Chapter 9 Terms

Christians Perspective of Miracles

A true miracle is an event in the external world brought about by the immediate agency or the simple volition of God, operating without the use of means capableof being discerned by the senses, and designed to authenticate the divine commission of a religious teacher and the truth of his message (John 2:18; Matt. 12:38).

The credibility of miracles isestablished by the evidence of the senses on the part of those who are witnesses of them, and to all others by the testimony of such witnesses. The witnesses were competent, and their testimony istrustworthy. Unbelievers, following Hume, deny that any testimony can prove a miracle, because they say miracles are impossible. We have shown that miracles are possible, and surely they can be bornewitness to. Surely they are credible when we have abundant and trustworthy evidence of their occurrence. They are credible just as any facts of history well authenticated are credible.
Miracles, it issaid, are contrary to experience. Of course they are contrary to our experience, but that does not prove that they were contrary to the experience of those who witnessed them. We believe a thousandfacts, both of history and of science, that are contrary to our experience, but we believe them on the ground of competent testimony.

An atheist or a pantheist must, as a matter of course, deny thepossibility of miracles; but to one who believes in a personal God, who in his wisdom may see fit to interfere with the ordinary processes of nature, miracles are not impossible, nor are they incredible.Miracles were widely believed in around the time of Jesus. Gods and demigods such as Heracles (better known by his Roman name, Hercules), Asclepius (a Greek physician who became a god)and Isis of Egypt all were thought to have healed the sick and overcome death (i.e. have raised people from the dead). Some thought that mortal men, if sufficiently famous and virtuous, could do...