Miracles

Today’s commonplace is yesterday’s ‘miracle.’  Of course landing a man on the moon is not commonplace but it has been done.  Is it a miracle? Most of us have not had a heart replacement, but many have been performed.  Is that a miracle? Projecting the perfect image and sound of a person’s voice across the world with only a second or two delay would have been unthinkable 200 years ago but we see it every day.  Being told you could carry in the palm of your hand the libraries of the world only a half-century ago would have seemed preposterous.  Television, airplane flight, modern medicine—all of these things would have been considered miracles in time past—incredible then but indisputably credible now. 

Many wonderful things—in reality the most commonplace things in the world—are also frequently called miracles; such is the birth of a child or the coming of spring.  But to label these things as miracles, I submit, diminishes the strength of the word.   Real miracles upset our most cherished assumptions of how the world is or should be—or at least has always been. They are occurrences which are beyond the power of any presently known physical power to produce; they deviate from the known laws of nature.   They are supernatural events.

People initially distrust the report of miracles because these are incidents that do not fall within the pale of their own experience or because the ‘miracle’ cannot be replicated at will.  Because they have not experienced such an event they say the purported miracle could not have been experienced by anyone. 

Miracles threaten the established order.  From time immemorial people who claimed they had seen, heard, or experienced ‘miraculous’ things were dismissed as delusional or burnt at the stake as being possessed.  Yet the reports of a few of these ‘miracle workers’ or ‘miracle experiencers’ or the extraordinary event itself have persisted notwithstanding the gainsayers.  Christianity, at least in its pure form, persists.

 

So, are there miracles?

I believe there have been miracles and there will yet be more.  But they will not be and have not been just random events.—there will be a witness or witnesses.  And the ‘miracle’ will serve a good purpose.  This is critical.   This is the test: evidence, witness, good purpose. 

How is it done?

My faith has much to say about miracles.  Miracles are done by the power of God, which power is sometimes delegated, upon need, to man.  And they are done even today in God’s true Church.  Miracles are, indeed, a sign of the true Church.  They are called ‘gifts of the Spirit.’  Strong faith in Jesus Christ and righteousness capacitate the power of God by which miracles are performed.  A church which denies miracles or has no miracles performed in it is not God’s true Church, for "God is a God of miracles and is the same yesterday, today, and forever. . . .” If it serves His purpose He can perform miracles; who are we to limit Him or what He can do?

   

Miracles, true miracles, are done for but one purpose—the eternal salvation of man.  I, for one, desire to be saved from and out of this wicked world. Now that is a miracle! Thank God for miracles.