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Does unbelief limit God’s power? Mark 6:5-6 seems to say so. But is that really true?
Does Unbelief Limit God’s Power?
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Category Archives: Miracles
Can Satan’s Followers Do Miracles?
by Gary Demar – original source here – https://americanvision.org/22443/can-satan-and-his-followers-perform-miracles/
Christian commentators often turn to the story of Moses and Aaron and their encounters with the magicians of Egypt as evidence that demonic miracles are real and can rival God’s miraculous works. If miracles are a way to demonstrate God’s power and authority over the created order, then “if something or someone other than God can perform miracles, then the value of miracles for attesting to Christ’s divinity is negated.” [1]
When Aaron threw down his rod before Pharaoh (Ex. 7:8–12), it became a serpent by the power of God. We shouldn’t be surprised that God can perform such a miracle since He created man from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7). For God, turning a dead stick into a serpent is child’s play. Could Pharaoh’s sorcerers and magicians also perform creation miracles? The Bible describes their “powers” as “secret arts,” or more accurately, “deceptive arts” (Ex. 7:11).
These were developed skills—conjurors tricks—that were concealed from Pharaoh and the general public. The livelihood of the magicians depended on their ability to convince Pharaoh that they had miraculous abilities. Pharaoh’s tricksters had no more power than the “magicians” who served in Nebuchadnezzar’s court and could not tell the king the contents of his dream.
Turning a staff into a serpent was a simple magician’s trick. Jannes and Jambres, the names that Paul gives to Pharaoh’s court magicians (2 Tim. 3:8), probably performed this spectacle quite often. It was their signature trick. But how did they create the illusion? Dan Korem, a trained magician, reminds us of similar illusions performed today. “The most practical method to duplicate the magicians’ feat is similar to a trick performed today where a magician changes a cane to a silk handkerchief, rope or a handful of flowers.” [2]
Modern magicians regularly work with animals, so we shouldn’t be surprised if ancient magicians did the same. Here’s how it could have been done. Susan Schaffer, a reptile curator at the San Diego Zoo,
explained that to measure the length of a snake, she takes a tightfitting tube and coaxes the snake into it, as snakes like dark, tight-fitting environs. To replicate the illusion of changing a rod into a snake, a telescopic shell must be constructed to house the snake. Given the materials available during that time period, such as a piece of pliable papyrus, this could easily be made. With the snake concealed inside the “staff,” the magician would simply have to pass his hand over the shell, collapsing it at the same time, leaving the snake in its place. This action could be covered by the motion of throwing the staff to the ground, creating the illusion that the staff visibly changes to a snake. [3]
Lighting would have been poor indoors, so the sleight of hand would have been easily concealed. A good magician could come up with several ways to perform this trick in a way that would convince the casual observer who probably saw what happened around Pharaoh’s court from a distance.
Here’s a short video of a trick I do to make a playing card float in mid air:
After church on Sunday, I picked R.C. Sproul’s book Moses and the Burning Bush that was on display. I was surprised to read the following and how it agreed with comments made by Korem and Kole:
Satan cannot perform miracles. The Bible warns us against the signs that Satan will perform, deceiving even the elect; but those signs are described as lying signs wonders. That doesn’t mean that they are true miracles that are performed for satanic purposes. Rather, they are false signs or tricks; they might be more astonishing than the most impressive magic acts, but they are still tricks. Satan is not God. He cannot do the things God can do. Real miracles that authenticate God’s messengers are acts that only God can do, such as creating something out of nothing or raising people from the dead. Satan can’t control the laws of nature; he’s just a magician. He’s good at his craft, but his craft is altogether evil.
We saw how that took place in the confrontation that Moses had with the magicians of Pharaoh’s court (Ex. 7:10–13). Moses took that rod), threw it on the ground, and it turned into a snake. But the magicians of Pharaoh just yawned and threw their sticks on the floor too—and they all became snakes. It was the oldest trick in the history of sleight-of-hand: inside each of their sticks was a snake. The sticks collapsed, so the snakes that were already in there could come out. Pharaoh’s court thought that was all Moses was doing, too. But Moses’ “trick” was real; his snake ate all of their snakes. Those magicians were no match for Moses—because they were no match for God. [4]
But didn’t Pharaoh’s magicians turn water into blood and produce frogs on command, replicating the miracles brought about through Moses? The miracle performed by Moses turned the Nile into blood as well as the “rivers … streams … pools … reservoirs” as well as the water in “vessels of wood and in vessels of stone” (Ex. 7:19). Pharaoh’s magicians did the same “with their secret arts” (7:22).
Thinking Straight in a Crooked World
There were “magicians, conjurers, and sorcerers” in Babylon who served under Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2:1). If they truly had supernatural powers, they would have been able to interpret the king’s dream as well as to tell him what he dreamed. This they could not do (2:4–14). In fact, they admitted that it was impossible: “‘There is not a man on earth who could declare the matter for the king. . . .’” (2:10). Thinking Straight in a Crooked World explains why. If you are looking for a book to help with biblical apologetics, this is the book to start with.Buy Now
Their trick was to turn a small amount of water into blood. They must have gone to Pharaoh with a small pot of water and showed him how they too could turn it into blood. Magicians turn milk into confetti, a common trick performed by many stage illusionists. [5] Turning clear water into “blood” would be simple. Holding a pouch of blood in the palm of the hand—there was enough of it around—it would have been a simple thing to open it into the water. “Presto-change-o.” Water into blood!
The real miracle would have been for the magicians to turn some of the bloodied water throughout Egypt back into fresh water! This they could not do.
The plague of frogs, like the bloodied waters, occurred throughout Egypt. Once again, the court magicians went to Pharaoh and showed him that they could also produce frogs. “Magicians today produce live doves in the middle of a stage from handkerchiefs; and doves are far more difficult to handle than a docile frog.” [6] Like with the bloody water, the real miracle would have been to rid the land of frogs.
Reginald Scot, author of The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), takes an equally skeptical view of miraculous demonic powers being attributed to Pharaoh’s magicians. “If Pharaoh’s magicians had suddenly made frogs, why could they not drive them away again? If they could not hurt the frogs, why should we think that they could make them? … Such things as we are being bewitched to imagine, have no truth at all either in action or essence, beside the bare imagination.” [7]
If someone begins with the assumption that the devil can impart the ability to perform miracles, then he will see miracles in what the ancient and modern art of stage magic is. The replication of frogs was the last trick performed by Pharaoh’s magicians. They ran out of tricks. By the third miracle, “the magicians said to Pharaoh, ‘This is the finger of God’” (8:19). They knew a miracle when they saw it.
- André Kole and Jerry MacGregor, Mind Games: Exposing Today’s Psychics, Frauds, and False Spiritual Phenomena (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1998), 79.[↩]
- Dan Korem, Powers: Testing the Psychic and Supernatural (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 174.[↩]
- Korem, Powers, 174.[↩]
- R.C. Sproul, Moses and the Burning Bush (Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2018),99–100.[↩]
- Korem, Powers, 175.[↩]
- Korem, Powers, 175.[↩]
- Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (New York: Dover Publications, 1972), 180.Scot’s work was originally published in 1584, and only 250 copies were reprinted in 1886. It was reprinted once again in Great Britain in 1930. The 1972 Dover edition is the latest reprint, retaining the spelling of the original edition.[↩]
A Biblical View of Signs, Wonders, & Miracles
Article by Justin Peters (original source here)
Is God still in the miracle business? There is an entire swath of professing Christianity that would answer that question with a resounding and enthusiastic, “Yes.” The Word-Faith and New Apostolic Reformation movements (WF/NAR) are twin movements that, though there be a bit of distinction between them, have far more in common with one another and, in fact, they are today essentially melding into one. They both teach that there are modern day Apostles, that Christians are entitled to guaranteed physical healing and financial prosperity, and that signs and wonders are to be a normative part of the believer’s life. Though this author holds that these movements are doctrinally heretical and teach a different gospel,[1]such serious concerns are beyond the scope of this article. We will focus here specifically on whether or not their claims of the continuance of modern day signs and wonders are valid.
What is a Miracle?
We should begin by defining exactly what a miracle is because this is a term that is often misunderstood and misused even by theologically conservative believers with a high view of Scripture. A miracle is “an observable phenomenon effected by the direct operation of God’s power, an arresting deviation from the ordinary sequence of nature, a deviation calculated to beget faith-begetting awe, a divine in-breaking which authenticates a revelational agent.”[2]In other words, a miracle is an act performed by God that is an indisputable change in natural law that validates one of His revelatory messengers.
There is an important distinction we must make between a miracle and God’s providence. Floating ax heads, parting seas, talking donkeys, fire from Heaven, and resurrections from the dead[3]are miracles. The Lord snatching Philip away (Acts 8: 39) is a miracle whereas fortuitously running into someone who lends us aid is not. A man lame for 38 years suddenly walking is a miracle (John 5:1-9), but slowly recovering from cancer is not. We should give thanks to God for sending us people to lend aid and we should give thanks when one recovers from a disease (even when one does not recover from a disease!), but such things are not to be called miracles. Rather, they are acts of God’s good Providence.
Were Miracles Common?
Many have this idea that God was performing miracles all the time throughout the Bible. We think that had we been living in biblical times we would be seeing God perform one miracle after another. Such is not the case, though. For one, if miracles were commonplace then they would cease to be, well, miraculous. More definitively, though, is that even in biblical days miracles were quite rare events. Consider this: Between Adam and Moses, about 2500 years passed with precisely zero miracles. Then Moses and Joshua arrived and performed a dozen or so miracles. After they passed from the scene another 500 years passed with no miracles until the arrival of Elijah and Elisha who performed another handful of miracles. There then commenced another multi-century long drought of the miraculous (and of God even speaking) until the ministries of Jesus and His disciples[4]who between them, for a few decades, performed many miracles. With the closing of the Apostolic age until now there has been no one who can credibly claim to perform miracles. So, for the 6000 year or so history of mankind less than 200 of those years saw any miracles performed and only by 100 or fewer individuals. Surprised?
The Purpose of Miracles
Many professing Christians today believe that God performs miracles for our own benefit. If someone is sick, God desires to heal that person and would gladly do so if that person only has enough faith. The clear teaching from Scripture, however, is that God does not primarily perform miracles for the benefit of a particular individual. Rather, when God performed miracles He did so with the primary purpose of authenticating one of His messengers. The miracles of the Old Testament authenticated Moses and the prophets as coming from Yahweh and also showed Him as the one true God over pagan deities. The miracles of the New Testament authenticated Jesus as the Messiah and the Apostles as His spokesmen.
Individuals certainly benefited from the healing miracles of Jesus, but these acts were always done to authenticate Who He was and to affirm His divine mission to atone for sins. Jesus certainly had compassion on the sick, but their physical comfort took a distant back seat to his concern for their spiritual well-being. He knew their greatest need was not healing from sickness and disease but from sin.[5]
Are there Apostles Today?
Given that after Jesus was resurrected and ascended into Heaven it was primarily His Apostles who performed signs and wonders,[6]a crucial question to ask regarding the continuance of the Apostolic gifts is, “Are there modern day Apostles?”
In order to be an Apostle a man had to meet three requirements:
1) He had to be an eye witness of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ[7]
2) He had to be directly appointed by Christ to be an Apostle[8]and
3) He had to be able to perform the signs and wonders of an Apostle.[9]
None of the men who saw Jesus raised from the dead are around anymore. They have all been in Heaven now for almost 2000 years. This takes care of the first two requirements. As for the third, no one can do what the Apostles did. No one. No one today can heal the sick and raise the dead as did the Apostles. A careful reading of Scripture shows that the ability to perform signs and wonders were unique to the Apostles even in the days of Acts.
Consider Acts 2:43, “Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place among the Apostles.” Notice that the signs and wonders were being done by the Apostles. Acts 5:12 is even more clear, “At the hands of the Apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people.” Notice the specificity and clarity of the Holy Spirit as He inspires God’s Word. The signs and wonders were being performed “at the hands of the Apostles” who were “among the people.” Signs and wonders were simply not being performed by Christians at large, but by the Apostles and there are no more Apostles today. Period. Continue reading
The Matchless Miracles of Christ
In the course of His earthly ministry, Jesus
healed diseases
cast out demons
calmed storms
raised the dead
fed thousands at one time
walked on water
turned water into wine
and even controlled the placement of fish (e.g. Matt. 17:23–27; Luke 5: 1–11).
Because His miracles were so well-known, Jesus Himself pointed to them as verification that He came from God. As He told His critics, “For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me” (John 5:36; cf. Matthew 11:5; John 10:38).
Significantly, Jesus’ opponents never denied His miracles. Though they questioned the divine origin of His power (Matthew 12:24), they were never able to deny that the works He and His apostles performed were supernatural (John 11:47–48; Acts 4:16). Even today, “the fact that miracle working belongs to the historical Jesus is no longer disputed.” [1]
In the words of the German scholar, Wolfgang Trilling: “We are convinced and hold it for historically certain that Jesus did in fact perform miracles. . . . The miracle reports occupy so much space in the Gospels that it is impossible that all could have been subsequently invented or transferred to Jesus.” [2]
Jewish literature from the first few centuries A.D. confirms that the Jews, like the Christians, accepted the fact that Jesus performed supernatural acts. Unlike many of the pseudo-miracles done today in the name of Jesus, the actual miracles of Jesus were irrefutable. But while they could not deny His power, the Jewish religious leaders rejected the idea that God was the source behind it.
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day attributed His power directly to Satan (Matthew 12:24). In later centuries, the rabbis attempted to pass it off as sorcery and magic. [3] Thus, in the Babylonian Talmud we read this accusation: “Jesus the Nazarene practiced magic and deceived and led Israel astray.” [4] Though intended pejoratively, that statement provides backhanded confirmation of the fact that Jesus performed amazing wonders (which His enemies misconstrued as “magic”). The statement also indicates that His miracles were so compelling that many in Israel believed in Him.
Jewish sources further acknowledge that Jesus’ immediate followers also had the power to heal in His name. [5] Princeton Scholar Peter Schäfer comments on one particular account in the Talmud, in which the grandson of an unbelieving Jewish man named Yehoshua b. Levi was miraculously healed by a Christian. Though the healing was successful, Yehoshua b. Levi was mortified that his grandson had been subjected to such “magical” powers. Based on that account, Schäfer explains the Jewish perspective of Jesus’ miracles:
The story about Yehoshua b. Levi and his grandson . . . presents an ironical critique of Jesus’ and his [apostle’s] power [to perform miracles]. True, it argues, their magical power is undeniable: it works, and one cannot do anything against its effectiveness. But it is [in the minds of the Jews] an unauthorized and misused power. [6]
Again, the opponents of Christ (and the apostles) could not deny His miracle-working ability. The best they could do was try to deny the heavenly source of that power.
Faced with the reality that Jesus and His immediate followers could perform miraculous deeds, the Jewish leaders (both in Jesus’ day and in the generations that followed) had a clear choice. But rather than attribute “the chaste, ethical, and redemptive nature of the miracles of Christ” [7] to God, they chose instead to attribute them (either directly or indirectly) to Satan. Their wild accusations exposed the irrational nature of their blinding unbelief.
Jesus Himself pointed out the self-contradictory nature of their claim (cf. Matt. 12:25–32): Why would He use His miracle-working power to fight against Satan, if He was in fact empowered by Satan? That Jesus used His miracles to further the kingdom of God clearly revealed the true source of His power. [8]
Though neither the Pharisees nor the later rabbis responded in belief, their writings (from the first few centuries of church history) provide historical confirmation of Jesus as a miracle worker. [9] His ability to perform mighty wonders was undeniable.
Thus Christians today can look to Christ’s miracles as verification that He is indeed the Son of God (John 3:2); Acts 2:22). As the early Christian leader Justin Martyr (d. 165) explained to the Jewish antagonists of his day,
“[Jesus] was manifested to your race and healed those who were from birth physically maimed and deaf and lame, causing one to leap and another to hear and a third to see at his word. And he raised the dead and gave them life and by his actions challenged the men of his time to recognize him.” [10]
Even today, two millennia later, the accounts of Jesus’ miracles leave us in amazed wonder as we reflect on the majesty of who He really is.
When healing does not come…
Andrew Wilson wrote this article on Wednesday, at www.thinktheology.co.uk. It is entitled “The Problem with ‘the problem’s never at God’s end'” and deserves to be read widely.
“When people don’t get healed, the problem is never at God’s end.” Pithy, popular, memorable, intuitive – but also misleading, and sometimes very unhelpful. Here are three reasons why.
Firstly, it assumes that somebody not being healed this side of the resurrection is always a “problem”. So every time someone is prayed for and remains unwell, we have a problem. Every time someone dies, we have a problem. Not just a tragedy, or a loss, or another painful reminder that the world we live in is still broken, but a problem, with someone to blame. Given that it’s a problem, it’s obvious that it must be at our end or at God’s end. And who wants to attribute “problems” to God?
But this obviously begs the question. How do we know it’s a problem when somebody isn’t healed, especially in the light of the characters we encounter in the gospels (all but one of the “multitude” at the pool called Bethesda) and the epistles (Epaphroditus, Trophimus, Timothy, Paul himself), who weren’t immediately healed? Would we say the same of all suffering – “if someone is still facing persecution, then the problem is not at God’s end” – and if not, why say it of sickness? Would we say it of those who have not been raised from the dead? To assume that these things are “problems”, such that either God or a particular human being is somehow to blame for them, is itself a problem.
Secondly, the extremely pithy nature of the statement – and this is true of almost all bumper-sticker theology – oversimplifies something that is actually quite complex, and collapses a variety of biblical explanations into one all-encompassing überexplanation.
Biblically speaking, some people are sick because the people praying for them have insufficient faith (Matt 17:19-20). Some people are sick because the people praying for them need to pray [and fast?] (Mark 9:29). Some people are sick because there’s something going on behind the scenes that we know nothing about (Job 1-2). Some people are sick because the glory of God is going to be revealed through them in the future (John 11:4). Some people are sick because God created them that way (Exod 4:11). Some people are sick as a result of divine discipline (1 Cor 11:27-32; cf. Heb 12:3-11). Some people are sick because they need to change their lifestyle in some way (1 Tim 5:23). Some people are sick because they have not yet approached the elders for prayer (James 5:14-15) or perhaps because healing is a charismatic gift that not all possess (1 Cor 12:27-31). Paul may have been sick because God wanted to bring him to Galatia to preach the gospel (Gal 4:13) or because God wanted to crush his pride and teach him to rely on divine strength (2 Cor 12:7-10). And with some sicknesses, of course, there is no explanation; we just do not know why Trophimus was ill (2 Tim 4:20), and we shouldn’t talk as if we do. The biblical reality is that sometimes, the reason people aren’t healed is to do with us; sometimes, it’s to do with God; sometimes, it’s to do with both; and sometimes we don’t know.
Practically, of course, we should live and act on the basis that God wills to heal – which the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels demonstrates unequivocally that he does – and make sure that we have done, and are doing, all of the things God has called us to do to see that happen (prayer, obedience, faith, using gifts, and so on). If our starting assumption is “God has ordained my sickness,” rather than, say, “this daughter of Abraham has been bound by Satan for eighteen years” (Luke 13:16), the chances are that we will never have faith to pray for anyone to be healed. We should also bear in mind the obvious fact that people who believe God always wills to heal, as many Pentecostals and Charismatics do, pray for far more healings, and see far more healings, than people who don’t. But taken simply as a reflection of biblical teaching, the claim that God is never responsible for human sickness simply cannot be sustained. (For what it may be worth, I still regard P-J Smyth’s message on this subject at Together on a Mission, just after his recovery from cancer, as the best I have ever heard). Continue reading
Miracles Today?
Do miracles happen today? If we believe in a God who still answers prayer, I am sure we as Bible believing Christians would say “yes.”
I try to refrain from using the word “miracle” too often though because as I understand its definition, it refers to something that totally defies natural law – something that cannot be explained by natural process alone.
I can testify to seeing the Lord do some amazing things in the region of Kerala, India. I remember taking a small team there in 1996 and praying for two young girls aged 7 and 9, one deaf and mute since birth, the other deaf since birth, and they were totally healed by God’s power, which resulted in their mother, a Hindu (before all this happened), making a profession of faith in Christ. It was something I will never forget and still brings tears to my eyes when I think of it. The image of a young child hearing sound and speaking for the first time is forever etched on my mind.
In a village in Mongolia (in 2005), I saw the pastor’s mother healed of a lame leg which she had suffered with for more than 60 years. Apparently, she had injured her leg when she had fallen off a horse as a teenager, and now at age 76 brought her home village a tremendous visible testimony to the power of God and the authenticity of the gospel!
I mention these two incidents (though I could speak of others) because I am still in contact with people who were present at the time and who can verify these things.
Though I am sure every Christian can testify to seeing answers to prayer even in the realm of physical healing, why do we not see the same level of miracles today as in the time of the early church? Here (below) is a short video (less than 4 minutes) by Dr. John Piper which I think is quite helpful in this regard: