Edited sentence: All of their attempts to find an outside source as a cause for the flame to prove it as a hoax have been futile.However whatever the criticisms may be it is still hard to believe that if a miracle such as this was a fraudulent one, that it would continue to happen for well over a thousand years in documented history.The Church has been heavily guarded for centuries in order to prevent any outside interference.The flame itself comes right back if extinguished, and the Church as well as the priests have all been carefully inspected for decades prior to the events of the miracle.This sort of inspection has gone on from the time that Muslims occupied the city to our present age