Interview with Craig Keener (Part 4 of 6)

Craig Keener and Mama Jeanne Mabiala

This is the fourth part of an interview series with Craig Keener, who is a professor of biblical studies at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, as well as, the current president of the Evangelical Theological Society. A new post in the series appears every Saturday.

JR: Tell us about some of your ministry experiences in Republic of Congo, the home country of your wife, Medine.

CK: Ministry went well but I personally learned a lot more from those doing ministry there.

Let me tell one story, about Mama Jeanne. Because she prays for us regularly, my brother-in-law said she wanted to meet with us. We went to the tin structure outside her home where she meets with people much of the day to pray for their needs. She is not a pastor, but is a deacon in one of the local evangelical churches. (Although the "evangelical church" is the country's mainline Protestant church and is not Pentecostal, there is great openness to any of God's activities in Scripture.) Mama Jeanne prayed for us and began to prophesy at length, and what she shared about my work was deeply encouraging to me. When we were parting I told her I have always had very high respect for prophetesses. She responded very humbly.

A few days later we returned, because I was collecting some healing testimonies for a book that I was writing, and my brother-in-law assured me that Mama Jeanne had some. This humble woman began to narrate various healings in a matter-of-fact way (as if to say, who wouldn't expect Jesus to heal people?), including three people raised from the dead directly through her prayers. (In one case, there was someone in the room who was present at the time and could verify the story; my brother-in-law knew some other people in her stories.) I was dumbfounded. "Mama Jeanne, if I write these stories in this book, you will have people from the U. S. wanting have you pray for them!" She broke up laughing and pointing to an old picture of Jesus on her wall. "It's just Jesus!" she said. In other words, Jesus is the same in the U. S. as he is in Congo.

As I have said about the other questions, I have a lot of growing to do. Some of my fellow charismatics may think, "Keener is a charismatic scholar; that's great." But Keener has a long way to go in the Spirit. I thank God for giving us examples like Mama Jeanne.

Mama Jeanne's stories were included in Craig's two-volume book, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. 

J. P. Moreland, from the Talbot School of Theology, says of  Miracles, "Seldom does a book take one's breath away, but Keener's magisterial  Miracles is such a book. It is an extremely sophisticated, completely thorough treatment of its subject matter, and, in my opinion, it is now the best text available on the topic. The uniqueness of Keener's treatment lies in his location of the biblical miracles in the trajectory of ongoing, documented miracles in the name of Jesus and his kingdom throughout church history, up to and including the present. From now on, no one who deals with the credibility of biblical miracles can do so responsibly without interacting with this book."

In the video below, Keener gives a talk on miracles during a chapel service at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology.