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My student has asked me a question. She had this sentence: The strong man made these things come true. Why is it "come," not "came?" I know that "come" is correct, but how to explain it? Thanks for your help.

Because the expression is "to make something happen". Happen is the base form of the verb and is never conjugated; the verb "make" changes tense.

Reneegianti wrote:My student has asked me a question. She had this sentence: The strong man made these things come true. Why is it "come," not "came?" I know that "come" is correct, but how to explain it? Thanks for your help.

Some verbs like "see, hear, let, make" are always followed by bare infinitive (=infinitive without to)
I saw him cry.
I heard them speak.
She let us go.
He made us laugh.

Not necessarily always. See can be followed by gerund. There is a slight change of meaning then.
"I saw him smoke" (I was there when he took the cigarette, lit it and put it out. I saw the whole "process")
"I saw him smoking" (I happened to walk past him when he was smoking. I didn't see the whole action)
You have to be also careful about passive voice of make or help. In this case they are followed by full infinitive.
A lot of people helped me quit smoking.=I was helped to quit smoking.

Because in phrasal verbs , we just change the main verb to the past tense
In this case : to make sth come true
The strong man made these things come true

"make sth come true" is not a phrasal verb. It's, as Susan wrote, an expression. In this case a verb (make) followed by an idiom (come true), to be precise.

Because there has been use of past by using made and so there will be only come and not came