Miracles Today?

Why don’t we see any big, biblical-order miracles occurring in the world today?

One answer is that most of the 250 miracles recorded in the Bible occurred during narrow periods in biblical history when God was revealing new truth and confirming new messengers. Most of the miracles occurred during the lifetimes of Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the Apostles. There were long periods, hundreds of years, when no miracles occurred. Why? Because God had no new truth to reveal or messenger to confirm.

Today the Bible is complete. We are waiting for the end of history and the coming again of Christ. Until those days begin—and it may not be long—we shouldn’t expect any big, cinematic miracles worthy for another Charlton Heston to show us on the screen.

A second question: Are miracles occurring today on a smaller scale, unnoticed by the media?

The answer is yes. For several years I was on the missions team of Calvary Evangelical Free Church. While there I took the “Perspectives on the World Christian Mission” class. This is an intensive, fourteen-week course focusing on world missions. In each class there is a guest speaker, several of which were missionaries who served in remote, spiritually dark areas of the world. Their stories were eye-opening. The most common miracle they reported—sometimes to their own astonishment—was miraculous healing. They prayed for the sick and were able, through the Holy Spirit, to heal persons their families had given up for dead. One missionary reported that several of them fasted and prayed for a demon-possessed woman. After they laid hands on her, she became like a new person.

It’s easy to scoff at such stories. But these were not televangelists standing in front of a television audience asking for donations. They were sober servants of God who sacrificed comfort, an easy life in America, to go to remote, dangerous locations. And because they confronted spiritual darkness head-on, God gave them the power to heal and exorcise demons. There seems to be a principle that where spiritual light meets the darkness, God more often works through his servants using miracles.

Next time we’ll look at a modern-day example of a miraculous event in a remote region.