In part 1 of this article we saw that the Bible fits best with the
view that God wants to keep using Christians in miracle work until Jesus
returns.
In part 2 I listed some objections that are made by those who say
that Christians should not seek to work miracles today. And I gave what I believe are good answers to
those objections.
TESTIMONY
In this final part we will turn our attention to testimony of
miracles. In what follows, I will do two
things.
First, I will say something about claims of miracles. In recent years many Christians claim to have
witnessed miracles. I have spoken to
some who say they have seen miracles. And
I have even witnessed a couple of miracles myself.
Second, I will make some comments on evaluating claims of
miracles.
Reports of miracles
To begin with, let’s think about reports of miracles in the church
today. There should be no doubt that in
recent years many Christians have claimed that they have witnessed a miracle.
That is not to say that all Christians will be aware of these
claims, for at least two reasons.
First, more than a few believers, sadly, live their Christian
lives isolated within their own denominational bubble. And they therefore hear of little that goes
on outside that bubble.
This means that if a Christian is a member of a denomination that
denies the place of miracles today, they may well not be aware that there are
many claims of miracles in our day.
Second, more than a few Christians, equally sadly, have little
interest in countries outside the one in which they live. The New Testament makes it clear that the
early believers took great interest in what was happening with their brothers
and sisters around the known world. And
the same should be true today. But
unfortunately this is often not the case.
It is a fact that there are many more claims of miracles in some
countries than in others. So if a
Christian lives in a country where these claims are relatively infrequent, and
if they have no real interest in the church in foreign countries, they may not
know how many believers today claim to have witnessed a miracle.
A Christian who has contacts and interests within a variety of
denominations and countries, will be in no doubt that many believers alive
today say they have witnessed miracles.
I don’t intend to make a long list of such claims here. But I will give one example of the sort of
thing I mean:
A few years ago I was speaking to someone who has links with
churches in Nepal
What he meant, as he went on to explain, was that, just as we find
in Acts, God is using miracles to cause the rapid growth of His church in Nepal
At the present time worldwide there are many similar reports. It should be regarded as a fact that large
numbers of Christians in our day claim they have witnessed a miracle.
I have spoken to
people who say they have witnessed miracles
I have also spoken personally to some Christians who say they have
witnessed miracles.
For example, I can think of one conversation I had with a local
pastor a year or two ago. He told me
about a young woman who had suffered from severe mental illness. She had been unable to work and had been on a
lot of medication. He told me that after
his church ministered to her, she was able to work and no longer needed
medication.
I can think of another conversation I had with another Christian
many years ago. He told me how he had
laid hands on a woman who was wearing a neck brace. He said that she had been healed and was able
to immediately remove the brace.
I have had a number of similar conversations with various
Christians over the years.
My own experiences of
miracles
I would like at this point also to be able to reel off a list of
impressive miracles that I have experienced personally. However, I am not a position to do that.
I have witnessed God acting supernaturally in different ways. For example, I have seen Him speak powerfully
through prophecy and through ‘coincidences’, and I have seen him provide for me
in striking ways too. But in terms of
what the Bible would define as a miracle, I have not witnessed all that much. And what I have witnessed took place many
years ago.
Nevertheless, I will mention two experiences I have had, which I
am sure were miracles:
Firstly, I have experienced one healing miracle.
In 1989 I began to experience a difficult-to-describe abdominal
pain. This increased in intensity for a
few weeks. Then it remained for a
further few weeks at a level where it was causing me constant and considerable
discomfort.
A Christian brother laid hands on me for healing. At the time he laid on hands I felt no change. However, over the course of the next two
weeks the pain melted away to nothing and never returned. I am sure that this was a miraculous healing.
Secondly, I have also seen one visible physical miracle, a miracle
that was unusual in that it involved no human agent.
When I was in a back-street in Paris
On the sign was written my name ‘Max’ and also the words ‘Giselle
– Freund’. I can’t remember if there
were any other words on the sign too. I
didn’t have a camera with me, so I wasn’t able to take a photo. Anyway, the main words were ‘Max’ and ‘Giselle
– Freund’.
Immediately before going to Paris France Germany
I believe that on this miraculous road sign God was telling me
that He was with me, and that I was then, and had recently been, in the right
place at the right time. He did this,
rather mysteriously, by putting my name, along with the combination of a French
and a German word, on this road sign. The
fruit of this incident was that I had a better sense of God being with me.
I am rather hesitant to mention this event, because my experience
is that more than a few Christians have no awareness of God confirming things
in their lives in any way. I suspect
that what I have testified to here will look like nonsense to many. I am also wary that I might be accused of
fabrication.
Nevertheless, I believe that God has called me to be a witness of
what I have seen Him do (Acts 26:16), so I choose to obey. He knows I am telling the truth. And it is inconceivable that a workman in Paris
I should also point out that in the Bible many of the miracles we
find God performing have a mysterious or even bizarre element to them. So if God works miracles today, as I am sure
He does, we would most naturally expect some of them to have a certain
mysteriousness or strangeness about them.
Mysterious words on a road sign are therefore in no way incompatible
with the biblical portrait of miracles.
My main aim in this article is, of course, to encourage Christians
to seek to be used by God as instruments in miracle work. I am aware that the example I have just given
is not in this category of miracles, since there was no human agent. Nevertheless, I have given it in the hope
that it will help persuade Christians that God really is working miracles
today.
Evaluating claims of
miracles
There should be no doubt that many Christians in our day claim to
have witnessed miracles. So what are we
to make of these claims? How should we
evaluate them?
I am sure that Christians often go wrong at this point in one of
two ways.
Firstly, there are those who start from the position that a
reported miracle cannot be from God. Perhaps
this is because the existence of miracles today doesn’t fit their theology. Or maybe they feel threatened in some way by
miracles. Whatever the reason, they
immediately conclude that the report is false before even taking the matter to
God in prayer.
Some of those who take this attitude to miracles have been misled
by unbiblical teaching. Some are guilty
of the sin of unbelief, one of the key sins in the Bible. And some are just stubbornly believing what
they want to believe. Whatever the
reason or reasons, this attitude to miracles is seriously wrong in God’s sight.
Secondly, there are those who go to the other extreme and
immediately accept that a reported miracle is genuine. I have seen this often. Many Christians love the idea that God works
miracles, and they therefore choose to believe every report they hear.
However, we should compare this attitude with that of Paul. In 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 he tells the
church in Thessalonica:
‘20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything . . .’
It is true that the testing here refers first and foremost to
testing the genuineness of prophecies. But
Paul would surely have wanted Christians to do their best to test the
genuineness of miracles too.
We find a similar situation in 1 Corinthians 14:29. Here Paul instructs the Corinthians:
‘Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said.’
Again, although Paul is speaking about prophecy in this verse, he
would surely also have wanted Christians to carefully weigh reports of
miracles.
What we should do when we hear a report of a miracle is to start
from a neutral position. Instead of
being biased for or against its genuineness, we need to humbly take the matter
to God, asking for insight.
My experience of listening to Christians talking about the
miracles they claim to have witnessed leads me to believe that testimony about
miracles is mixed. I am sure some of it
is the figment of people’s imaginations.
On the other hand, I am sure that much of it is real. Many specific accounts just sound right. The testimony is not forced or exaggerated, and
the fruit in terms of God building His church in one way or another is evident.
In John 10:1-6, 16, 27 Jesus says that His sheep – Christians –
hear His voice. I think that if we
listen carefully, those of us who are born again should be able to hear that
God is working miracles today. This is
what Jesus is saying.
CONCLUSION TO THE ARTICLE
AS A WHOLE
That concludes our discussion of miracles. So let me sum up what we have found.
In part 1 of this article we saw that the Bible fits best with the
view that God wants to keep using Christians in miracle work until Jesus
returns. And I noted too that in the
absence of a compelling case for not obeying biblical instructions to seek
miracles, we should certainly obey them.
In part 2 we found that objections to the existence of miracles
today fail to convince.
And in part 3 we saw that many Christians today claim to have
witnessed miracles, and it makes most sense to think that some of the claims
are based on genuine works of God.
Let me end with a Bible text that I quoted earlier. In 1 Corinthians 14:1, as we have seen, Paul writes:
‘Pursue love, and eagerly desire spiritual gifts . . .’
As I noted, the gifts Paul refers to here include miracle work.
Paul’s command in this verse is for every Christian alive today as
much as it was for those in Corinth
Let all of us, then, who are following Jesus as Lord, be faithful
in heeding what the Spirit says in this verse of Scripture. We dare not disobey it.
So how exactly should we seek the ability to work miracles?
Well, most importantly we can pray that God would direct and
enable us. And for some of us, it may be
good to seek out people who are experienced in gifts of the Spirit, those we
feel we can trust, to ask for their help and guidance. The more of us who can use spiritual gifts,
including the working of miracles, the stronger God’s church is bound to
become.
See also:
