I Believe in Miracles

     I think its safe to say that most everyone's favorite passages in the Bible are the ones concerned with miracles, and why not? We love to hear the old stories of Israel's crossing of the Red Sea and of the Jordan river, of the dead brought to life, the sick healed, of talking donkeys, floating ax heads and a stopped sun. We love to be reminded that God is powerful and has absolute control over the universe. Can this interest go too far though? What does the Bible tell us about the miraculous and how can we apply it today?

     Firstly, and I know I'm not making any friends with some when I say this, miracles are pretty much gone in our modern age. I am well aware that there is a large and active community of people who spend a lot of energy seeking after miracles and believe that they are a part of any legitimate ministry and in the life of the body of Christ. The problem with that idea is that it ignores the fact that miracles were never normative. There was never a period when when every Tom, Dick, and Harry were throwing around sings and wonders. Miracles were always purposeful and specific, never random or whimsical. Look to the Old Testament, miracles were strictly confined to those few men who were designated as prophets sent from God and the miracles they performed were secondary acts meant to attest to the validity of their teaching; serving as a beacon to guide people to the prophet's words (really God's words). Miracles such as the parting of the Red Sea were partly pragmatic and meant to prove God's power to His people (and Egypt for that matter) and to facilitate God's plan of freeing Israel from their bondage as well as -again- serving as evidence that Moses was God's man in that day.

“Then the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house, and gave him to his mother. And Elijah said, "See, your son lives!" Then the woman said to Elijah, "Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is the truth."

(1 Kings 17:22-24)(emphasis mine)

     Cut to the New Testament. Many years have passed and God is moving His redemptive plan on to the next phase and so this means that miracles now serve the purpose of...attesting to the validity of prophets and teachers. Nothing changed! Jesus' own miracles were there to prove His God-hood, and the apostles were able to perform the miracles they performed to once again prove their status as the chosen teachers of God. If every believer at the time were going around raising the dead or healing the sick don't you think that somewhere in the all the New Testament books we would read about...any of them? Over the course of the book of Acts we see the recounting of miracles dwindle and disappear well before the end of the book. The only miraculous events we see happening to your everyday early church member is speaking in tongues, but those are Red Sea miracles, pragmatic ones that served to prove that those people were indeed saved by God and a part of His church. Especially in the case of the gentile believers as without a sign the Jewish brethren may not have accepted them given their long separation and dislike. We read that signs are not meant for those who believe, but to show proof to those who don't, and that the best gifts are teaching and understanding and prophecy (which is just the taking of God's words to His people, the words we have now of course are found in the Bible).

“Therefore tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers; but prophesying is not for unbelievers but for those who believe.”

(1 Corinthians 14:22)

     Modern day “miracles” seem only to work to show how spiritual the person performing them is, to prove they have reached that next plain of spirituality. In fact they have more to do with ancient Gnosticism (where it was believed secret truths would be revealed to the spiritual elite) than Biblical Christianity. The miraculous is never held up as something to be continually desired or searched for, in fact the Bible often praises those who do not require a sign and condemns those who do!

“Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, "When it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red'; "and in the morning, 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. "A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." And He left them and departed.”

(Matthew 16:1-4)

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.”

(Hebrews 11:1-2)

“Jesus said to him, "Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

(John 20:29)

     Let me finish this admittedly brief discussion of miracles by saying that I do believe in them and I even believe that if God wills they can exist in this day. The problem is not that God has changed or that He no longer acts at all, it's that the ones who claim these miracles have so much about them that does not mesh with scripture. Silly 'miracles', wrong use of them, inaccurate prophecy, bad theology, horrible doctrine, and more. Not everyone in this movement is an extreme case, let me be clear that I don't meant to say that. I only mean to refocus our attention on the Bible and remind everyone that the given Word -alone- is our source of truth. Every thought, idea , and experience has to be brought to that measure and cast aside if it does not pass the test. We don't need to be excited and impressed to be faithful, we know ourselves and we ought to know God. We know who we would be without God. The power of that changed life is more than enough.