Yesterday, I had an appointment in Banawe, Quezon City.  From Meycauayan, I took an FX shuttle to EDSA-Munoz and took a cab to Banawe.  We took a shortcut on Roosevelt Avenue and landed on Del Monte Ave. At the corner of Del Monte Avenue and Sgt. Rivera, there was this big tarpaulin signage just outside the Sergio Osmena High School.  It was advertising a Catholic Charismatic Lenten Retreat.  Free admission, it announced, and people were encouraged to come on the promise of healings and miracles.

That got me thinking.  Miracles get people hyped-up; or maybe people get hyped-up in expectation of miracles.  I think it’s a morbid curiosity. Sometimes, it’s a fascination with the extraordinary or the supernatural.  But, whatever people’s motivations are, miracles are always big news.  But in the Bible, miracles are not as commonplace as one would expect, and miracles are not given for people’s entertainment or for relief of symptoms.

If you want to be technical about it, a miracle is defined by the dictionary as an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs. It generally involves a suspension of natural or physical laws.  In the Scriptures, there are about four “seasons of miracles.”  By “seasons” I means a time or a period where miraculous events abounded, that is, when God spoke and acted through human messengers, his prophets. God moved and commanded the prophet to act in a way that displays the tremendous power of God. This stands in contrast to the “silent years” in which God did not speak or work miracles through prophets.

The first season was the time of Moses: when the Israelites were delivered from Egypt, when they stayed temporarily in the wilderness for 40 years until the time of Joshua when the Israelites embarked on the wars of conquest.  This period lasted about fifty to sixty years.

The second season was the time of Elijah and Elisha: when Israel had so apostatized that they degenerated from the worship of the one true God to the worship of idols.  These two prophets lived and worked from the time of King Ahab until the time of King Jehu, a span of about sixty-four years, according to the timeline worked out in Halley’s Bible Handbook.

The third season was the time of Jesus Christ, when Israel was fervently waiting for the Messiah to come.  They had mistakenly thought that the Messiah would relieve them from the oppression of the Roman Empire and establish Israel as a kingdom once more.  God will do that, but not at that time.  When Jesus Christ first came, he came as the suffering Messiah of Isaiah 53.  When Jesus Christ comes the second time, He will come as the conquering Messiah to sit once more on the throne of David.

The fourth season is still in the future, during the time of the Antichrist when miracles will once more abound. Not only will there be cataclysmic events, the Antichrist himself and the False Prophet will do lying wonders that will deceive many into thinking that the AntiChrist is God.

If you seriously consider it, there were some individuals who had personally benefited as a direct result of the miracles performed during those seasons, but the purpose was not really to benefit individuals.  The purpose was two-fold:

1. To remind Israel of who God is: loving and caring, worthy of utmost praise and worship; but also holy and just, worthy of our awe and fear;
2. To judge sin and unbelief:  note how God performed the ten plagues in Egypt against Pharaoh’s hardened heart of unbelief; note also how the fire came down from heaven against the priests of Baal;

Miracles are “signs” or [semeion], a Greek word which refers to an act or event that is pregnant with meaning.  It is not simply a display of supernatural power but a dynamic way of pointing out some aspect of God, or of the person of Christ. (This is from Charles Swindoll, in his study guide Beholding Christ…the Son of God).

These days, any and every extraordinary event is labeled a “miracle.”  But if you scrutinize it using the parameters of Scripture as basis, these extraordinary events may be extraordinary, science may be hard-put to provide satisfying explanations as to how they occurred, but the events themselves do not have a similar purpose as those miracles in the Bible.

In all the seasons of miracles in the Bible (with the exception of the ‘counterfeit’ miracles which will be performed by the AntiChrist and the False Prophet), the objective is always to bring about a conviction of sin, and an even stronger compulsion to repent.  God is always the center of the miracle.  During the tribulation, the AntiChrist  will be enabled to ‘counterfeit’ miracles so that he can deceive many that he is God himself.  Because that’s what a miracle is supposed to do, it is supposed to arrest our attention from our work-a-day lives for us to reckon with the God whom we largely ignore. Miracles occurred to correct our skewed and warped view of who God is and what He is doing.

If any person other than God gets honor and glory; if an organization gets recognition for the miracle; if the result is a bigger audience BUT there is no real change in individuals’ knowledge or relationship with God; if there is religiosity or piety but no real change of heart or mind that results in a visible change in lifestyle; it cannot strictly be called a ‘miracle.’ There must be a change in a person’s knowledge of God.

But in our day, we use terms lightly: if someone acts contrary to one’s habits, we exclaim: “milagro!”  If we get some surprise and unexpected benefit, we call it a miracle. If we happen to get something we think we truly don’t deserve, we call it a miracle.

The only thing miraculous in these examples is the unexpectedness of those events.  No physical laws are suspended, and they do not reveal God’s character or personality.  It may be that God had “engineered” (this word, and this usage, I borrowed from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest) unlikely events that His will is fulfilled and His hand is shown.  But, it is not technically a Biblical ‘miracle.’

I am sure I will be criticized for being too pedantic or technical, or worse, simply splitting-hairs. But is it not dangerous to attribute to God what might not be God’s work at all? Is it not blasphemous to attribute to God what is the devil’s work of deceit? Is it not equally dangerous not to give God due honor, glory, praise and worship for what He truly has done and is doing?  It is for this reason that we cannot take words lightly, events must be viewed with discernment, by rightly dividing Word of Truth. Always, things must be measured with the standard of the Word of God. There is no other reliable standard in spiritual matters than the Word of God.