Episode 74 – Miracles Part 7 – Have Miracles Ceased?

Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script: (Bible quotes from the New Living Translation)

God gave Paul the power to perform unusual miracles.  When handkerchiefs or aprons that had merely touched his skin were placed on sick people, they were healed of their diseases, and evil spirits were expelled.

Acts, Chapter 19, verses 11 through 12, New Living Translation

Don’t drink only water. You ought to drink a little wine for the sake of your stomach because you are sick so often.”

1 Timothy, Chapter 5, verse 23, New Living Translation

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VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. Today on Anchored by Truth we’re going to continue our discussion of miracles in the Bible. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books. Today we are going to conclude our examination about the miracle accounts contained in the Bible. On our last couple of shows we took a look at some of the objections that are often lodged against the historicity of the miracle accounts and we talked about the reasons we believe those objections are not persuasive when compared to the evidence that supports the authenticity of the Bible’s records. RD, would you like to remind us of some of the major points that we discussed?

RD: Certainly. One of the big points that we made is the question of whether or not a miracle occurred at a particular place and time is a historical question. As such, the evidence that supports the historicity of miracles is historical evidence. Probably the most common objection made about the Bible’s miracle accounts is that they can’t be true because they involve incidents that violate natural law. But natural laws pertain to operational science and are built around repetition or repeatability. But such laws are of much less value when it comes to evaluating origins or past singularities. The validity of the Bible’s miracle accounts is grounded in the historical accuracy of the Bible or at least the book in which that story is related. We have noted several times during this series that the book of Acts contains descriptions of a number of notable miracles. We can’t test the accuracy of those accounts per se but where we can test the historical accuracy of Acts – in matters pertaining to geography, culture, politics, and economics – the book has withstood considerable scrutiny throughout the years. We also noted that if there is valid, historical evidence for the occurrence of one or more miracles, simply doubting the evidence is not a form of evidence. Doubt is just that, doubt. Doubt has to do with a person’s evaluation of facts or evidence but has no evidentiary value. Another big point that we made is that sometimes critics try to keep a nucleus of a miracle story but try to strip that event of its supernatural character. Critics might say that when Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee he only seemed to do it. Storms on the Sea of Galilee are known to rise quickly and fade quickly. But the details of the story don’t support that accusation and that same thing is true of most of the attempts to use that approach.

VK: Thank you. I think that’s helpful to bring us up to the subject that we want to cover today and one that is itself the subject of some controversy. Do miracles still occur today? It’s seemingly a simple question but I know that you think that it has a number of dimensions.

RD: It does have a number of dimensions so right at the start I need to remind our listeners of something we’ve tried to emphasize often during the course of this series on Biblical miracles. In the Bible miracles are most often termed “signs and wonders” because the miracles always serve some sort of redemptive purpose. Besides the fact that Biblical miracles often occur to provide immediate help to God’s people they are also used as part of the larger plan of redemption – most often to authenticate someone as a true messenger of God. We also need to remember that while miracles are found throughout the Bible the greatest number of miracles tend to be clustered around specific events in redemptive history such as the exodus from Egypt. The last cluster occurred during the lives of Jesus and his apostles during the establishment of the New Covenant and the early church.

VK: And in our opening scripture from Acts 19:12 we heard about one of the times during the early church when the Apostle Paul performed quite a number of miracles. At one point in his ministry Paul ministered in the city of Ephesus for a period of three years. Yet, he was able to heal people with whom he never even personally came into contact. The scripture says that when “handkerchiefs or aprons” that had touched his skin were laid on the sick the sick were healed. Now handkerchiefs or aprons were very common items made out of cloth or linen in those days. Handkerchiefs were used to wipe sweat from the head and aprons were tied around the waist to protect the clothing of people working at a task. The scripture is not trying to imply here that the kind of cloth had any power only to link the item specifically to Paul. It was the power of God and the agency of Paul that provided the healing. The cloths that had touched Paul merely insured that everyone knew that Paul’s agency was the relevant factor. So, again, the scripture is just reinforcing that at that time Paul had been given the gift to perform the miracle of healing signifying he was an authentic messenger of God and the message about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was true.

RD: Exactly. And we see an important distinction between our two opening scriptures that is relevant to the question of whether miracles continue to the present day. Our opening scripture says specifically that God gave Paul the ability to perform miracles which as you just noted included the ability to provide healing even when the person wasn’t directly in Paul’s presence. Yet in our second scripture we heard from Paul that he was concerned about the health of one of his closest friends and associates, Timothy. So much so that he was encouraging Timothy to drink a little wine rather than just drink water.

VK: Well we need to make a couple of observations about that encouragement. First, the water of the first century Roman empire wasn’t always safe to drink. Sometimes they added wine to the water to make it safer for consumption but it was also thought that wine had some medicinal benefit. We should also note that the wine most commonly available at that time was far lower in alcoholic content than wine today. Wine today is usually around 11 to 12% alcohol whereas first century wine was more likely around 3 to 4%.

RD: Those are good notes. Paul’s concern for Timothy was about Timothy’s health and for whatever reason he thought Timothy might benefit from adding a little wine to his diet. But with respect to our discussion about miracles it appears that by the time Paul wrote his letter to Timothy the gift of being able to perform healing miracles had ceased. Paul ministered in Ephesus from around 53 AD to 56 AD whereas most scholars think he wrote to Timothy around 62 to 64 AD. So roughly a decade had passed between these two scriptures. Given Paul’s observations to Timothy it sure like Paul no longer had the ability to perform miracles at that time.

VK: So, your point is that even the later letters in the New Testament appear to indicate that the period of miracles that had marked the lives of Jesus and the Apostles had ended. And since Paul’s letters to Timothy are some of the latest scriptures to have been recorded we really don’t have any scriptural evidence that there were any more miracles in the Bible performed after that time, do we?

RD: No, we don’t. And that’s a critical observation with respect to whether miracles continue to occur today but it’s not the end of the story. As we said, the question of whether miracles have ceased has multiple dimensions. So, let’s make a distinction that the prominent Christian scholar Norman Geisler used to make. There is a difference between the gift of miracles and the fact of miracles.

VK: Hmmm. That sounds interesting. What is the difference between the gift of miracles and the fact of miracles?

RD: Well, as we heard in Acts 19:12 God had specifically given Paul the power to perform miracles. In other words, God had given Paul the gift of performing miracles but as our second scripture showed, apparently this gift was only for a limited time. We aren’t told exactly when it ceased, but sometime between when Paul ministered in Ephesus and when he was writing to Timothy from a Roman jail the gift had ceased. Paul had been given the gift of miracles to authenticate him as God’s messenger and the message he was bringing. But within the next decade God no longer thought that that gift was necessary for the church to continue to progress.

VK: Do you have any thought about what changed in that intervening 10 years? Obviously, God never does anything without having a specific reason. So why was the gift of miracles necessary in the mid 50’s AD but not needed 10 years later.

RD: We don’t know specifically but I think we can make some reasonable observations. For instance, in the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ death and the New Testament church was just starting miracles were one of the primary forms of evidence that God was doing something new in redemptive history. But as the church grew and added members, literally throughout the Roman empire, other forms of evidence of the truth of the gospel message became available.

VK: Such as?

RD: Well, as Paul and the other apostles had reached more and more people, more and more people had seen the miracles and could testify to what they had seen. So, more people than just the apostles could carry the message of the gospel based on first hand evidence. Of course part of that testimony was about Jesus’ death and crucifixion which in and of itself was compelling. Second, as the church grew it became obvious that the earliest Christians lived very different lives from many of their pagan neighbors. In John 13:35 Jesus said “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” As the church grew the world that was watching the early church could see that love in action. Just as today, being part of a caring and concerned body of believers was very attractive especially in an empire where various forms of brutality were all too common. Even the people outside the church could see that the church was different and that persuaded a lot of people. Third, more and more people could give testimony that their lives had been changed by the gospel. Even today, some of the most powerful and persuasive evidence for the authenticity of the Christian faith comes from people who testify about the positive difference their faith has made in their lives.

VK: So, the point is that as the church grew it wasn’t necessary for God to keep performing miracles in order to persuade people that the gospel really was the good news that He had sent His only son to bring forgiveness for sins. That’s perfectly understandable. But does all that mean that miracles are no longer happening in this world?

RD: Remember the distinction that we just made – that there is a difference between the gift of miracles and the fact of miracles. I, for one, am prepared to acknowledge that God still does remarkable things within His creation. I strongly believe that there are people who are healed of diseases whose healing defies conventional medical science. I’ve heard the testimony of missionaries who were delivered from danger or even death in ways that cannot be explained easily or even at all by human or scientific wisdom. So, when I talk about the strong likelihood that the gift of miracles has ceased, what I am referring to is that we no longer have compelling evidence that any particular person has been vested with the power to perform miracles. This does not mean that God cannot still provide supernatural deliverance, but it does mean that we no longer have any messengers from God that hold the same unique position as the original apostles.

VK: What you’re saying is that even if remarkable events occur today which seem to demonstrate supernatural activity that such events aren’t being done by the agency of any particular person who has been given the power to perform miracles as Paul did. If there were such a person they could actually add to scripture because they would have the hallmark of being an authenticated messenger of God.

RD: Exactly. That’s why Geisler differentiated between the gift of miracles which God occasionally conferred on specific individuals and the fact of miracles. Miracles, God’s intervention in His created order may still happen – miracles may occur in fact - but we do not have any evidence that any particular person possesses the gift of performing them at their discretion.

VK: I think that’s a valuable distinction. Perhaps, before we close this episode of Anchored by Truth, we should remind the audience why this discussion about miracles is so important.

RD: The primary reason that we wanted to undertake this series is to encourage people to study the Biblical accounts of miracles closely because, as we have noted several times, there are many critics who will label the Bible as being filled with myths or fairy tales because of the miracle accounts. Obviously, if the Bible treats miracles as being historical events and those events could be proven to be fabricated or false it would cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the Bible.

VK: So, by studying the miracle accounts and the historical evidence that supports the historicity of the books that contain them people don’t have to abandon their faith in the Bible’s inerrancy or infallibility?

RD: Yes. And, even more importantly, the fact that God has at times and places of His choosing supernaturally intervened in His creation and in history provides evidence of the supernatural character of the Bible’s origins. And that of course is important, not only so we know the truth of scripture, but also so that we can have a fully developed understanding of God’s attributes and character.

VK: What you’re getting to is that in order for us to worship God properly we have to know the truth about Him. That reminds me of the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verses 23 and 24 where Jesus said. “But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” So, if we don’t know that God has truly performed miracles as part of His redeeming and preserving His people we can’t fulfill that commandment. We can’t worship him in spirit and in truth if we have doubts about how He has interacted in history to bring us the special revelation that is the Bible.

RD: Yes. There is another verse in Timothy that I think is particularly important to this topic of miracles and to what we see happening all around us today. In 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verses 1 through 5 Paul said that the last days would be very difficult times. Paul said, “people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.” It’s always struck me that the last line of Paul’s warning is the key to all the problems that he lists before that. Why would people act religious but reject the power that true faith can bring? 

VK: I have the feeling that you believe that the rejection of the power, the failure to be godly, ties into people not worshipping God in spirit and in truth.

RD: Yes. In the last 150 years or so there has been gradual erosion in widespread confidence in the Bible. It was already happening before Darwin’s books gave rise to the idea that God wasn’t necessary for life to exist but it certainly accelerated after Darwin. As many people began to question the opening verses of Genesis they also began to question many other parts of the Bible. Today many people regard the Bible as being suspect unless one or more secular sources have confirmed the Bible – despite the fact that this is not a standard that’s applied to other books that come to us from antiquity. I think one big part of the reason so many people today don’t experience the power that comes from knowing Jesus is because we have abandoned our confidence in His word. Even worse, our kids often lose the faith they have in their early years when they run into the skeptics and the critics and are challenged by questions they can’t answer. The good news is that this trend doesn’t need to continue. The Bible has withstood its skeptics for 2,000 years and it will continue to withstand them. The question is not whether the Bible will stand the test of time. It has and it will. The question of whether we will let it help us do the same.

VK: So, being able to intelligently address issues related to the Bible’s miracle accounts is an important part of someone, particular young people, being able to retain their confidence in the Bible when the challenges arrive – which they certainly will. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer for our country’s school boards since it is so important

---- PRAYER FOR TAKING A TEST

VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!”

(Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation)

The Gospel of John, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 10, New Living Translation

https://christiananswers.net/q-eden/ednk-seaofgalilee.html