How Normal Are Miracles?

"The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.  Faith does not ... spring from miracle, but the miracle from faith."  (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
"For nothing is impossible with God"  (Luke 1:37, NLT, italics added). 
"Is anything too hard for the LORD?"  (Genesis 18:14, NLT).
"O Sovereign LORD!  You made the heavens and the earth by your strong hand and powerful arm.  Nothing is too hard for you!"  (Jer. 32:17, NLT).
"Jesus looked at them intently and said, 'Humanly speaking, it is impossible.  But with God everything is possible'"  (Matt. 19:26, NLT).  "He replied, 'What is impossible for people is possible with God'"  (Luke 18:27, NLT). 
"I did tell you, but you do not believe.  The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me"   (John 10:25, NIV). 
"Even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father"  (John 10:38, NIV).

If miracles happened on a regular basis ("God found me a parking spot, what a miracle!"  "I passed the test!"), we would call them "regulars" or "ordinaries!" By definition, God is over, above, and beyond natural law, of which He is the Author and Governor.  Part of the problematic issue is the definition of miracles per se.  Miracles are not the suspension of natural law, but the overruling of it by the One who made the "laws of the universe" (cf. Job 38:33) as we perceive them. When you catch an apple fallen from a tree, you do not suspend gravity, but overrule it by catching it!

All events are governed and caused by God, who is the Causa prima, or First Cause (Uncaused cause), known by the Greek philosophers.  We call unusual events caused by God miracles.  Note:  God, is the only Legislator, and made the laws of nature, and is able to suspend them or overrule them to His preference and will--Jesus wasn't bound nor limited by them.

But miracles are more common than you think:  Just looking in the mirror can reveal one!  The transformation of a convert's life is the biggest and most dynamic testimony to miracles ever!  Life is a walking miracle, since, by the law of biogenesis, life only comes from life, because the metabolic motor, DNA, only is replicated by existing DNA; this begs the question of where the original DNA came from (God!).  DNA couldn't have arisen by chance or luck, (it's far too complex with many proteins, the most complicated substance known to man) no matter how much time you think there was for anything to happen (according to scientists the Big Bang took place some 13.7 billion years ago--not enough time!).  Furthermore, when you consider the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine, ponder that He does it all the time when water nourishes a vine, and the grapes are made into wine!  Doesn't the cow turn water into milk?  All of nature turns food and water into excrement and waste matter.

Jesus never did miracles for show or on-demand, nor did He ever do a "biggie" miracle, and He did them before skeptics as well with only his inner circle and friends present--they were not helter-skelter, without rhyme, reason, or justification,  but had a purpose or need to deal with.   His enemies didn't deny that He did them, but became jealous of His influence.   His miracles vouched for His claims and bore witness of the truth; His life not belying His testimony and witness either, which were substantiated in manifold manners.

None of the miracles were fantastic or for personal prestige, selfish gain, or even monetary gain.  They all served to glorify God and to be signs of His deity--most were done out of sympathy.  He proved He had all authority over disease, nature, death, demons, maladies, and disabilities.  He performed such a variety of miracles to demonstrate His powers that you must rule out deceit, and we are exhorted to believe "on the evidence of the miracles themselves" (cf. John 14:11, NIV).

The trouble with miracles is that it evokes skepticism and antagonism in some--faith in others is increased.  They are meant to nourish the weak in faith, but not to convince the skeptic or one who doesn't want to believe:  John 12:37 says that, though He had performed many miracles, they would not believe in Him (not could not).  It's sure interesting that His enemies and the Pharisees, in particular, didn't doubt that He performed signs or miracles, but said that, if they left Him alone, the whole world would follow and go after Him, according to John 11:48 (and leave them--their real fear!).

This is the thing with miracles:  If you remove them like Thomas Jefferson did in his personal Bible, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, you disembowel Christianity and neutralize the faith; other faiths can delete their miracles and their religion remains intact. If we were to remove them, Christ would've been merely a footnote in history and of only passing interest as an itinerant teacher.  His miracles were not for show, nor to impress, but to make a point.  The gospels record some 37 miracles (tally depends on what you call a miracle), but He did countless miracles in reality, not just the ones recorded, and the world couldn't contain the books that would be written.

Modern Science cannot forbid miracles, they are outside its turf and domain (history is nonrepeatable nor observable). David Hume described miracles as violations of natural law:  This is is a deification of the laws of nature, and the laws are merely descriptions of the ordinary course of events.  If there were no laws of nature, nothing would be predictable and we couldn't study nature.   We shouldn't seek miracles (unusual events caused by God), because they only give the appetite for more miracles!  We should praise the Lord for the ones we do witness on a daily basis!

People claim to have a problem with a certain miracle, such as the virgin birth, but their problem is with the whole concept of the supernatural and miracles in general; the issue is settled by philosophy and history and theology, not science--it ultimately rests on the veracity of the witnesses, and the reliability and credibility of the historical records.  Secularists, who premise their faith denying the supernatural, are ruling God out of the equation, upon denial of miracles, which happen by virtue of their being a supernatural God--a fact they willingly and knowingly suppress.

In the final analysis, as Dostoevsky said above, miracles come from faith, not faith from miracles!  Life is a miracle and the sunrise is one too, except that you experience it so often you don't consider the complexity and wonder involved.  Believers see miracles everywhere, skeptics see none due to the hardness of their hearts.  Everyday wonders are no fewer miracles and we ought not to take them for granted and lose our sense of awe with the miracles of nature; even the firmament shows His handiwork per Psalm 19.   Let me sum it up with a quote from songwriter William Cowper:  "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform!"  (Therefore, Matt. 9:29, NIV, says:  "...According to your faith let it be done to you.")   Soli Deo Gloria!  

It's A Miracle!

Jesus never did miracles on demand, as Herod had hoped to have a personal show of the supernatural. There was also never a biggie miracle or grandstanding that the Pharisees had demanded if they were to believe because of their cynicism.  Jesus would not accommodate the Pharisees' demand for a "sign." Case in point: The bystanders told Jesus to come down from the cross and they would then believe in Him.  The miracle was that He stayed on the cross--it was love them kept Him there and the temptation was to come down and use His powers independently of the Father's will.  But Jesus did thirty-five recorded miracles and numerous ones not mentioned, but if they were, "the world could not contain the books that would be written!"  The thing about miracles is that they only make the appetite for more miracles and don't make a skeptic become a believer--it takes a work of God in the heart to make a person a believer, which is also a miracle in its own right.

What Jesus did were called "signs" by John because they were not helter-skelter, to attract attention, or even for personal promotion, but to meet a need and teach something about Himself:  He is the Bread of Life; the Light of the World; the Resurrection and the Life, etc. Each of the seven recorded signs of John's gospel (actually there are seven miracles in John if you count the one after His resurrection), are for a reason to bear witness of the Deity of Christ in a different aspect and light. Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness to turn stones into bread and use His powers for personal advantage--but He never did take advantage of His powers!  Christ didn't want to be known simply as a miracle worker or healer or even teacher or martyr, but He would've been a mere footnote in history had He performed none!  Miracles are essential to prove the Deity of Christ and the ultimate proof is His resurrection.  If you remove the miracles from other religion's Scriptures, the religion remains intact, but not so with Christianity--they are essential.

People believe that all they need to believe is a miracle. They say:  Miracles do not produce faith; faith produces miracles!   The Jews in John 12:37 "would not believe" despite Christ's miracles.  If you are cynical and have a hardened heart, no miracle will make a believer out of you.  The heart of the matter, then, is that it's a matter of the heart.  There is plenty of evidence of the miraculous to those who are seeking it and are willing--just look in the mirror and you will see a miracle!  Sunrise is a miracle, yet because it happens every day we don't give it a second thought; life itself is not some fluke of nature, but a miracle--if these things happened all the time we'd call them regulars.

Science cannot forbid miracles, it can only say that they don't normally or regularly occur.  When you say they are against the laws of science, nature, or what they term natural law, you are personifying science and nature as if they are persons making up rules, and are not subject to rules.  In our case we can make laws and break them; the penalty is inherent.  God is a Lawmaker, Judge, and Executor of his will and laws.  God is the Author of the laws of nature and its Lawgiver and can suspend, cancel, or revoke them at will, just like people commonly say rules are made to be broken.  Jesus did miracles out of need and not to promote Himself: likewise, we should meet people's needs with the miracles of modern-day science and technology.

What then are miracles?  All events are caused by God as He is the causa prima or First Cause; miracles are just unusual events caused by God. If you remember the "Miracle on Ice" back in 1980 you would attribute that to being a miracle, and the 1969 World Series when the New York Mets won, they may have been unusual, but they don't meet the definition of miracle: Which must defy the natural in such a way as to make a person come to a decision as to whether he believes in miracles (events unusually caused by God) or not.  The purpose of miracles in Scripture is to confirm faith and authenticate the messenger by demonstrating God's power.


Miracles in the Bible are different:  They are not performed for no rhyme or reason, for prestige, for money, or for power, but in sympathy for the suffering of man and to increase his faith.  No!  People were not gullible, ignorant, superstitious, or unsophisticated in His day and knew what was a miracle and what wasn't.  There are false miracles and ones that could have a natural explanation.  The presence of the counterfeit does not preclude the reality of the real thing and prove they are spurious.

But the timing is what makes them miraculous (like the drying up of the Red Sea).  Laws describe what happens, and don't control what happens, so whether miracles occur is ultimately a historical and philosophical question, not scientific (which only describes repeatable, observable, and measurable events producible under laboratory conditions with controlled variables and constants). The question and issue is this:  Are the documents accurate and the veracity of the sources reliable? If one believes in God, it follows by definition that God can do what He wants, and that would include miracles. However, modern-day Secular Humanism and Postmodernism deny the supernatural as a presupposition and won't even go there or admit a divine foot in the door.

Sometimes we trivialize them like when we find a parking space or hit a hole in one in golf we attribute the events to something miraculous, but we mustn't downplay them and realize that we live in the presence of miracles--we just don't see them because they are all around us and happen without our awareness.  Miracles are for the reason to elicit or evoke faith where a seed has been planted and a person is ready to believe with an open mind, needy heart, and willing spirit:  "Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father's name, they bear witness of Me"  (John 10:25, NKJV).  Jesus implored them to believe for His works' sake.  Soli Deo Gloria!