“Are there still miracles today?”

QUESTION: Are there still miracles today as in the time of the apostles?

ANSWER: God is sovereign. He does not change (Mal. 3:6). His power is undiminished. We should not try to subject Him to our rules or attempt to define what He can and cannot do! Many Christians attest to God’s miracles on their behalf. If God’s miracles done on any one day, worldwide, were totaled up, we would be absolutely staggered at their number.

Yet God’s Word teaches principles we do well to note. Jesus’ miracles in John’s Gospel are all signs “written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (Jn. 20:30-31). The apostles’ miracles were a matter of “God bearing witness according to His own will” to that great salvation first spoken by the Lord and confirmed by those who heard Him (Heb. 2:3-4). When the Lord commissioned His disciples to preach the gospel worldwide, He said they would do mighty signs in His name (Mk. 16:17).

At Mount Sinai God had given His Law to the Jews, a people that looked for signs. He had done this in a remarkable way. The Law was holy, just and good, but powerless to save a single soul. Yet why should the Jews follow a different message than the one they had heard from God years before? God gave them signs and miracles to show them that this new teaching was from Him. And these signs and miracles were also for the Gentiles, for they were signs their dead idols were powerless to do!

We do not live in the days of the Acts and Epistles, but rather, near this dispensation’s sad end. We have the complete Word of God to read. Why should God be doing great signs and miracles in a day of failure when so many reject God’s Word? If we do not accept His Word, we will not believe even though confronted with One risen from the dead, says the Lord in Luke 16:31. These signs would simply add to our condemnation.

What the Lord did in a day when the believers were of one accord and obedient to Him would be incongruous today when so many self-anointed “healers” and false teachers are trying to make empires for themselves.

By Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.