How many Americans have experienced miraculous answers to prayer? A new survey from the American Bible Society (ABS) reveals the results of this thought-provoking question.
Dr. John Plake, editor-in-chief of the State of the Bible series and chief innovation officer at ABS, told CBN News that 48% of Americans believe that they have received a miraculous answer to prayer.
And the fascinating results don’t conclude there, as 35% also said that they have witnessed or experienced a divine healing.
“We were really trying to get at, not just, ‘Do you believe that these things are possible?’ but, ‘Have you had some kind of an experience where you’ve prayed for something that you believe was answered in a miraculous way, or have you witnessed or experienced a divine healing or a miracle?’” Plake said. “So on the prayer side of things, what we noticed was that practicing Christians, nine out of ten of them, say that they have prayed for something that was answered in a miraculous way.”
The researcher said the level of one’s faith participation has a lot to do with how they view the miraculous.
“People who are practicing their Christian faith, I think, have a worldview that allows them to see that there’s more to life than just the naturalistic world around them,” Plake said. “And so they are more likely to pray, and they are more likely to have these experiences of saying, ‘Hey, something supernatural, something miraculous happened in response to that.’”
Even among non-Christians, though, he said a fifth of these individuals report praying for something that they believe was answered in a miraculous way.
Plake also shared some of the findings he found most surprising, including numbers on beliefs about the current state of miracles in the modern world.
“I was a little bit surprised. I think there are actually parts of the church that take the theological view that miracles were for an earlier age,” he said. “Maybe they ceased when the time of the apostles ceased and things like that.”
With that in mind, he said it is a “little bit remarkable” to see 58% of evangelical Christians report that they have “actually witnessed or experienced a divine miracle.” The same is true of 58% of Black Protestants and 33% of Mainline Christians.
Even among people with non-Christian faiths, 40% reported experiencing or witnessing a divine healing or miracle. Watch the video above for more on this study.
These topics are at the heart of CBN’s “Investigating the Supernatural” film series. The first movie, “Investigating the Supernatural: Miracles,” deals with miraculous healing, and the second film — “Investigating the Supernatural: Angels and Demons,” which was released in March — explores the reality of angels and demons.
