Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

Dr. Ken Boa: Hello, this is Ken Boa and I'm welcoming you to the Think On These Things webinar. We are now in our third session. We've been looking at some of the tough objections that people raise to the whole worldview that is associated with a theistic perspective, a transcendent perspective that is top-down rather than bottom-up.

In doing so, we're exploring various themes, and tonight we're going to be looking at why believe in miracles. This is the distilled essence of a chapter of my book, I'm Glad You Asked, which deals with the 12 basic objections that people raise toward the Christian faith and toward religion in general. There's a wider array of these things, but we've seen that all the questions that one might encounter are variations and combinations of these 12.

With that in mind, I want us to take a look at what it means to have an understanding of this question. I'm just going to be giving you a brief overview. I'm going to be using a Keynote presentation along these lines, and I'm going to be taking you through these questions very rapidly. So once again, it's going to be a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, as it were.

I hope that it'll be coherent in the sense that you can always go back and you can explore on the Think On These Things podcast, which takes the first 15 minutes that I overview the question. That's a standalone podcast that we're going to be having on the Reflections.org website. You can also go to the Reflections Ministries channel on YouTube and find all the videos that are there.

Let's begin our journey into this whole theme of what it means to think on these things with regard to the fundamental objection that people raise about miracles. I'm going to be taking you on a quick ride, but we can always zoom into these things and see them later. So, why believe in miracles?

How can a rational person today accept the stories of miracles in the Bible? Or another way of asking this question is, aren't miracles contrary to the laws of modern science? A third question is, there's no historical basis for these miracles; aren't they myths and legends? Or why doesn't God perform miracles today? Variations of these questions surface again and again.

This leaves us with only three options. I'm going to be doing a special session on the resurrection itself, which we see here as an appendix. So either no, maybe, or yes are the only options that you've got in front of you here. If we consider the aspect of what they are, it's really a unique thing in Christianity insofar as so many things in Scripture are built upon God's works in space-time history.

Very few such accounts occur in other religions. Christianity stands or falls on the historical reality of these miracles, unlike Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. The first option is that they're not possible. The philosophy of naturalism drives this notion that we are in a closed system that is subject to uniform natural causes.

As a consequence, we have right from the beginning a kind of scientistic mindset, not scientific. Scientism means that everything is reduced down to what they claim we can do through science alone. If it's not in science, it's not real. But of course, that's not a scientific statement that people make.

Nevertheless, a lot of it's based on Hume's denial that no amount of evidence could establish a miracle had occurred. He claimed that the university of natural law is supported by the uniform experience of man against the occurrence of miracles. But what do you do with the documented reports of miracles? Well, they can't have occurred, so those reports are wrong, which means it's circular reasoning.

You're front-loading the verdict at the beginning there. This is an assumption that either God doesn't exist or can't intrude into this. It's not a scientific position at all; it's a metaphysical position, which fails to grasp the limits of science and its scope. That's limited to natural phenomena, especially repeatable phenomena.

The degeneration of science into scientism is a mistake. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. Miracles could be encountering things that are supraphysical, not just supernatural, but supraphysical. The idea of something that's beyond, for example, the mind itself, has always been an issue in naturalism and trying to account for that.

It goes beyond; a higher principle can overcome, just as aerodynamics can overcome the pull of gravity. The claim that miracles violate or contradict natural laws is just as improper as to say that the principle of aerodynamics defies or violates the law of gravity. No, it's a higher principle.

There's a supernatural agency. The fact that we cannot explain them doesn't mean that they can't occur. We're beginning to discover in science that we're filled with things that we can't understand. When I discovered the total liquefaction in the metamorphosis of butterflies some years ago, it was an astonishment. The more I'm looking at the natural world that God has made, the more amazing it becomes.

It doesn't destroy the regularity of nature if we have this idea that it's happening all the time. But these are sovereign interventions that are not commonplace. It assumes the backdrop of a world that makes sense and that's reasonable, and these are therefore unique and extraordinary entries.

They are not threatened, but rather they're unusual by definition. They involve a very brief suspension of the normal processes of nature by a higher power. Nature is amazing, but we won't say it's miraculous; it would dilute the concept of miracles. A miracle is a phenomenon that occurs in space-time history so radically different from the ordinary operations of nature that its observers are justified in attributing it to the direct intervention of a supernatural agent.

Even in Scripture, we see brief time clusters of miracles: one at the time of Moses and Joshua, a second at Elijah and Elisha, and a third one with Christ and the apostles. We had clusters that authenticated the Law, the Prophets, and the New Testament. There was a long period of time in between these. Not that there were no miracles in between, but it was not one experience after another. They were profound singular events.

They're relative to us, not to God. There's no higher power than His. This is based upon Edwin Abbott's story Flatland, where a guy named A Square from a two-dimensional world sees a sphere from a three-dimensional world. It would seem what he does is miraculous from his vantage point, but they're not.

The real question is if God created the universe, then there is a supernatural or supraphysical nature dynamic. Now the question isn't whether they're possible, but whether they occurred. Is there any evidence to support them? This brings us to the second option: that they are possible but may not have occurred.

This is the question of speculation. It's not going to be a question of speculation and guesswork. It's going to be a question of history and of evidence. The scriptures are highly evidential, as we know. Space-time history is huge in the scriptures. Abundant geographic and chronological documentation supports God's revelation and ties it to the real world.

It's not a fabric of myths or a bunch of fairy tales, but we are given specific dates and locations that are verifiable or falsifiable. They are recorded with tremendous attention, as much as with non-miraculous events. This is unique to the biblical scriptures. They can be subjected to historical scrutiny because of the reliability of the New Testament documents, which we'll explore when we talk more about the reliability of the Scripture itself.

Are they beneath the dignity of God? The sovereign God who made nature can use nature to manifest Himself, especially in the highest form of revelation, which is Jesus Christ, who accomplished more miracles than any other person who ever lived. General revelation doesn't tell us enough, but special revelation includes these specific space-time historical encounters.

General revelation reveals His eternal power and a divine nature, but now we deal with special revelation, which ultimately leads to witnesses to who Jesus is. We have this historicity claim: four Gospels and 35 of Jesus' many miracles, in which He demonstrated authority over four spheres: nature, disease, demons, and death.

He demonstrated authority over all spheres. They accomplished these with great restraint. They're understated and publicly done. We often have contexts in which there are hostile eyewitnesses who are present who cannot deny them; they just don't want to embrace Him. He's unique again, and these natural explanations do not really suffice. Weak attempts have been made.

Of course, the greatest miracle of all is the sign of Jonah the prophet, the resurrection itself. The answer to why believe in miracles is best answered by looking at the abundant historical evidence for the resurrection itself, which is substantive. This brings us to the third option: that miracles are possible.

We believe in the resurrection and miracles, as many have done, but yet still refuse to place their trust in Christ. I'm thinking about one Jewish scholar who actually came to the conclusion that Jesus actually did rise from the dead, and yet he still refused to acknowledge Him as Messiah. Eyewitnesses didn't always respond with faith. The heart of an unregenerate person is at enmity with God; they may see it but still not embrace it, as we see clearly with the resuscitation of Lazarus.

Only the Spirit can convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Some claim that if He wanted us to believe, why wouldn't He reveal Himself more directly? They want God to clobber us into the kingdom almost by forcing us to believe. It's like the so-called modest request by Thomas, "Show us the Father; it's enough for us." They just want us to show us God the Father. You couldn't ask for more than that.

But God's already done enough. We see that the Second Coming is one of judgment. He came to offer salvation the first time, but ultimately there is going to be the consummation of all things. Miracles cannot create faith, but they can be used by the Spirit of God as a catalyst of faith.

I think that the miracles of Christ, beginning with the wedding of Cana in Galilee, especially the resurrection, the supreme miracle, have profound implications for our own destiny. If He rose from the dead, then it means that we would rise from the dead as well. As I said before, we're going to have an appendix on the resurrection, and I'm going to do that separately as a separate study.

This just gives you a bit of an overview of the material that we have in this understanding. Now we are going to be opening it up for an opportunity for you to go to the Q&A portion and type in your question. Do share this with your friends. We would welcome you to go to the Reflections.org website and also the Reflections Ministries YouTube channel.

The Lord bless you and keep you. Let me just close again with that little prayer that I began with because it's important for me to use that and round this out. It's a way of summarizing our time together. We've been talking about the one who is the image of the invisible God, the infinite Word who spoke all things into being in the heavens and on earth, both visible and invisible.

You're the radiance of the Father's glory and the living manifestation of God's nature. As the infinite Word who became the incarnate Word, You put a face on infinity and eternity. All things have been created through You and for You. You are before all things, and in You all things hold together: the microcosm, the biosphere of this earth, and the macrocosm.

As the Word became flesh, You manifested Your authority over nature, over disease, over demons, and death during the brief days of Your miraculous earthly ministry. To know You is to know the Father. To trust You is to trust the Father. To love You is to love the Father. And to serve You is to serve the triune ministry of the three-in-one. The Lord bless you in this time. God bless.