SCIENTISTS DISCOVER POWER OF PRAYER

Five hardened scientists sat weeping in a room adjacent to that of a patient they were testing. They were oblivious to the registrations of the trembling needle on their instrument dial, spellbound by the flow of prayer coming from the tiny microphone in the patient’s room. At least, they were oblivious to the surging needle until it began to strike the post at the far right and to bounce repeatedly against it, trying to go past it. The clicking sound aroused their attention. This was not the unknown which they had set out to discover. But something infinitely more exciting and significant. This experiment was to change the entire direction of one scientist's life - that of Dr N Jerome Stowell, whose account of the experiment follows: “We wanted to make an experiment to discover what took place in the brain at the moment of transition from life to death,” Dr Stowell recounts. They set up their experiment in a large pathological laboratory with infinite care, using precision instruments. “I was almost a devout atheist,” Dr Stowell recalls. “I didn’t believe that God was any more than a conglomeration of everyone’s mind put together, and the good that was there, that was God as far as I was concerned. As for the real, all-powerful God existing and loving us all, with power over everything, I didn’t believe that.” But in the large pathological laboratory that day he had an experience that gave a jolt to his religious tenets. “We chose a lady whose family had sent her to a mental institution, but who had been discharged. The doctor could find nothing wrong with her other than that she had cancer of the brain. This affected the balance of her body only. As far as her alertness of mind was concerned and in every other way, she was exceptionally brilliant. But we knew she was on the verge of death, and she was informed in this research hospital that she was going to die.” Before informing her of this, the scientists had attached a tiny pick-up to her brain to ascertain what would take place there in the transition from life to death. They also put a very small microphone, about the size of a quarter, in her room so that they could hear anything she might say after learning of her impending death. “Five of us, hardened scientists - perhaps I was the hardest of the group and the most atheistic - were in the adjoining room with our instruments,” Dr Stowell details the experiment, “preparing to register and record what transpired.” “Our device had a needle pointing to zero at the centre of a scale. To the right, the scale was calibrated to 500 points positive. To the left, the scale was calibrated to 500 points negative.” “We had previously registered on this identical instrument the electromagnetic power used by a 50 kilowatt broadcasting- station in sending a message around the world. The needle registered 9 points on the positive side.” As the last moments of the woman patient's life arrived, she began to pray and to praise the Lord. Her prayers were so beautiful as they came through on the small microphone that they held the five listening men in the next room spellbound. They heard her ask the Lord God to be merciful to those who had despitefully used her. “Then she reaffirmed her faith in God,” Dr Stowell continued, “telling Him she knew He was the only Power and that He was the living Power. She told God He always had been and would be GOD. She told Him how much she loved Him.” Engrossed in the beautiful torrent of prayers escaping the dying woman’s lips, the scientists completely forgot about their experiment. “We looked at each other and saw tears streaming down scientific faces,” Dr Stowell relates. “I had not shed tears since I was a child.” “Suddenly, we heard the clicking sound on our forgotten instrument. We looked and the needle was registering a positive 500 and desperately trying to go higher, only to bounce against the 500 positive post in its attempt.” “By actual instrumentation, we had recorded that the brain of a woman alone and dying, in communication with God, had registered more than 55 times the electromagnetic power used by a 50 kilowatt broadcasting-station in sending a message around the world!” Thoroughly astounded by their discovery, the scientists later tried the same experiment on a man lying in the research hospital stricken with a deadly social disease, who cursed and took the Name of God in vain when agitated by a nurse during the experiment. The needle immediately clicked back and forth against the negative 500 post! “By actual instrumentation,” Dr Stowell recounted, “we had registered what happened in the brain when that brain broke one of God’s Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain!’ “We had established by instrumentation the positive power of God and the negative power of the adversary. We had found that beneficial truth is positive and that non-beneficial things covered by God’s ‘Thou shalt nots’ of the Ten Commandments are negative in varying degrees.” “It is the presence of God in us that gives us power, the extent of which we have no conception as to its magnitude,” he concluded. The effect of this experiment, resulting in one of the most amazing scientific discoveries of all time, was so great upon Dr Stowell that he gave up his brilliant career as a scientist and has engaged in witnessing to the goodness and the greatness of God ever since. Thus, by “accident”, the genuine power-of-God-in-man through prayer was proven to be a measurable reality; and it was demonstrated by five men who did not even believe God existed! Pondering the surge of energy produced by one weakened and dying woman, one is awed by the possibilities of prayer power generated by a small group or an entire nation of people joined in heartfelt prayer. It is that powerful call to heaven, made by single key individuals or entire nations, which has drawn God into the affairs of men to direct the course of history. The above narrative is but one of the living witnesses of that awesome power! [Dr N Jerome Stowell, “A Scientist Discovers God,” He is Able, Aug.1970] [Voice Magazine, Los Angeles, California].