Category Archives: Miracles

The pattern of miracles today

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A third section of Tim Chester’s Do Miracles Happen Today? that I would like to consider is the part of chapter 4 where he outlines the circumstances in which miracles are more likely to happen today.

1. On the frontline of mission.  John Stott writes: ‘Especially on the frontiers of mission, where a power-encounter may be needed to demonstrate the lordship of Christ, miracles have been and are being reported.’

As Chester says: ‘There are a number of things that make people more inclined to pay attention to the Christian message: the lives of Christians (Titus 2 v 9-10); our response to persecution (1 Peter 2 v 11-12); the community life of the church (John 13 v 35; 1 Peter 3 v 8-15); the worship of the gathered congregation (1 Corinthians 14 v 23-25).…

Why are there fewer miracles today?

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The second part of Tim Chester’s little book Do Miracles Happen Today? that I would like to summarise and reflect on comes in chapter 3.

While insisting that God can and does do miracles today, Chester says that, in fact, they are fewer and lesser in scope than those that happened at the time of the Gospels and Acts.

Some Christians put this down simply to a lack of faith on our part.  If our expectations were greater, then so would the provision of miracles.…

What is a miracle?

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Introducing a short series based on sections of Tim Chester’s book, Do Miracles Happen Today? And other questions about signs, wonders and mighty works.  The Good Book Company.

In chapter two, Chester discusses the definition of ‘miracle’.

An unusual feat?  The success of Leicester City football team in winning the Premier League in 2016 was an extraordinary achievement (they had odds of 5,000 to 1 against them at the start of the season).  But it was not a miracle.…

John 14:12 – ‘Greater deeds’

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John 14:12 – “The person who believes in me will perform the miraculous deeds that I am doing, and will perform greater deeds than these, because I am going to the Father.”

What are these ‘deeds’, and in what sense would they be ‘greater’?

Miracles (accompanied by conversions)?

Some think that the ‘deeds’ are miracles, as in Jn 5:17; 10:32.  They would be quantitatively ‘greater’ in that they would be multiplied through all Jesus’ followers.…

Acts 9:32-43 – “Tabitha, get up!” (sermon notes)

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Text: Acts 9:32-43

How do you like your Christianity?  Spectacular, or ordinary?

1. Spectacular – the dead raised

The gospel has been moving out in ever increasing circles.

Peter and John have been sent from Jerusalem to Samaria, 8:14ff.  Now Peter is moving to the outer regions of Judea.  Visiting the ‘saints’ in Lydda.

First, the healing of Eeneas.

Then 10 miles away, in Joppa, Tabitha/Dorcas has died.

They send for Peter – what did they expect him to do? …

Are miracles meant to be everyday occurrences?

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We have no reason to think that God will not, still less cannot, grant miracles in our own day.  But before we conclude that they ought to be everyday occurrences, we might pause to consider that:-

  • in the Bible, ‘miracles clustered round the principal organs of revelation at fresh epochs of revelation, particularly Moses the lawgiver, the new prophetic witness spearheaded by Elijah and Elisha, the Messianic ministry of Jesus, and the apostles, so that Paul referred to his miracles as “the things that mark an apostle”.’
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Understanding the plagues – can science help?

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In his book The Miracles of Exodus (Continuum, 2003), physicist Sir Colin Humphreys argues that a plausible scientific basis can be found for the plagues of Egypt, as recorded in Exodus 7-11.

This is not to suggest that they can be ‘explained away’ as merely natural phenomena.  Rather, accordingly to Humphreys’, the miraculous element lies in their timing and intensity, along with the fact that they were predicted.

Instone-Brewer (Science and the Bible: Insights For An Ancient Text) takes a similar line:

‘These plagues are not portrayed in the language of miracles, except with regard to their timing and their ferocity.

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Healing miracles

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I have recently returned, after a period of absence, to consider the question of miracles in general, and of divine healing in particular.

Looking again at the work of Rex Gardner (a consultant gynaecologist and an ordained minister), I found myself pretty much in agreement with his conclusions:-

  1. Intellectual honesty demands that (after discounting cases with dubious diagnoses, those where psychosomatic considerations are important, and others where the cure might be attributable to adjuvant medical therapy or where spontaneous remission might be the explanation) there remain some cures for which medicine has no explanation.
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Miracles: sixteen theses

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After all these years, my thoughts and feelings about miracles are still a bit of a jumble.  I offer the following as an attempt to ‘nail my colours to the fence’ (as it were).  These are pretty much bare propositions; elaboration by way of argument or evidence may be found elsewhere:-

  1. A miracle is an extraordinary event in the natural world, prompting people to respond, “This is the Lord’s doing, it is wonderful in our eyes.” 
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Imagine a world without suffering

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Readers of this blog will not expect to find much here by, or about, John Hick.  However, his writings on the philosophy of religion are not without interest or value.

Hick has thought deeply about the problem of suffering.  He asks us to imagine what the world would be like if there were no possibility of pain or suffering.  I have always been struck by what he says about this:-

Suppose…that this world were a paradise from which all possibility of pain and suffering were excluded. …