The Bible isn’t written the way critics say it is. Often an attacker of the Word of God will try to pull out some apparent contradiction or fallacy, hoping to unravel the whole Text with nothing but a “gotcha” moment that is almost certainly easily reconciled by anyone willing to read the Book with an open mind. I could give a number of examples of these so called “gotchas” but I’ll just focus on one…
“Why no miracles today?”
The idea behind the question, at least when asked by someone looking to undermine the Word of God, is simple: All kinds of supernatural occurrences are recorded in Scripture but those things don’t happen today. Oh sure, there are incredible things we have all witnessed, like people surviving seemingly lethal and catastrophic accidents, or remarkable recoveries by people who seemed to be days or hours away from dying of a disease. Those things happen and cannot be disputed.
They’re not necessarily miracles, however.
A miracle occurs when the “natural” is interrupted to make way for the “supernatural.” When I pray for rain and it rains, that’s not a miracle. It’s the answer to prayer, sure, but not a miracle, because rain is a natural occurrence. If, however, I prayed for it to rain in my bedroom and a cloud appeared and started showering…that’s not natural. That’s supernatural. By definition, that’s a miracle.
The Bible is filled with such supernatural occurrences, at the same time the world today is not. The critic of the Bible will say “the Bible is just a bunch of made-up stories with ‘fantasy magic stuff’ happening, and the fact that those things aren’t happening today proves it was all just made up back then.”
Okay, but here’s just one problem with that argument: The Bible only contains about 200 specifically recorded miracles (supernatural doings by God or an empowered person). That’s a lot, sure, but it’s also two-hundred that are spread across Genesis to Revelation, a timeframe of some four thousand years. That doesn’t mean there weren’t other miracles done; I’m just saying when you look at the whole of history, even a thousand specific acts is a drop in the bucket.
The vast majority of people who have ever lived, especially including those who lived in the so-called “Bible times,” lived without ever witnessing a miracle. And yet, many of those people believed in the miracles as told by the Bible. They believed because they were told about them, from trustworthy people, and because they heard about them from other people whose testimony corroborated what they had been told as well.
If the argument against the Bible is “no one has seen a miracle like the Bible describes,” then that argument is as soft as wet paper. In our own lives we can list countless things we have not seen yet we believe because enough testimony has been provided to corroborate it. That doesn’t even get into the logical reasons to believe the Bible, such as the fact that the people who wrote the so-called “fiction” of the New Testament were willing to be put to death rather than deny what they wrote. You don’t die for something you know is a lie. You might fight for a lie, or kill for a lie, or die unintentionally while fighting/killing for a lie, and certainly you might believe a lie, thinking it’s the truth, but no one has ever gone merrily to the chopping block, singing as they went, for something they knew wasn’t true. Peter was crucified upside down. Paul was beheaded. Thaddeus was killed by firing squad (shot with arrows). Thomas was run through with a spear. On and on the list goes. They died knowing what they believed, which gives instant credibility to the things they wrote as eye-witnesses.
But, perhaps the argument is “miracles in the Bible don’t happen today, and that hints at the Bible being fiction.” If so, once again, the argument is faulty…
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
(1 Corinthians 13:8-10)
Perhaps the question should be, why would Paul even bother to say miracles would end? Think about the argument the critic is making: “The people who wrote the Bible were just making it all up.” Okay. So if that’s true then Paul (et al) never did any miracles. All he did was write about miracles that never happened. Okay. So why bother to future proof that? Why go to the trouble of saying “by the way guys, after I’m dead, it won’t be too much longer and miracles will go away. When the perfect (complete) Word of God is finished, you won’t need miracles anymore.” Why would Paul care? If he was just a liar pulling a con on people, why bother continuing the illusion after he’s dead? And what are the people he’s writing to thinking? According to the critic, there are no miracles, which means no one Paul was written to has ever seen one, and yet Paul writes to them and talks about the miracles he did in front of them (Galatians 3:5)!
None of that makes sense if you start with the supposition that miracles didn’t happen.
The fact is, there is a timelessness to the text of the Bible. There is an “eternality” to Scripture which defies human reasoning. That alone isn’t the only reason to recognize a Divine hand at work in its writing, but it is one reason, and it’s a good starting point for an honest-hearted critic to take a second look at the Book men have died defending.
~ Matthew