There is no link for this, because it is not a news story. It is something that happened at my grandmother's church perhaps 40 years ago.

Old man Curtis couldn't read. Everyone knew that he couldn't read. He never came close to finishing school. For all of his life, he had never read a thing. He had been married since he was a teenager, and his wife attested to the fact that he couldn't read. His children also attested to said fact, as well as everyone who knew him (including my grandparents, my mother, aunts and uncles, and everyone else who had known him for all their lives in this one horse town).

Mr. Curtis wasn't retarded, but he was definitely well below average in terms of intelligence. To call him "borderline retarded" wouldn't be far off the mark.

One day in church he stood up to give a "testimony". There was nothing unusual about that in and of itself. He said that he prayed and asked God to teach him to read so he could read the Bible for himself, and God did so, and now he was going to read some verses from the Bible. Everyone got extremely quiet; a nervous kind of quiet like when you have the feeling that someone is about to make a fool of themselves in public. Even his wife tried to get him to shut up and sit down, but he would have none of it.

You see, in general, most Christians give lip service to believing in miracles, but when it comes right down to it; they really don't. Sure, they'll believe something indirect that could have many explanations such as "I prayed that God would help me find a job and the next day, I found one," or "I prayed that God would heal Mr. Smith's cancer and a few weeks later he went into remission." Those type of "miracles" are easy to believe in, because they could (and probably are) cases of coincidence.

Mr. Curtis then proceeded to flawlessly read an entire chapter from the King James Bible, much to the utter astonishment of the entire congregation. He continued to demonstrate his flawless ability to read, anything and everything, without hesitation or having to "sound out" words, for the next few decades of his life until he died of natural causes at a little over 100 years of age.

Cool story.  

I see nothing in the narrative that would've prohibited him from contracting with someone to teach him how to read, or from receiving outside instruction supplemental to his own studies.  I don't believe in miracles or modern-day divine intervention.  I believe God's done with this world for the time being, and the thought that He'd snap His fingers and put a complete reading education in this guy's while completely ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people suffering horribly around the world is extremely offensive and actually negates the idea of a "loving" God.

Occam's razor makes this story make a lot better sense - he wanted to read, he prayed that he'd be able to learn, he found someone to teach him or help him with his own studies and PRAISE GOD he can read!

In before people argue over whether he was blind or not.

O_P, you know how much I respect you.  But unless your theory is that God blessed him with the ability to read through an instructor or personal study, that's not anything close to the simplest explanation or even remotely likely.

Re: the concert pianist in the post following the quoted, some people just have natural skill in an area.  Blessing, maybe.  Or their brain simply works different than ours.  You can call it what they like but a divine explanation is far from the simplest.

He was a simpleton and worked at the mill and came home, day in, and day out. His wife was a "housewife", and perhaps a few IQ points higher than him (she could barely read, and at best could stumble through one or two Bible verses; and I do mean stumble).  

It is no small or easy feat to teach a 60-someodd-year-old simpleton to read, especially to read flawlessly from ~350-year-old English text. His wife at least, would have noticed.

I don't suspect a conspiracy from either of these child-like people, neither do I suspect fine acting skills, nor even the capacity for any sort of long-term plan.


Except, there is no basis for your belief regarding how God is supposed to work.