I Believe In Miracles - Old (Testament) School

This Sunday and next, the Rolling Hills Youth Sunday school class will be examining the miracles of the Old and New Testaments.  Is it hard or easy to believe in miracles as a 21st Century Christian?  Do you believe in miracles?

Physicist Max Planck once said, “Faith in miracles must yield ground, step by step, before the steady and firm advance of the forces of science, and its total defeat is indubitably a mere matter of time.”  The famous atheist Richard Dawkins also said, “The virgin birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children.”  How do you feel when you hear these remarks?  Do you think they're flat-out wrong?  Do you have a nagging doubt that they might be right?

Questioning miracles is nothing new.  People have been doubting miracles from the very beginning. For example, when God turned Aaron's staff into a snake to try to convince Egypt's Pharaoh of the power of the one true God, Pharaoh wouldn't believe it:
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron,  “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.”

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said.  (Exodus 7:8-13)



The German Rationalists were a group of Bible scholars in the late 17th and early 18th Century who couldn't bring themselves to believe in miracles.  They believed that the miraculous events described in the Bible happened, but that there must have been purely natural explanations for those events. These are the folks who brought us the "swoon theory" of the resurrection ... the idea that Jesus didn't really die on the cross but only was unconscious until he awoke later, appearing to have risen from the dead.   But let me get this straight: Jesus was beaten near death, was nailed to a cross, hung there for hours, had his side pierced by a spear, was declared dead by his professional executioners, was buried in a sealed tomb, woke up, had the strength to roll away the boulder that blocked the tomb's entrance, got past the Roman soldiers posted to guard his grave, and looked good enough to convince his disciples that he had risen to new life?  Really??  The problem with these rationalists is that their "natural" explanations for miracles often seem more far-fetched than the miracles themselves.

Later, a 19th Century Rationalist named David Strauss came along.  He believed miraculous events in Scripture were myth.  The events never occurred.  There’s no need to find natural explanations for them.  Strauss and the rationalists before him assumed that miracles are simply impossible.  But are they? 

Professor William Lane Craig points out:
“Does a person have to suspend their critical judgment in order to believe in something as improbable as miracles?  Only if you believe that God does not exist!  Then I would agree – the miraculous would be absurd.  But if there is a Creator who designed and brought the universe into being, who sustains its existence moment by moment, who is responsible for the very natural laws that govern the physical world, then certainly it’s rational to believe the miraculous is possible.”  

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“Given the existence of God, miracles are not incredible.  For why should it be thought incredible that God should want to reveal himself in the natural world to men, and how could this be done without involving a miraculous element? "

If you're into reading philosophy and theology, you might want to check out this article by Professor Craig on the subject of the disbelief of miracles.  Warning ... It's not exactly light reading: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/miracles.html

Dr. Craig is an interesting guy.  What did the famously combative atheist Christopher Hitchens think of Professor Craig?  See for yourself:

So, here are this week's nominees for the Wesley Award in the category of Best Old Testament Miracle:

Jake chose the miracle of Creation from Genesis 1.  What a great beginning to our nominations ...

Adrienne chose the story of Jonah and the Whale.  The whole Book of Jonah is only four chapters long.  Read it in your Bible, or read it here on this eBible:  http://www.gotquestions.org/eBible.html
It's a whale of a fish tale that some find hard to swallow ...

Nick nominated the God's miraculous appearance to Moses in the burning bush.  You can read about it in the 3rd Chapter of Exodus: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%203&version=TNIV  What a hot pick ...

And congratulations to Paige, who picked the winner of this week's Wesley Award, nominating the Parting of the Red Sea.  You can read about it in Exodus, Chapter 14, verses 5-31:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus%2014:5-31&version=TNIV

(A special thanks to Wes, who phoned in the tie-breaking vote this week!)  Join us next week when we select the Best New Testament Miracle.  Have a great week, everyone!