Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.-Hebrews 13:8

God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?-Numbers 23:19

For there shall arise false Christs, and false Prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.-Matthew 24:24

I Deserve a Miracle

I deserve a miracle
And I’m ready now, today,
To gratefully accept my miracle
And to know that it’s okay.
I no longer believe that miracles
Are reserved for just a few.
And I know my God will do for me,
Those things I cannot do.

I deserve the peace and love
I’ve longed for all these years.
So, today, I claim my highest good
And I relinquish all my fears.
I open up my heart to God,
I welcome Him inside.
And, I release all results to God,
Humbly and without pride.

I expect a miracle
Today and every day.
Regardless of appearances,
Or what others do or say.
The spirit God has given me
Is of power, peace, and love.
And because I am a child of God,
These are things I’m worthy of.
So, today I claim my miracle.
As I go forth in expectancy.
Knowing that those things I cannot do,
My God will do for me.
©Linda Troxell

Can I tell you how shocked I am to find out how much passion is inherent in the opinions held about miracles? I didn’t realize that so many different people had so many different thoughts regarding every aspect of miracles. Opinions about everything from how to define them, to whether or not they actually exist. From how many were performed in the Bible to whether or not they continue to exist today. And I’m telling you, people hold their opinions on this topic dear.

In researching this blog post I found out that there is some vehement disagreement concerning the number of miracles contained in the Bible. It seems the difficulty arises when more than one or two people begin to debate which acts, in the Bible, are and are not actual miracles. The disagreement is not so much about the definition of a miracle, there seems to be something of a consensus regarding what constitutes a miracle. The disagreement is about whether or not a given act meets that definition. The exception to this stalemate is the agreement that Jesus performed 37 miracles personally, give or take a few. However, the arguing begins once talk turns to other miracles of the New Testament. And all semblance of agreement disappears when a discussion of the number of miracles in the Old Testament begins. Having said that, opinion has it that there are between 60 and 100 miracles attributed to the New Testament and between 50 and 150 attributed to the Old Testament, depending on who’s counting and how they’re counting.

This is a pretty big discrepancy. But for me, it is of little consequence. I believe in miracles. I am one who believes the Bible is true and literal. Therefore, I believe every act that is reported in the Bible is literal and true. And, although I might have some doubt regarding which acts actually meet the definition of a miracle, there is no doubt in my mind that there were many, many miracles performed in both the Old and New Testaments and none of them are a metaphor, analogy or parable. I also believe that miracles still happen today. There are many reasons for that belief, but the main one is that the Bible tells me so. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.-Hebrews 13:8; God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?-Numbers 23:19 Both of these verses tell me that God does the same things today that He has been doing since the dawn of time.

The most common definition of a miracle used by those who insist miracles no longer happen today is this, or something very similar, explained by Dr. R. C. Sproul. “A miracle, properly speaking, is an extraordinary work performed by the immediate power of God in the external perceivable world, which is an act against nature that only God can do.” As you can see, this is a very strict and narrow definition. And I would have to concede that when we use it as a definition, there are probably very few miracles happening today. But for my purposes that definition is far too narrow. However, that does not mean I don’t believe that some things people identify as miracles are silly and perhaps even insulting to God. I ran across some pretty strange ones while reading. Let me show you what I mean.

In 1977 a newspaper article reported that a woman in Lake Arthur, New Mexico was frying tortillas and she noticed in the burn marks of the tortilla the likeness of Jesus. The woman built a shrine to the tortilla and thousands of the “faithful” visited the shrine concluding that it was indeed a holy tortilla. Come on, that is just plain silly. I don’t think God probably found it amusing. Nor was he probably amused when in 1980 the fire photographer for the Deptford, New Jersey fire department saw a likeness of Christ in the flames of a fire. He came across the fire accidentally and took pictures. When they were developed it seems there was a likeness of Christ in flames on one of the slides. According to the Gloucester Times, soon people were talking about the pizza Jesus of Deptford Township and hundreds decided it was a true miracle. Really?

I think most of us can agree those things and others like them are silly. But when I say I believe in miracles, I’m not speaking to that silliness. I’m speaking to the serious debate about miracles. And one of the issues that stumps me in the narrow definition of a miracle as set forth by Dr. Sproul is his assertion that a miracle is “a work done by God’s power which is against nature and that only God could do”. It’s the against nature part that throws me. Because in my thinking all of nature is something only God could do. Who but God could have made this whole world work the way it works? Who could have engineered the plan by which all things of the earth work together to sustain life? Are we really supposed to believe that this intricate plan just evolved as so many claim life evolved?

Are we to believe that there was no creative mind behind the making of a tree, a flower, or a plant? Or that the perfect plan by which the insects pollinate the flowers that are eaten by the birds who spread the seeds that will become more flowers evolved? From what? How did it work before it evolved? And are they really asserting that the perfect system wherein, small animals eat insects and are eaten by larger animals who then are eaten by still larger animals, the whole circle of life, was an accident? Could the system of waterways on the earth whereby streams flow to rivers which all flow to the ocean to be evaporated into the heavens to make the rain that will water the plants and trees and replenish the streams and rivers have just evolved without someone, some creative mind, to engineer it? No, for me these things are natural and they could have only been done by God.

And even if I could believe that somehow all of the extraordinary feats of nature came about without a creative mind to engineer them. Surely that can’t explain the “natural” process by which human beings are created? Have you thought about how a baby is made, lately? It is first miraculous that a sperm can actually make that marathon swim to get to an egg. And when the sperm gets there and combines with the egg, that infinitesimal combination of sperm and egg, measuring roughly .0118 of an inch, contains all of the genetic information and material to build a human. That is not a miracle? Then, begins the gestation period. Roughly 38 weeks of baby-building wherein the information contained in that zygote, made up of one sperm and one egg, will be used to create an embryo which will develop a head and brain, eyes and skin and fingernails and hair and more. This will happen by thousands upon thousands of intricate systems and operations, many of them still not understood by science, and it will become a human baby. 38 weeks in which literally millions of operations must happen in perfect precision, in perfect order, and with perfect timing to build a viable embryo that is ready to grow into a healthy baby. That’s not a miracle? Yet, those who define miracles as an “act against nature,” would call this only part of the natural world.

Having had my rant, I must explain the rationale of those who believe that miracles no longer take place. It is only fair that I give a nod to the explanation of those believers who do not call the above things miracles. Because, in their reason for being concerned, they have a very valid point. These theologians tell us that there is no word for miracle in the original languages of Scriptures. The terms that were translated into English as miracles in Greek and Hebrew literally mean signs and wonders. This indicates, they say, that the miracles performed in the Bible were performed not primarily to meet the needs or to comfort people, but to point beyond the miracle itself to validate the existence of God, to authenticate His word and to support His revelations. In other words, they believe the sole purpose of miracles in Biblical times was to authenticate the authority and existence of God. They say that because God is no longer giving new revelations, for some reason He no longer needs to authenticate His Word or His existence. Thus, He has no need to perform miracles. However, they don’t discount the wonder of what God does in our lives today. They acknowledge that God continues to intervene supernaturally in our lives and they refer to this as supernatural works of God, rather than miracles.

At first, this seemed to me like splitting hairs, miracles, supernatural acts, what’s the difference? But when we look at doctrine there is a distinction and the distinction is important. We’ve all experienced events in our lives when something happens at just the right moment to benefit us and we know it is not just a coincidence. It might be as small as finding the best parking space at the mall when we are in a super hurry or as important as saying the right thing at the right time that convinces someone not to take their own life. And while we call these things miracles, we know that they really aren’t. These things are what we might refer to as acts of providence, God shots, or favor. These are examples of what the theologians call God’s supernatural interventions into our lives. It is God orchestrating natural events to control a situation in our favor; He is controlling the natural to make it do what He wants. Opposed to a miracle, which is when God suspends a natural law while He acts and when He is finished the natural course of life continues. For example, a miracle is suspending the law of gravity while He parts the Red Sea or walks on water. A supernatural intervention is God putting a thought in your mind to check on the children just as one of them is swallowing something dangerous, or guiding someone who is suicidal to you and prompting you to say what they need to hear. No natural laws were suspended; God just orchestrated our thoughts and behaviors for His purpose. So, you might be saying, “I get it, but why does it matter what I call it?”

It matters, they tell us, because we could be playing right into the hands of the enemy by referring to Providence as miracles. False signs, miracles, and wonders, the Bible tells us, will be one of Satan’s primary tools in the end times. Jesus warned us that: For there shall arise false Christs, and false Prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; [remember the original language had no word for miracles] so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.-Matthew 24:24 And we know that one of the ways to convince people that something is okay is to make it familiar. Satan is an endgame player. He starts early changing our culture, wearing us down little by little until he has made something so familiar to us we don’t even notice it anymore.

There is no question that we hunger for the mysteries of God in this day and age. Even in the secular world people are eager to witness great and unknowable things. This leads us to be willing to label anything unusual as a miracle. One German author wrote that the word miracle is a hot-button word which polarizes individuals into two opposed camps of believers and nonbelievers. Those who believe, say miracles happen with regularity; those who don’t believe say they never happen. However, I think that there is a third camp that is overlooked in this. That is the camp of those of us who believe that true miracles, while rare, do still happen from time to time in our world. We’ve all heard of the occasional mother who defies the natural laws to pick up a two-ton car to save her child. Or, not as rare, but still miraculous are the people who have been spontaneously cured of disease in spite of all medical reason. So, I think to say that miracles no longer exist in modern days is to overstate the case. Perhaps we can agree that they are exceedingly rare, yet they do exist.

There is no question that language both reflects and creates our culture. And I think this information is sufficient for us to at least consider our language in regards to miracles. It makes sense to me that if Satan did want to use prophesies and miracles as propaganda to confuse us all in the end times, normalizing them so that they were unremarkable would be a perfect strategy for making us less vigilant to frauds. So perhaps we should take the point of Dr. Sproul and the other theologians seriously. Perhaps we can make it a point not to label every event that is providential as a miracle. I think I am going to make an effort to think and speak of these things as favor rather than miracles. Whether or not it is true that Satan is laying the groundwork for the end times in this way, in my view it can’t hurt to be safe rather than sorry.

Points for Prayer and Pondering

1. Which camp are you in? Do you believe God still performs miracles, as defined by Dr. Sproul, today? Have you actually witnessed one?

2. What is your feeling about the devil using the familiarity of miracles to normalize them so he can use it against us in the end times? Yes? No? Unsure?

3. Have you personally experienced what I refer to above as acts of providence, God shots or favor?