed that. But you didn't seek a medical attention to it until you were a student in college, is that right? Yeah. Yeah, okay. But you had and you'd gone and been causing you these troubles that you mentioned, some pain and sleeping and other such things. Did it affect your running very much and other athletic endeavors? Um, a little bit. My sister is an ace cross country runner. She actually, she ran her first marathon in Newport and she finished in about three hours and nine minutes. Which meant that she was the third, she placed third for women's. And this is her first marathon. So we were really excited about her time. And in contrast, I've never been much of a runner myself. And I think that the fact that my left leg was longer than my right leg played a role in that. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So you go to the Christian Union Weekly meeting that's happening, and these people are offering to pray for people. And you're still in the process of investigating the faith and reestablishing whether you believe these doctrines of the faith and then learning about what it means to be born again. but you're there and what prompted you to be willing to be prayed for? That's, I mean, it's a little different or a little odd for a lot of people, but you seem like a bold guy, but you went for it, huh? Yeah. Just thought, why not? I wanted to put God's words to his test to see if I really could experience this. They had just spoken, the couple who was presenting had just spoken about all the people who they had healed. And I wanted to test it. And then I also wanted my leg to be healed. So I asked them for prayer. I say that's good putting it to the test and whether all the promises in the scripture, whether God is really real and to see if there's supernatural power there and see if that there was a divine force in the universe. So I think that's really, really great and wanting to see. So what happened? How do you go up front and they pray for you? Mm-hmm. So they asked for volunteers. I raised my hands. They call on me. I go to the front. They sit me down. They explain a few things. And then first, I actually asked them to pray for my back, where I also was experiencing some pain. And so the man puts his hand on me. He starts to pray. And immediately as he starts to pray, I can feel the bones in my right leg getting longer. Really? Really? You can actually feel that? I could feel them getting longer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The femurs in my right leg, I could feel them growing. Yeah. It felt like one of the growth spurts I'd experienced when I was really young. Interesting. Interesting. So that's happening. You feel that something's happening to your leg and then what happens? So then they keep praying for me. They prayed a little bit more for my back. I've had scoliosis for a few years. It's unrelated to my leg, but it's another health-related problem that I've been dealing with. And the scoliosis, so they prayed for my back, which unfortunately did not end up being healed. And I knew that I had felt something in my leg. Mm-hmm. But I wanted to be absolutely certain about what had just occurred because I didn't want to potentially make anything up. I want to be absolutely certain about what had occurred. And so they prayed for me. And then I left the building. I took two laps around the green at Dartmouth. Walking just to, just to feel if there was any more tension. And there actually, there was a little bit of tension on those laps, but that was because of the tension I experienced before it was leftover tension from beforehand. And, and you know that because it later went away. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So then I went back to Christian Union and we, I spoke to some more people and I wasn't really sure about what had happened. That was my reaction. I was just kind of confused. I could feel my leg growing. I still felt a little bit of tension. I was kind of like, what's going on here? And then I w I remember leaving Christian Union and walking back that same night. And I remember lying down to sleep and I'd always instinctually slept in a certain way. I'd sleep on my side with my right leg extended and my left leg kind of curled beneath it. And I just remember I didn't have to sleep like that anymore. I had no, I felt no reason to. And... And that was a real moment for me. That it was like, wow, I might've actually just experienced a miracle. Yeah, yeah. I bet that really, as a guy who was on a quest to see if God was really real, and this even put forth as seeking a demonstration that he's real, and then having that healed, how did that affect you? Yeah, it affected me a lot. I had three reactions. To the healing of my leg first Number one was that God is real. Yeah number two is that he loves us and then number three Was I was actually a little bit scared Because I felt like this meant that I owed him greater obedience and Yeah, and I needed to follow him at a higher level and And so I had those three reactions. Yeah, interesting. So I think about that middle one, about knowing his love for you, that must have been very touching and really incredible to consider that the God with that kind of incredible power had that individual care and interest in your own life. Yeah, absolutely. And this is a problem that. you know, people having one leg longer than the other leg. This is a problem that even in a world that is advanced as the world that we live in, people still deal with it. There's no amount of doctors, no amount of money, no amount of medicine, no amount of anything that we as people can do to fully solve this problem. it it's really only God who has the power to do such a thing. Yeah. Operationally how to extend the leg that's impossible to do, to think about that could be done. So what a, yeah. Amen. That's fantastic. And now can I ask, what did your friends and family think when you were telling, started to tell them this? I mean, that's, that's kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I would say it's my reaction between my friends has varied. Yeah. So when I was sharing my testimony at Christian Union two weeks later, I wanted to wait two weeks because I needed to be absolutely sure about what had occurred before I wanted to go public about it. Yeah. Yeah. So I waited two weeks and I was speaking during the senior speaker series. And I just remember as I was sharing my testimony, I'm just looking at the crowd and I just see mouths dropping, eyes wide from some of the people looking. They were stunned. A lot of the people there who were listening to my testimony were people who were there on that day as I was being healed. And so that was the reaction of a lot of my friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what about friends back in New York or family back in New York? Anyone back where you grew up and everything, any reactions from any of them? Yeah, my dad told me that he was happy it occurred, but that I needed to get back to my job search. That was his reaction. Well, it's a good time for you, I guess, in some ways. Yes. You've been diligent in your job search, by the way, just testifying here. Okay, good. Anything else? That was the main one that comes to mind. Okay. Okay. That's great. That's interesting. Wow. Well, that's great. And praise God for that. And that played a role as you coming into the faith. And I remember us talking about this, and you mentioned three main things that brought you to God, and that being one of them, also the passing away of our mutual friend's mother and the godly reaction of the family in the midst of that a year ago. And then also you, by the grace of God, deciding to read the And all of those ignited faith in your heart to become a Christian. And do you want to add to any of that or describe that at all? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, about the reading of my Bible, I picked up my Bible January 1st. of this year. Yeah, six months ago. Yeah. Yeah. I had never really read a Bible before. And I have dyslexia. So reading a lot of dense text has always been particularly challenging for me. And the thought of reading a book that looks like this thick was extremely intimidating to me. Um, so I set myself what I thought was a manageable goal, which would be to read the four gospels in one Dartmouth term, which is a 10 week time period. And I was able to finish it. And then it was spring break and I didn't really have anything to do for a few days. So I thought, well, why not pick up my Bible and start reading? Um, so I was able to finish it. And so I started reading five chapters a day, and then I realized I could do more than that. So then I started reading 10 chapters a day, and I realized that I could still read more than that. And so by the end of spring break, that two week time period, excuse me, I started reading 15 chapters every day. Wow, that's great. And then I maintained that pace for the entirety of my 10 week Dartmouth term. And then a week, two weeks after. And so the result was that with the exception of the four gospels, I read the Bible cover to cover in 13 weeks time. Yeah, that's amazing. And so you read the whole gospel, I guess, I mean, Bible over what, 16 weeks total or something like that? Yeah. Read the gospels right before, that's fantastic. And what did that do for your faith in God? Yeah. Yeah. It definitely did a lot of things. I would say I've been very lucky to have a lot of great, really devout friends who I've been able to build off, build my faith off of, but reading the Bible for myself enabled me to build out my faith for myself rather than just feeding off of other people. And, In addition to that, it was often intimidating for me to be in rooms with these people who are incredibly devout, who have been seeking God at a high level often for years. And when I was able to read the Bible for myself, I felt that it put me on their level and it gave me the same authority to talk about spiritual topics as they had before. And so it made me a lot more confident in my faith because of that. And then in addition, I would say it made me just so much more confident in God's love and his message to be able to understand it at a deeper level and to read about all of the incredible things that God has been able to do for people who follow him. Yeah, I can imagine sitting down kind of for the first time as you're drawing close to the Lord and reading all those incredible stories and the Lord's rescue and reward those who live for him and honor him. And just seeing that in such a concentrated time period had to be just amazing. Yeah, it was incredibly special. I was a little sad when I finished it because... To me, watching your favorite movie for the second time, as cool as it is, is not the same as watching it for the first time. And I was actually just reading The Book of Acts before, and it's definitely really cool to get to read it, but it doesn't have the same power as when you're reading it for the first time and there's suspense and you don't really know what's gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, really powerful. Although, of course, going through second, third and fourth times, you'll learn new things, take it to greater depths. I know so many who've read the Bible many times, they continue to find new jewels in it and also remember and encouraged by aspects of who the Lord is that they've forgotten. So that's incredible. Wonderful. Great to hear. And so that played a big role in you coming to faith, too, and deciding to walk with Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And I think the first time we met was when you came to the conference in New York back in January or last year or something? It would have been the conference in January, I think February, but. Okay. All right. Really? Is that first time we had met? I'm trying to think through Nicholas there. And so, but it's been great. You came to that conference, which we put on in New York every six months, mostly for adults, although we do let a few students to come to help people see that the supernatural realm is real. And we've got a great speaker and demonstrations of the Lord doing miraculous things in a context where people are going to ask questions. Because for instance, one question you no doubt had was, well, why did God heal your leg but not your back? And people have questions like this. And how have you processed that for yourself? Yeah. I honestly don't really know. I've asked several people about why they think it occurred. And truthfully, I haven't gotten a perfect answer from anyone beyond the fact that sometimes God will heal you and other times you won't. Yeah, yeah, it is and can be a mystery. I see as I've laid hands on people for them to be healed. Sometimes it's wonderful and dramatic and immediate or sometimes slow and then other times you don't see the change there. And the Lord has his reasons for suffering and allowing suffering. There's a lot of passages on the scriptures along those lines to show his glory, to teach us to rely on him. And I don't believe we have our... bodies fully and completely healed until the next life. But that being said, as a demonstration of his kindness and as a demonstration that he is real, like you found out in a tangible way out of his mercy, he will heal from time to time as a reminder, as a foretaste, as a sampling of what's to come in the future. And I always encourage people, keep seeking out the healing unless the Lord tells you not to, but keep have the faith, keep asking people to pray for you. He may or may not do it, but it keeps you dependent on him. He has the power to heal. He loves to heal people. But regarding his divine plan, he knows that afflictions and difficulties on us does produce spiritual fruit. It is pruning, as it says in John 15, so that we'll grow and mature all the more. So there's a lot of beautiful explanations and teachings on the scriptures. And we should take a little time in looking at it. Actually, our mutual friend, Nicholas, he and I were talking by phone a couple of days ago, some things going on in his life as he's doing missions work in Zambia this summer. So it's really beautiful and amazing who God is, how he operates, and his great purposes. So, well, anything else you want to leave with us or talk to about in regarding to this? It's something you'll remember and be able to share your whole life. But anything else you want to comment on with it? Yeah. I guess one final thing to share was how incredibly lucky I felt that God had chose to heal me in that moment. There's a lot of people who want to believe. but they're just not able to wrap their heads around the existence of a God who can raise people from the dead or part the sea. And I was one of them for a while. And then this miracle occurred, and now I'm living proof that those kinds of miracles still exist to this day. And there are so many people I know who are also seeking God at a high level, who haven't been able to witness a miracle as tangible as the one that I've gotten to witness. Our mutual friend Nicholas, who you mentioned earlier, I don't think he's ever had the privilege of... being witness to a miracle like this to himself, maybe to other people. To other people, yeah, he's prayed to see some great healings, that's right. Yeah, but to himself, I don't think Nicholas has ever been able to experience a miracle like that. And so it just, it made me feel incredibly thankful for God that he would heal me in this way. Amen. Amen. What a great, great attitude. Amen. Well, I'm going to say a prayer. Father, we thank and praise you. Lord, you are good and gracious and wonderful, true in all of your ways. Thank you for healing Nathaniel's leg and as a testimony, both for his own physical benefit, but as a testimony that you are real and igniting faith in his heart and he may follow, love, and please you and strengthen him for all the days of his life that he will walk with you and honor your great and wonderful name. We thank you, Lord, and praise you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Bennett Broadcast. To learn more and find additional resources to help you grow in your walk with God, visit BennettBroadcast.com. To accelerate this movement of helping America return to God, visit ChristianUnion.org slash Cornerstone. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And I hope you'll join me again as we seek the Lord together for our lives, for our communities, and for the future of the nation.