Some have challenged Christianity’s validity on the basis that miracles simply don’t happen. The objection is usually formed in a statement like “If miracles are real then why have I never seen one?” Some have even boasted “If God would do a miracle right now in front of me I would believe He was real!” Somehow I doubt that would be true for many of them as committed to naturalism as they are. You could raise their 30 years dead grandmother from the grave right in front of them and they would be looking for a naturalistic explanation.
Even so, it is not an altogether unfair question to ask “Where are all the miracles today?” A cursory reading through the Bible would might give a person the impression that from the time of Adam and Eve until the death of the apostles that miracles were an almost daily occurrence (or at least monthly, right?). So why is it that God, if He is really real, just stopped performing miracles? Doesn’t this point to the reality that the Bible is little more than a bunch of mythical tales full of legends gone wild?
Well, if there is one thing I have learned over the years it is that you need to take a closer look and be very careful before you come to snap conclusions. So here is a key question in this discussion that I would ask an objector “Is it really true that miracles in the Bible are as common as you think?”
Actually if you take the number of miracles talked about in the Bible, around 350 give or take (depending on how you define miracles this list can fluctuate some) and divide them across the time span of the writing of the Bible (about 1,500 years) then you end up with 0.2333 miracles a year or one miracle about every 4 years. So miracles were not happening every day apparently, but there is even more that ought to be said here. The miracles in the bible, as it turns out, are not evenly spaced throughout the biblical timeline.
In fact, the majority of miracles occur surrounding figures like Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Peter and Paul. In other words, large bulks of these miracles happen around a specific people and at a specific period of time. A relevant question to ask would now be “Why is this the case?” Well I am glad you asked! The answer is because God has often used miracles as a way to validate the message or ministry of a certain individual. When Moses claimed in the Exodus account to be Yahweh’s chosen leader of His chosen people how did he prove this was so? God did miracles all around him to validate that Moses really was God’s servant (e.g. staff turned into a snake, 10 plagues, parting of the Red Sea, water from stones, etc.). And God did this with Elijah and Jesus and the apostles too.
So, in reality, most people throughout biblical history never saw miracles either! There were long periods of time where God (as far as we know) performed no miracles among his people. That such events more often than not surrounded certain figures at certain times and in certain places guarantees that the majority of people throughout history are much like you and I and have not seen one of these acts of God first hand. This is not to discount their validity in any way though for there are good reasons to believe that miracles have occurred and still can.
In fact the eye-witness accounts of Jesus found in the Gospels and even earlier in Paul’s epistles weigh in as strong evidence that Jesus really died and rose from the dead. A great book for considering this is The Case for the Resurrection by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona. The historical evidence surrounding Jesus’ life, death and resurrection are staggering. Furthermore, the fact that we have not personally seen something doesn’t negate its possibility. I have never personally seen many things in this world that I believe to really exist and the same goes for you I am sure.
So then arguing that miracles don’t happen or that God doesn’t exist because you haven’t seen a miracle happen isn’t all that strong of a case. The Bible gives a logical reason for the sparsity of miracles, and there are plenty of things that are real that you and I may never see but don’t doubt. Ask yourself this also, if miracles happened every day, would they still be considered miracles? If a miracle occurred in front of you on a daily basis you would probably draw the conclusion that miracles are like gravity, a part of the natural order of things! It is the rarity of miracles that in part makes them so powerful for affirming God’s plan in this world. If they were common place then you could raise someone’s 30 years dead grandma from the grave and they would simply exclaim “Big deal! Happens all the time.”
