Why don't Miracles Convince everyone?
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What qualifies as a Miracle?
Child’s Faith-Filled Prayer and God’s Amazing Answer
by Lee Strobel, excerpted from his new book The Case for Miracles
Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. — Matthew 17:20, NIV
In Equatorial Africa, far from pharmacies and hospitals, a woman died in childbirth, leaving behind a grieving two-year-old daughter and a premature baby in danger of succumbing to the chill of the night. With no incubator, no electricity, and few supplies, the newborn’s life was in jeopardy.
A helper filled a hot water bottle to maintain the warmth desperately needed by the infant, but suddenly the rubber burst — and it was the last hot water bottle in the village.
A visiting missionary physician from Northern Ireland, Dr. Helen Roseveare, asked the orphans to pray for the situation — but a faith-filled ten-year-old named Ruth seemed to go too far.
“Please, God, send us a water bottle,” she implored. “It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, the baby’ll be dead; so please send it this afternoon.” As if that request was not sufficiently audacious, she added, “And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl so she’ll know You really love her?”
Recalled Roseveare, “I was put on the spot. Could I honestly say, ‘Amen’? I just did not believe that God could do this. Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything. The Bible says so, but there are limits, aren’t there?”
The only hope of getting a water bottle would be from a parcel sent from the homeland, but she had never received one during the almost four years she had lived there. “Anyway,” she mused, “if anyone did send a parcel, who would put in a hot water bottle? I live on the equator!”
A couple of hours later, a car dropped off a twenty-two-pound package. The orphans helped open it and sort through the contents: some clothing for them, bandages for the leprosy patients, and a bit of food.
Oh, and this: “As I put my hand in again, I felt the… could it really be? I grasped it, and pulled it out. Yes. A brand-new rubber, hot water bottle!” said Roseveare. “I cried. I had not asked God to send it; I had not truly believed that He could.”
With that, little Ruth rushed forward. “If God has sent the bottle, He must have sent the dolly too!” she exclaimed.
She dug through the packaging and found it at the bottom of the parcel: a beautifully dressed doll. Asked Ruth, “Can I go over with you, Mummy, and give this dolly to that little girl, so she’ll know that Jesus really loves her?”
That parcel had been packed five months earlier by Roseveare’s former Sunday school class. The leader, feeling prompted by God, included the hot water bottle; a girl contributed the doll.
And this package, the only one ever to arrive, was delivered the same day Ruth prayed for it with the faith of a child.
A mere twist of fate? An embellished yarn? Or perhaps a miracle?
Would that be enough for you to believe? Would it convince everyone?
27 “Then the rich man said, ‘Please, Father Abraham, at least send him to my father’s home. 28 For I have five brothers, and I want him to warn them so they don’t end up in this place of torment.’ 29 “But Abraham said, ‘Moses and the prophets have warned them. Your brothers can read what they wrote.’ 30 “The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’ 31 “But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”
What do we mean by a miracle?
An event or occurence displaying the power of God.
It is temporary or time constrained.
It is an exception to the ordinary course of nature or so improbable so as not to be mere coincidence.
It reveals God’s purpose and presence in the course of history and our lives.
Why don’t all people believe in God when confronted with evidence of the miraculous?
Miracles do not “prove” God.
There are hard skeptics.
The famed skeptic David Hume when he wanted to debunk Christianity had to change the definition of a miracle. Listen, when you have to change the definitions of words in order to create arguments to win, is your philosophy or argument really an argument or is it just bias?
Hume said and did things that would not fly in our current age. He immediately discounted any accounts of miracles from non-Western “enlightened” cultures or countries. Were they of lesser value? Lesser credibility? Lower intellect in his mind? If you take the time to read him, you may find him to be very biased.
Why did he do that? Well, he was not a scientist. He simply had a polemical axe to grind against Christianity and religion. What he realized when he first attempted to attack miracles based on science, again, he was not a scientist. In his mind science would be the mechanism for skepticism. What Hume realized as he began to build an argument is that many of the accounts of miracles were simply God using natural events, situations and occurences in extraordinary ways.
Read the account of the parting of the Red Sea during the Exodus. It says God sent a great wind. Now that is an unusual event, but still natural. That it occured at the time the Jews needed to escape makes in even more extraordinary. Then when it happened as Moses prayed to God on behalf of the people in a specific time of dire need is another key point. The fact that the Jewish people exist today also lends credulity of the Supernatural intervention.
People will say, Hey water doesn’t turn into wine. Sure it does. Rain comes down all the time and vine roots gather it and make grapes all the time and then people gather the grapes and let it ferment. Jesus just bypassed a few of the elements and sped it up a great deal.
So Hume realized, I need to change the semantics so I can trick people (who already have a heart issue with God), in other words, they want to find a way to deceive themselves, so I can win!
So he said, miracles are events and occurrences that defy the course of nature and science.
He then went on to say, nature and science is all that exists.
Thus nothing can happen that defies nature and science.
Now folks, how many of you Christians believe in the law or science of gravity? All of you I hope.
Now, when I pick this up, am I as an intelligent being defying the natural course of a gravity? Am I exerting will and control that has interfered with the “natural” course of this objects trajectory? Of course I am! But, that took intelligence, will, and exertion of energy or power.
That happens all the time. Hume, you may be intelligent, but you don’t get a win by playing the shell game of moving definitions and denying some obvious things.
He never disproved God, he simply offered a definition of his own creation that presumes skepticism without being broadly logical. Let me explain something here. You can make “logical” arguments that sound right and seem logical if you buy into all the premises without checking them. Here’s one that will result in a true conclusion for the wrong reasons.
Frogs are mammals.
All Mammals are animals.
Therefore frogs are animals.
Sometimes we can luck into a good conclusion, but we carry a wrong premise. The difficulty comes as we keep using the wrong premise, Frogs are not mammals, in other ways of thinking. We will get wrong answers.
Here’s another that will have a wrong conclusion.
Frogs are animals.
Animals fly.
Therefore frogs can fly.
That’s the tricky thing. Hume claimed a number of things that were based upon his bias and DESIRED conclusion.
ULTIMATELY, Hume’s arguments should be tossed out for intellectual honesty. He made a huge CIRCULAR argument. He claimed based on science that nature is the only reality. Thus anything that didn’t conform to the laws of nature thus CANNOT happen because all that exists is nature.
Do you see the circle? I don’t want to consider the supernatural. So I deny that anything but the natural exists. So I refuse to consider anything but nature and purely natural causation can occur.
OK Hume, THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS YOU GOT WRONG SCIENTIFICALLY and LOGICALLY.
How did we get nature and the laws of nature? Did they create themselves?
Nature cannot create itself or cause itself to come into existence. So something other than nature would have been the cause. I don’t care if you want to point to the big bang or quantum. There is a point where all these laws of nature as well as time did not exist and then they came into existence. That is scientific consensus, not merely some backwoods conservative Bible thumping preacher’s opinion.
Now don’t get me wrong, Hume did not “create” skeptics. He gave skeptics something that seemed like an intelligent way to lean into their bias. He offered them some mental candy to avoid considering God and harden their hearts.
Now like I said above, MIRACLES do not in themselves PROVE GOD. Pharaoh’s magicians did the miraculous in the name of the gods of Egypt. But miracles are possible and when combined with a number of things can bypass people’s bias, skepticism and questions that keep them from considering the claims of Christ. So if a Westerner can repeat Hume’s argument and deny the blatant flaws and circular logic, she can with the wonderful aid of our natural pride believe she has a good reason to deny God. So recognize:
Some determine in the hearts not to believe.
I engaged two skeptics recently. Both thought they were so smart and would just crush little ol me with their deep intelligence and destroy my naive faith. Both asked at one point for one things or one argument that would counter their assertions or give a reason for God. Guess what, I had at least one. When I offered the everything has a beginning and said you know scientific consensus says that nature and natural law began at some point. You want to know what his response was? Well then I “guess” nature is ETERNAL. LOL, talk about shifting the goal post.
One guy made a similar statement to which I responded, I find it odd that now I’m the one defending science and you are the one arguing against all the scientists. How did we come to this, because I’m confused?
7 He again fixes a certain day, “Today,” saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, “Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts.”
Everyone has bias that must be confronted. For some a miracle will bypass their preconceptions, others not so much.
My own story came when I began to be burdened for my dad. Before I had gotten anywhere in my Seminary studies, I asked my dad what it would take for him to believe the gospel. He said, “I’d believe if Jesus Christ sat down at this table and witnessed to me.”
I said, Dad when you meet the resurrected Jesus without believing, it would be too late. What if it was a prominent Christian that would talk with you, what if Billy Graham were to talk with you in person. Remember, I was just a Noob in the Billy Graham School. My dad said, sure, then I would. But that will never happen.
Well, at Seminary we learned about Billy and that he was getting towards the end of his ministry. They were doing less Crusades than ever and there were less and less team members. Besides everyone wanted to work for Billy right?
Low and behold I prayed. Yes, I worked for Billy. I called my dad and invited him to the Tampa Crusade. Against insurmountable likelihood, I had an opportunity for the one thing my dad said would convince him.
You know what my dad said, “No. I’ll not believe even if Billy Graham talked to me.”
That really broke my heart in a number of ways. Most importantly because I knew he had a hard heart. Also I realized the extreme bias and prejudice that ran deeper than just one aspect of religion.
But realize there are people who will SAY openly, “Give me 1,000 reasons to believe” and were that to happen, they’d say, “I need 1000 and 1” now.
That’s the nature of freewill. It’s not for a lack of witness, miracles, evidence, or prayer, IT IS A MATTER OF WILLINGNESS.
Some have not considered the weakness of their skepticism.
At best a skeptic if she wants to be intellectually honest could only be agnostic, not atheistic. So there are some who may seem hard at first. And maybe all you do is help them understand they really aren’t an atheist, they just don’t know enough yet. So they move to a position of agnostic, I don’t know. I don’t know that nature is ALL there can be or is. I don’t know enough to deny God. I may not be ready to believe in or receive God, but I’m open to examine my bias and the most likely inference from what I learn.
We must remember that Jesus pointing to the miracle of God’s special revelation is the primary objective means of people being aware of God.
Romans 1:16 (NASB95)
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.