Providence and miracles
The talks about miracles are getting common in our community today. Often we heard how some people receive a sum of money at the very moment they needed it most. How you found a parking space just when it is busiest moment of the day. That you received an encouraging sms or a call at the very moment you needed it most… and we tend to exclaim it is a miracle!
Modern signs and wonders that have ceased, is infiltrating the church. They are completely different in experience and purpose than New Testament miracles. Sometimes we mistakenly describe providence as miracles. While we believe everything God does is a miracle - no matter how insignificant it maybe - we should have a clear distinction between providence and biblical miracle.
Providence is how God orchestrating things and events so that it does what He wants it to do.
Miracles happens when God rose above the laws of nature and do something beyond that law.
Reading the Scriptures, biblical miracles happened relatively ONLY on the three, brief periods of biblical history:
a. The days of Moses and Joshua
b. During the ministries of Elijah and Elisha
c. Time of Christ and the Apostles
None of those periods lasted much more than a hundred years. Each of
them, each of the three, experienced a proliferation of miracles
unheard of at other times in God’s redemptive history. But even during
those three times, miracles were not just normal everyday occurrences
that happened to anybody and everybody. The miracles that did happen in
the time of Moses and Joshua–involved Moses and Joshua! The miracles
that happened in the time of Elijah and Elisha, happened around the
ministries of Elijah and Elisha. And the miracles that happened to
Christ and the Apostles and through them, happened through their
ministries.
There weren’t just miracles happening all over everywhere to all kinds
of people. And aside from those three intervals, the only other
miracles recorded in Scripture are very, very, isolated events. It is
true in the days of Isaiah, the Lord miraculously defeated
Sennacherib’s army, then healed Hezekiah and turned the Sun’s shadow
back (2Kings 19-20). It is true, in the days of Daniel, God
miraculously preserved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, in the furnace
(Daniel 3). But those are very uncommon and very unusual. It is true
that God did miraculously preserved Jonah in the belly of a great fish.
But for the most part, those are very isolated. And miracles like those
didn’t happen to God’s people as a course of life. Now, God, of course
at anytime can inject Himself into the human stream supernaturally, and
do a miracle. But He chose to limit Himself primarily to three periods
of history, and very rarely will you ever find a miracle in the times
in between. The rest of the time God just works through providence. He
doesn’t need a miracle: He can just work through providence. The reason
that He did a miracle is because a miracle can only be attributed to
God. It can only be explained supernaturally, and there were times when
that was crucial.
All those miracles performed were not meant to stand on their own. That is, without pointing to the message.
All those miracles are always meant to validate or authenticate the message and those specifics messengers.
The Bible we lifted up in our hands are already authenticated with the miracles in it. It doesn’t need further authentication. Nothing in Scripture indicates that the miracles of the Apostle’s Age
were meant to be continuous. If you keep reading in the Book of Acts
and you will get to the part in the Book of Acts where you finally say
to yourself, "I haven’t read a miracle in a long time," and you’ll
finish the whole book and never see another one! They had begun to
cease even in the Book of Acts.
So what it is for? those practicing these miracles and wonders believes it is for edification.
But going back to the Bible, these were never meant for edification but for a sign to unbelievers. It’s in fact a sign for the unbelievers.
Providence, in many ways, is a greater miracle than a miracle. It would
be easier to do something supernatural than it is to orchestrate all of
the infinite contingencies of life and make them work God’s purpose, but the Lord do it every moment of every day.
We can only thank God that he already passed down to us an authenticated revelation through those writers, in the form of our Bible. It needs no updating so there’s no need of present verification. Its message is complete.
May the Lord will keep us true to His truth.
Happy Birthday to my brother, Glenn!
