Why I Believe The Bible Is True: Miracles

Do you believe in miracles? Have you ever experienced a miracle?

Asking this questions opens up so many possible answers, for many will define miracles differently. For instance, one might say that I guessed on all the answers on my Spanish 2 exam and miraculously received an “A”. Another might say it was a miracle when someone donated money anonymously to your missions trip. And finally, someone calls it a miracle when the tumor no longer shows up on the MRI and the doctors don’t know why.

The Oxford Dictionary defines miracles as “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.”

The idea of miracles can either be either exciting or terrifying depending on your understanding of the natural world. Do you hear miraculous stories with skepticism or with wonder? Maybe a little bit of both. There are some “miracle” stories that seem farfetched and unreliable, and others that are verifiable, i.e., comparing two MRIs.

Whatever the case, miracles force us to think outside the box. Which is why I believe that Peter used miracles as one of the pillars of defense of the Scriptures.

Read 2 Peter 1:16-21.

Voddie Baucham’s summary of this passage goes like this. “I choose to believe The Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses, reporting supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed their writings are Divine and not of human origin.”

Last week we looked at the importance of the eyewitness accounts and the manuscript evidence of the Bible as the first pillar of the trustworthiness of the Bible. But what were they eyewitnesses of?

“For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.” 2 Peter 1:17-18

Peter speaks of the event that James, John and he witnessed on the top of a mountain called the “transfiguration” (Matthew 17:1-13, Mark 9:2-13, Luke 9:28-36). The three of them had the privilege of seeing the glory of Jesus Christ manifested on the earth before his death, burial and resurrection. Jesus face and clothes became a radiant white, then Moses and Elijah showed up with him. At that point, a voice from heaven declared, “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Afterward, Jesus told them not to speak of it until after he rose again from the dead. Now Peter is talking about it.

Peter is saying, we didn’t make this stuff up. We saw it. We were there. It happened and it changed our lives.

When it comes to believing the Bible, we have to recognize that accounts like this make it impossible for us to relegate it to one religious book amongst many. It’s either unique and true or it is a fraud and unreliable.

That’s what the appeal to the miraculous does, it forces you to decide what you are going to believe about it. The Bible is a book full of miracles, events that cannot be explained by nature and therefore considered to be the work of the divine, i.e., God.

From the opening words of Genesis 1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” the Bible uses the argument of the miracles to demonstrate the existence of God and His involvement with His creation. If you deny miracles, you have to deny the Christian God.

In the past couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to watch two movies about Moses, the Exodus and the Red Sea crossing, full of archeology and history lessons. I watched a YouTube video of a man’s deconversion from Christianity into atheism/agnosticism (denial of the Christian God and uncertainty about what to believe). And I watched Professor John Lennox speak at Harvard University on “Is Belief in the Supernatural Irrational”? This was the order I watched them in.

In the deconversions story, this man deconstructed his belief in the miraculous and began to deny the major miracles of the Bible. He began by denying the Creation account in Genesis in favor of popular evolutionary claims. From there he denied that Adam and Eve were real people, which led to him questioning the stories of the Old Testament. Next he denied the Flood, the Exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea. And finally he denied his belief in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection.

As I was watching the deconversion story, I was amazed at his claim that “there is no evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, that the Exodus happened or that they crossed the Red Sea.” He talked about his rigorous studies and pursuits, but what became evident is that he settled for the popular skeptics answers. However, I just watched a movie that showed archeological evidence that the Israelites were in Egypt and that an Exodus did happen.

He moved from accepting the miraculous and explaining events as God doing supernatural things in our natural world, to believing that to be irrational. Yet John Lennox is a mathematician and professor at Oxford, and he argues that believing that God works miracles is not irrational but grounded in substantial evidence.

It caused me to wonder about this journey of deconversion, miracles and how we approach the Word of God. In a past series on Doubt, I challenged the students to doubt, but to doubt fairly. We will always question our beliefs on some level at different times in life. When life doesn’t go the way we planned, we tend to question God. When we question our belief system, we should have the intellectual integrity to give equal scrutiny to the new idea as to our traditionally held belief.

What I mean by that is we can think that the new argument is better because it is new, and the old has to be inferior because that was what we are taught. We become suspicious and skeptical of our own beliefs and welcome the fresh new ideas without truly examining them.

This is what I think happened as I listened to the deconversion story. He accepted the criticism of his previously held belief with open arms. He didn’t challenge it. He didn’t apply equal scrutiny. He allowed the new arguments to come in and deconstruct his previous views. And that happens when we rationalize away the possibility of miracles.

Peter puts this very test before you when he says, “we were eyewitnesses of supernatural events.” The Bible is historically accurate accounts of supernatural events, of God divinely working amongst His creation. I believe it has to begin with creation. If you believe in a Creator who established our world, our scientific laws, space, time, etc. then you will find it easier to believe that He is free to do supernatural acts within creation.

If God spoke the earth into existence out of nothing, as Genesis says, then parting the Red Sea seems plausible. He is the author and giver of life, so raising Jesus from the dead is a possibility. Yes, the normal experience of human history is that humans die, are buried and that is it. Jesus resurrection is a divine interruption to the normal experience, that is what makes it so unique.

Dr. Gary Habermas writes extensively about the historical account of Jesus life and evidence for His resurrection. I would encourage you to read his work on 12 evidences for the resurrection, for further research into this important event.

The fact that Peter was writing about his eyewitness account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses, was radically transformed by his belief, and was willing to die for his belief demonstrate his sincere belief. It wasn’t just his story and account, but as we saw last week, the apostles wrote and taught and carried their message far and wide.

The result of their transformation, belief and passing on the message caused a big enough impact on the first century that non-believing historians wrote about Jesus and his claims. Today there is no doubt that Jesus really lived, that Jesus died on a Roman cross and that he was buried. The life of the apostles, the conversion of Paul, the birth of the church and it’s continued presence in the world are evidence of the miraculous resurrection.

Each person who comes to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ can attest to the miracle of forgiveness and reconciliation with God. Throughout the world, even today, God is at work in miraculous ways.

The appeal to the miraculous forces a decision. Do you dismiss the supernatural and look for scientific explanations, or are you open to a God who continues to interact with His creation? The Bible tells God’s story and invites you into His redemptive story, will you take God at His Word?