Feeding 5000 - Thinking Properly

Thinking Properly

Thinking about how Jesus took 5 loaves of bread and two fish (Mark 6.41) and fed 5000 (v.44) can drive you bonkers if you don't think correctly about it.

Do you know what seems to hurt my faith when I don't find the answer to this conundrum? I do. Not thinking properly. God wants me to think properly and not keep putting off proper thinking regarding this matter.

We never see anything like this today, not even once. How do we explain it? The only way to explain it is like a programmer of a computer game who brings in various elements that were not there before.

It's either that or the writers embellished. Because think about it! If each person had 3 slices of bread and a loaf of bread had 15 slices, one loaf could feed 5 people. 5000/5=1000 loaves of bread are needed. This is miraculous!

If the writers did not tell the truth, was this an acceptable behavior to tell a fib? No. Lying back then is the same lying today. Does the Holy Spirit lie? No. There is no option but to believe because Jesus would not lie about this, nor would John and Matthew and Luke and Mark lie about it. Their consciences' would prick them if they had made it up. Besides there would be 5000 people to say it never happened as is depicted. Remember, some of these people could have lived on into the 2nd century, so anyone at any time they could have had ample opportunity to say that it was untrue. No one ever did.

Why is it that no one else ever recorded this event as an eyewitness account? It seems this event is recorded in writing in the hands of just a few. The only explanation I find for this is that people just didn't write such things down. After all, we have very few writings about Christ in the first half of the first century. Altogether we have about 50 sources relating to Christ in the first century and a half. Only 50! At most that is 50 people who recorded events, so is it really so unreasonable that not one of those mostly illiterate 5000 would ever record this event also?

South Park says the way it was done was to prepare the 1000 loaves of bread behind some object and then unveil it by pushing out those loaves from behind the obstruction, after distracting people, but that's 1000 loaves of bread! Who could afford to pay for this many loaves?

Did Jesus speak to someone with lots of money who gave freely for this expected moment and supposed miracle? For surely someone would have exposed Jesus as being a fraud in getting the bread from a bread-maker.

The only explanation is that Jesus actually did it by inputting these items into His creation.

Why doesn't God do this today? That's the mystery isn't it? Isn't that what we His children are really asking? Why do we have no examples today to help us with our faith? It seems to me that God Has His way of doing things - that's the answer! We need to honor and trust in this way.

If God were to regularly or even once perform this miracle by the Holy Spirit in the way He did it, out of nothing, then we would know unequivocally that God is God and choice would be irrelevant, but God doesn't do this. He only did it when He was in Person.

It would seem to me that God is always making it a challenge for us, because this strengthens our faith and our spirit for Him and this is what gives Him so much joy to see! He loves to see us have so little clues to His working and yet we still believe! This is faith.

When we fulfill the conditions for His working grace is bestowed abundantly like those 5000 loaves of bread out of nothing. This is true grace and I have experienced it, and because I have experienced it, how could I ever give it up? How much more blessed are others who do not receive this grace I have received and are even more faithful than I.

Praise You God!