100 Sermon Illustrations on Miracle

Most of the “lists” of top stories of 1988 included the dramatic rescue of the two gray whales trapped in the ice off northern Alaska.

It was a marine cliff-hanger of sorts, but for sheer melodrama it couldn’t compare with another whale story that took place in the South Atlantic in 1891. The whale in this saga swallowed a British seaman named James Bartley. The whale died, but Bartley lived.

The story unfolded in this fashion. A whaling expedition off the Falkland Islands spotted and mortally wounded a huge sperm whale. In the struggle between th seamen and the giant creature of the deep, the whaling boat was upset and the seamen were thrown into the sea.

When the survivors were picked up, two men were missing. One of them was James Bartley, age 21.

Just before nightfall the same day, the dying whale floated to the surface. With their long flensing blades the men removed the thick blubber which would be cooked down into oil.

Shortly before 11 that night, working by lantern light, the tired crew removed the stomach and the huge liver. As they did, they were startled to notice movement inside the great paunch - a slow, rhythmic movement that looked like something breathing.

The captain called the ship’s doctor and a great incision was made. A human foot became visible - shoe and all. A few moments later they pulled James Bartley out. He was doubled up and unconscious - but alive!

For nearly two weeks he lingered between life and death. Gradually he recovered his senses. But it was a month before he was able to tell what had happened.

He remembered being flung into the air when the whale crushed their longboat and, as he fell back into the sea, he saw the great mouth open over him. He screamed and found himself being swallowed. Then oblivion.

He had been inside the whale’s stomach for 15 hours. As a result he lost all the hair on his body. His skin was bleached to an unnatural whiteness and he was almost blind for the rest of his life, which he spent as a shoe cobbler in his native Gloucester.

James Bartley was visited by medical men from many lands, so the story goes. He lived 18 years (till age 39) after his incredible adventure. On his tombstone are the words:

JAMES BARTLEY - 1870-1909

A MODERN JONAH

Is it possible then that Jonah really WAS? To those who don’t believe the story in the Bible, the saga of James Bartley probably won’t convince them.

Those who already believe need no such reinforcement for their faith. But they can be excused if, after hearing the story of the “modern Jonah,” they look at us skeptics with a “told-you-so” glint in their eye.

It wouldn’t be the first time the skeptics have been outfoxed by the Bible-believers. One such doubter went up to a minister who had just finished a sermon on the historicity of the Jonah story.

The unbeliever said he had heard that the throat of the whale was too small for a man to pass through.

“I have heard that too,” said the minister. “And it bothers me. I guess I’ll just have to wait until I get to heaven. Then I’ll ask Jonah about it.”

“But what if Jonah isn’t IN heaven?” replied the cynic.

“Then you ask,” said the quick-witted parson.

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(c) 1989 Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

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Holwick: Some skeptics have cast doubt on the historicity of Bartley. Here is a detailed account from ShipofFools.com’s Urban Myths page:

One of our readers, Andrew Appleton, wrote to ask: ‘Is the story of a Japanese man who survived three days in the stomach of a whale true, or is it an urban myth? I have heard it told several times as proof that the story of Jonah is scientifically possible.’

I haven’t heard the Japanese story, but there have been numerous books, articles and sermons that have dealt with the feasibility of being swallowed by a sea creature and surviving. Most of the articles either speculate about the possibility of various fish or mammals being able to swallow a human, but if you survey Christian literature, you will find one story in particular which is the most cited.

MAN OVERBOARD!

The story dates back to the late 19th century and involves a whaling ship named the ‘Star of the East’, operating off the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. According to most accounts, a whale was sighted, the harpoon boats were launched, and the whale was successfully speared. In the violence that followed, however, one of the smaller boats capsized, throwing two crew members into the sea. One of them drowned and the other, said to be a man named James Bartley, disappeared. The whale was eventually subdued and its carcass hoisted onto the ship where the crew started carving it up for blubber.

After a couple of days of work, they got down to the stomach, where some workers noticed something large inside, ‘doubled up’, and showing signs of life. They cut the stomach open and there lay James Bartley, unconscious and somewhat digested, but alive. They doused him with sea water, put him in the captain’s cabin and after a couple of weeks of recovery, he was back on the job.

Most accounts of the story also include a detailed description of what Bartley experienced and felt during his whale of a journey. He is quoted as saying that he remembered flying through the air when the whale struck the boat with its tail – and then suddenly being in darkness and slipping along a smooth passage of some sort. He then came into a larger area marked by a slimy substance that seemed to shrink from his touch. He finally realized that he was in the whale. He said that he could breathe, but that it was very hot in there. At some point he lost consciousness and the next thing he remembered was being cared for by the crew.

Some versions of the story say his skin was permanently affected by the gastric juices in the whale, and that he had a bleached white appearance for the remainder of his life. Other versions describe his skin as having been left with a bluish color.

HARPOONING THE TALE

There have been a few other, similar stories, but researchers suspect that they all have the same origin. The story of James Bartley is therefore of greatest interest, since there are so many accounts of it and they include enough information to allow some good digging to be done.

The definitive research into this story has been done by Edward B. Davis, a professor at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. He was curious to try to document the story since it was so often repeated by fundamentalist biblical apologists and had even found its way into several Bible commentaries. His research is summarized in an article in ‘The American Scientific Affiliation’, published in 1991.[1]

Davis not only scoured newspaper files, original documents and libraries, but spent time in England tracking down some of the sources. He verified, for example, that there really had been a vessel named the ‘Star of the East’ and that its captain was a man named J.B. Killam. He followed the trail of the great British engineer, Sir Francis Fox, who was so struck with the Bartley story that he included a chapter on it in his autobiography, published in 1924.

The result of Davis’s research was that he could not find any credible evidence to support the James Bartley story. In fact, he found evidence which made the story seem more questionable. He checked out a report that Bartley had been treated at a London hospital for the effects of the whale’s gastric juices on his skin, but could not find any substantiation for it. When he read through the documents about the particular voyage during which the alleged whale incident happened, James Bartley was not listed as a crew member.

More damaging to the story was a letter written by the wife of the captain of the ‘Star of the East,’ Mrs. John Killam. The contents of her letter were published in 1907 in ‘The Expository Times’ by a reader who had corresponded with Mrs. Killam about the whale story. She said:

There is not one word of truth to the whale story. I was with my

husband all the years he was in the Star of the East. There was

never a man lost overboard while my husband was in her. The sailor

has told a great sea yarn.

Despite this, the story has been repeated by a number of conservative Christian writers, including Bernard Ramm, Harry Rimmer and the creationist Henry Morris; and also in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary on Jonah and the IVP Bible Dictionary.

ORIGINAL WHALE?

One of the alleged sources of the James Bartley story was a newspaper report published in Great Yarmouth, on the east coast of England. Davis visited the port and found an article that gave an account of the story, but it offered nothing to help support the facts of it. He also found a whale story dated 1891 – the same year as most of the James Bartley accounts. According to the story, a 30-foot rorqual whale caused a stir when it came close to the shore off the town of Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth. It ran against the town’s pier and beached itself while being chased by several boats.

The whale became a local celebrity and was known as ‘the Gorleston Whale’. The carcass was hoisted, became an exhibit for a couple of days, and then a taxidermist stuffed it and it was displayed in the London Westminster Aquarium. According to Davis, two of the clippings he found about the Gorleston Whale, including one written within days of the event, reported that the story had ‘inspired a number of exaggerated tales.’

Has there ever been another human being besides Jonah who has survived being swallowed by a sea creature? We can’t say, and it is not our purpose to doubt the scriptural account. Stories such as the one about James Bartley, however, have not measured up to a standard of reliable evidence.

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1. "A Whale of a Tale: Fundamentalist Fish Stories," by Edward B. Davis, .

The life of Indian Sundar Singh parallels the experiences of Paul.

Sundar lived in northern India in the 1920's. As a young man he was a devout Hindu and persecuted Christians in his village. One day he was praying in his room and a great light appeared. He looked into the light and saw the form of Jesus Christ. A voice spoke to Sundar in Hindustani:

"How long will you persecute me? I have come to save you; you were praying to know the right way." Though totally unaware of the story of Paul's conversion, at that point Sundar became a believer in Jesus.

He was so committed he became a missionary to the villages of Tibet. One spiritual leader there became so upset with him he had him thrown into a dry well. The lid was securely locked and he was left there to die. The bones and rotting flesh of many others lay around him.

On the third night, when he had been crying to God in prayer, Sundar heard someone unlocking the lid of the well. The lid was removed, and a voice spoke, telling him to take hold of the rope that was being lowered. Sundar did so, and was glad to find a loop at the bottom of the rope in which he could place his foot, for his right arm had been injured before he was thrown down. He was then drawn up, the lid was replaced and locked. When he looked around to thank his rescuer, he could find no trace of him. The fresh air revived him, and his injured arm felt whole again.

When morning came, Sundar returned to the city where he had been arrested, and he began preaching again. News was brought to the spiritual leader that the man who had been thrown into the execution-well for preaching had been set free and was preaching again. Sundar Singh was brought before the leader and questioned, and he told the story of his release. The leader declared that someone must have gotten the key and let him out, but when they searched for the key, it was found attached to the leader's own belt!

True illustration of miraculously answered prayer.

Not long after Dallas Seminary was founded in 1924, bankruptcy knocked at its doors. By noon on one particular day, every creditor threatened foreclosure. That morning, the founders of the Seminary met to pray in president Lewis Sperry Chafer’s office. They asked God to provide the needed funds. Harry Ironside was part of that prayer meeting. When it was his turn to pray, he prayed in his characteristically pointed manner: “Lord, we know that the cattle on a thousand hills are thine. “Please sell some of them and send us the money.”

Meanwhile, as these men were praying, into the seminary’s business office came a tall Texan. Addressing a secretary, he said, “I just sold two carloads of cattle in Fort Worth. I’ve been trying to make a business deal go through and it won’t work. I feel that God is compelling me to give this money to the seminary. I don’t know if you need it or not, but here’s the check.”

The secretary was well aware of the seriousness of the seminary’s financial situation. She also knew that it was for that purpose the founders were gathered in prayer. So the secretary took the check to the door of the president’s office and timidly knocked. When she finally got a response, Chafer took the check out of her hand and stared at it with amazement. The amount matched the exact size of the seminary’s debt. Looking at the signature on the check, he recognized the name of the cattle rancher.

Turning to Harry Ironside, he said, “Harry, God sold the cattle!”

The two parents watched the screen anxiously and with awe. The head appeared. The arms twitched. Then the feet wiggled -- the feet of their 18-week-old baby.

For Lee and Dena Smith, the day -- April 10, 1997 -- and the unborn child were answers to years of praying. Seven to be exact. The ultrasound technician could sense their excitement and smiled kindly as she cheerfully chatted about each new discovery.

Then silence.

As the second anniversary of that day approaches, Lee talks about the day as if it were yesterday.

Unnerved by the sudden stillness, Lee tentatively asked what was wrong. No answer. Lee watched the technician scan the spine and brain stem. He asked again.

“I do see a problem,” said the technician. “And the doctor needs to look at it before I tell you what I think.”

The doctor looked grim. He compassionately, yet firmly, told the tragic news: Their child had an incomplete formation of its spine -- a birth defect known as spina bifida. Accompanying this rare abnormality was hydrocephalus -- an abnormal increase in spinal fluid in the head cavity which leaves no room for brain development.

This neural tube defect had dashed the Smiths’ hopes for a child, at least a healthy one.

More tests at a research hospital revealed a grave situation.

Doctors offered no hope, explaining the baby would die in utero due to the fluid build-up. If, by a slim chance, the child lived, she would exist in a mentally vegetative state, totally paralyzed.

“Really the only option for you is to terminate the pregnancy now,” said one doctor. The Smiths were devastated.

“I remember going to the doctor’s office the first time. I thought that this is what Abraham must have felt like when the child of his faith was in the womb of Sarah,” recalled Lee, a master of divinity student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. “And now, having this news, I wondered if I may have felt like Abraham did when God said to sacrifice Isaac.”

The choice was clear according to the doctor. Nothing within human rationale justified carrying the baby to term.

But, something in the Smith’s faith said, “Let God have his way. If stillbirth was required, then the Lord would give the grace to endure that.”

So Lee and Dena agreed to wait. Their decision shocked the doctor. “The doctor acted like we were absolutely foolish,” said Lee, a native of Raleigh, N.C. “He was short with us and very uncompassionate.”

“‘Well, if you’re determined to do that, I’ll see you in a month,’“ the doctor said condescendingly, Lee recalled. “‘In a month you’ll see that the hydrocephalus has continued to worsen. It will not go away. It will continue to build up until the child’s head cavity explodes in the womb.’“

When the Smiths returned home, Lee called everyone he knew -- the deacons in the church where he pastored, his family, his friends. The Smiths’ request was simple and earnest: They did not care whether the child was mentally or physically handicapped, they wanted a child -- a life.

Church members began to pray. And they instructed Lee to take that Sunday off. “No, I want to preach,” Lee said.

He preached from Matthew 14, which tells of Jesus calming both the storm and the fears of his disciples. He is a “God of our storms,” Lee said.

During the altar call, many came to pray. Overcome with emotion, Lee and Dena left and went home. The congregation stayed, petitioning God long into the afternoon.

The following month seemed to last forever.

“During that time we just prayed, prayed and prayed. And the Scripture that came to my mind is in the James 5:16b, which reads, ‘The fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much.’ I began to hold to that Scripture,” Lee said.

The Lord also spoke to Dena that month. She read a book about the women approaching Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body. On the way to the tomb, with despairing hearts, the women had no clue that the stone was rolled away. They were in their “grief journey.” But when they arrived, a miracle had happened.

“I don’t know if God can do this in my situation or not. I don’t know if this is my wishful thinking,” Dena said at the time. “But I feel that the Spirit of God is saying to me, ‘You’re in your grief journey, but the work is already accomplished. The stone has been rolled away.’“

She believed it, and Lee believed it as well.

“It was a comforting sense of the Spirit of God, saying, ‘You don’t know it yet, but I’ve already dealt with this problem,’“ Lee said.

The day for the follow-up exams finally came.

As the doomsaying doctor began the ultra-sound, Lee noticed something different. A full spine. Brain tissue developing. And no fluid.

The doctor didn’t say a word. After about 20 minutes of testing, he turned the machine off. “You’re child is fine,” he said bluntly.

“I don’t know what to say about it. The spine is fully developed. The ventricles of the brain where hydrocephalus builds up are normal size. I don’t have an explanation for how this happened,” the doctor said.

“Let me explain it to you,” Lee said, reciting James 5.

By that time word had spread, and a crowd had gathered. “I announced that continued fervent prayer could reverse what in the scientific realm doctors would classify as a hopeless case,” Lee said.

Lee had another word for the doctor: “If there is one-in-a-million chance for a natural remedy, not to mention supernatural intervention, doctors shouldn’t tell people there’s no hope. That one-in-a million might be my child.”

On Sept. 12, 1997, the one-in-a-million Alison Hayley Smith came into the world.

“She’s doing great,” Lee said.

Since then, Lee has shared this miracle in a dozen churches, incorporating the story into his sermon on Matthew 14, “The God of our Storms.”

God has used Alison’s story to minister to others swirling in the hurricanes of life, Lee said. Following one service, a lady whose baby had the same condition approached Lee.

“I encouraged her that a handicapped life was better that no life,” Lee said. “Sometimes God chooses to heal, and sometimes he doesn’t. When he doesn’t, he’s still the same God. And, the God of all comfort makes himself available, and his grace is sufficient.”

The Smiths view their storm to be like that of Job. “You almost want to say, ‘Lord, why did you put me through that month of hell if you were going to heal the child?’ Well, for the same reason he put those disciples through that long night of toil upon the sea of Galilee in Matthew 14 -- as a faith- building tool.

“No matter how dire the news is, I don’t believe there’s ever a hopeless situation. There’s always hope in the gospel,” Lee said. “God is able to do abundantly more than we could ever ask or think.”

Packer’s analysis of the faith healing movement. Their three main arguments are outlined:

1. Jesus Christ, who healed so abundantly in the days of his flesh, has not changed. He has not lost his power; whatever he did then he can do now.

2. Salvation in Scripture is a holistic reality, embracing both soul and body. Thoughts of salvation for the soul only without, or apart from, the body are unbiblical.

3. Blessing is mixed where faith is lacking, and where God’s gifts are not sought and expected. “You do not have, because you do not ask.”

Louise Redden, a poorly dressed lady with a look of defeat on her face, walked into a grocery store. She approached the owner of the store in a most humble manner and asked if he would let her charge a few groceries. She softly explained that her husband was very ill and unable to work, they had seven children and they needed food. John Longhouse, the grocer, scoffed at her and requested that she leave his store.

Visualizing the family needs,she said: 'Please, sir! I will bring you the money just as soon as I can."

John told her he could not give her credit, as she did not have a charge account at his store. Standing beside the counter was a customer who overheard the conversation between the two. The customer walked forward and told the grocerman that he would stand good for whatever she needed for her family. The grocerman said in a very reluctant voice, "Do you have a grocery list?

Louise replied, "Yes sir." "O.K." he said, "put your grocery list on the scales and whatever your grocery list weighs, I will give you that amount in groceries." Louise, hesitated a moment with a bowed head, then she reached into her purse and took out a piece of paper and scribbled something on it. She then laid the piece of paper on the scale carefully with her head still bowed. The eyes of the grocerman and the customer showed amazement when the scales went down and stayed down. The grocerman staring at the scales, turned slowly to the customer and said begrudgingly, "I can't believe it."

The customer smiled and the grocerman started putting the groceries on the other side of the scales. The scale did not balance so he continued to put more and more groceries on them until the scales would hold no more. The grocerman stood there in utter disgust. Finally, he grabbed the piece of paper from the scales and looked at it with greater amazement. It was not a grocery list, it was a prayer which said: "Dear Lord, you know my needs and I am leaving this in your hands."

The grocerman gave her the groceries that he had gathered and placed on the scales and stood in stunned silence. Louise thanked him and left the store.

The customer handed a fifty-dollar bill to John as he said, "It was worth every penny of it." It was sometime later that John Longhouse discovered the scales were broken; therefore, only God knows how much a prayer weighs.

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Two nuns were driving down a country road when they ran out of gas. They walked to a farmhouse and a farmer gave them some gasoline but the only container he had was an old bedpan. The nuns were happy to take whatever they were offered and returned to their car. As they were pouring the gasoline from the bedpan into the tank of their car, a minister drove by. He stopped, rolled down his window and said, "Excuse me, sisters. I'm not of your religion, but I couldn't help admiring your faith!"

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By Dan Clark from Chicken Soup for the Country Soul, Copyright 1998 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Ron Camacho

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This most remarkable incident happened many years ago, and was told in a railroad magazine. One summer morning a twelve-car train containing the members of a Sunday school in eastern Missouri was bound for a picnic at a point about fifty miles distant. Although the sky was cloudless when the excursion started, the train had not proceeded more than half way when a thunderstorm broke. The rain fell in torrents. The engineer was worried for fear the terrific downpour might cause a washout or spreading of the rails, and he slowed down to about thirty-five miles an hour. As the train swung around a curve and approached a small station which it was to pass without stopping, the engineer, peering through the broken curtain of rain, saw that the switch ahead was open. It meant a terrible disaster. Instantly he closed the throttle and put on the brakes.

“Better stick to it,” he shouted to the fireman, “hundreds of children are on board.”

“I mean to,” was the answer. “God help us all!”

His last words were drowned by a terrific crash of thunder which came with a flash of lightning that seemed to strike the ground just ahead of the engine. The next thing they knew they were past the station, still riding safely on the main-line rails.

The train came to a stop and the engineer and conductor hurried back to discover what had happened and how the train had passed the open switch. They found the lightning had struck squarely between the switch and the rail and had closed the switch. “It was the act of God,” said the engineer. -- J. M. Farrar

In September 1993, a Brownsville, Texas, man looked out the window of his house and saw a crowd of people pointing at the dusty hood of his 1981 Camaro. He went outside and asked what they were doing ... and was told jubilantly that the Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared in a dirt stain on the hood.

To get rid of the throng, the man washed his car. But the image reappeared ... and so did the crowds. "They won't let the owner move his car," a Brownsville police dispatcher told reporters. A church spokesperson told reporters: "If it leads people to prayer, that's good in itself."

In the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament, you will find many individuals - Noah, Abraham, Moses, David - building altars, as a way of memorializing something God had done for them. They did not want to forget how God had worked in their lives and built an altar to leave a reminder for the next generation.

Reader’s Digest relates the story of a twelve-year-old boy from Florida. One afternoon while playing in the woods he was bitten by a deadly eastern diamondback rattlesnake. Some time later his father found him lying unconscious in their home. Recognizing what had happened, he rushed the boy several miles to the nearest clinic. On the way his car broke down, and he stood on the highway pleading for motorists to stop.

Finally, a farm-worker stopped and they got him to the clinic, but the amount of venom and time elapsed were so great that the clinic could not help him. He was taken to a hospital, only to be told that he had no chance of survival. Several days later, to everyone’s surprise, the boy opened his eyes. The doctor told him that he was very fortunate, for never had he seen anyone in such a situation survive. The lad told them he had known all along that all would be well. He said, "After being bitten, I tried to make it back to my home, but I started to fall, when a person in white stood by me and picked me up. He carried me into the house and told me that I would be sick for some time but not to worry. He would take care of me, and I would be completely well again."

Everyone was speechless. His father tried to dissuade him from his story because "we are not religious people," he said. "We do not go to church." The boy would not be dissuaded, and the article ended by saying that, "There is one young boy growing up in America who believes he was carried in the arms of God."

It will be vital for this boy to remember his experience through life’s twists and turns. Most of us will not experience a miracle as dramatic as this, but the intervention of God in our lives is equally convincing. The marvelous thing about His work is that He can reach you where you are. Wherever you are can be an altar. You can make this the moment you turn your life over to Him and let Him carry you every step of the way.

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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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| My Source:

| Matters of THE Faith, Volume 4, #4, Jan/Mar, 1999

| Author: Darrell Conley

MIRACLES, PROVIDENCE and RANDOMNESS

by Darrell Conley

It is the contention of this article that these three ways are the ways in which God has operated or operates in the world. It is all important in discussing these matters that we define, as much as we can, our terms so we will know what we are talking about. This is often neglected in our Biblical discussions and as a result our statements are not on point.

As it is being used in this article, MIRACLE means a sign or confirmation from God that He has spoken through a particular person or group of persons.

PROVIDENCE, so far as I am able to determine, is the same act of God, but hidden behind His natural law, so that we cannot know when or even if He has acted. We say, as Mordecai said to Esther, "Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14). We pray in faith and leave the answer of our prayer to God. We should always pray, "Thy will be done." This prayer He will always answer.

RANDOMNESS is sheer chance, the sheer accident of natural law. This surely is how God deals with all men most of the time and the very reason for His natural law. It is objective and impartial toward all.

As an illustration let me use a quotation of an article from an incident that is now some years in the past. Some of us remember the tragedy that struck one of the congregations in Garland, Texas. During the Sunday morning worship service, the roof collapsed from the accumulated snow, killing a little girl and injuring several other people. One of the elders of that congregation was quoted in the paper as saying, "It was a miracle more were not killed. God was with us." While sympathizing with those who were suffering and realizing that many people are prone to overstatements, there are several things I find disturbing about that remark.

Was it really a miracle? The disaster, like most disasters, could have been worse. Does this make it a miracle? I can find no place in the Bible where a limited disaster is called a miracle. Was it a miracle when the Sanhedrin didn't stone Philip to death as well as Stephen? All miracles were wonderful and extraordinary occurrences, but not all wonderful and extraordinary occurrences are miracles. If many great and wonderful events are not miracles, how much less this disaster in Garland?

In examining the miracles described in the Bible, we discover that the miracle (as opposed to providence or coincidence) was the DIRECT and OBVIOUS intervention of God into the chain of cause and effect we call natural law. Notice that the words DIRECT and OBVIOUS are in all caps. In a miracle God makes it obvious that He is the One Who has done the thing. As Trench said, "The unresting activity of God, which at other times hides and conceals itself behind the veil of what we term natural laws, does in the miracle unveil itself, it steps out from its concealment, and the hand which works is laid bare" [Richard Trench, NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD, p. 13]. If in the tragedy at Garland, God obviously intervened, where is the evidence? Why was not the building spared? Why was not the life of the little girl spared? To ascribe such a lame "miracle" to God is strange indeed.

I understand the relief and gratitude at escaping from such disaster and the desire to express one's gratitude to God, but "miracle" is an overstatement. God works much of the time by allowing His natural law to run its course. Is there no such thing in the life of some people as the natural or coincidental? Must we attribute everything either to the providential or to the miraculous activity of God."

We live in a fallen and cursed world--a world of pain and sorrow and death. A world which is designed by God to allow us to make a free choice to serve Him or reject Him. It is a perfect place for soul growth. But it is not a perfect place. Unless we wish to ascribe to the deliberate and direct action of God all of the evil and suffering in the world, we must acknowledge that randomness exists. There are random sufferings and there are random causes for pleasures and lack of suffering. The wicked suffer, but the righteous suffer, too. The righteous sometimes prosper, but the wicked do so as well. We must also recognize that God's Will for this world allows for the free will of man with all of its possibilities for good and evil.

The expression, "God with us," in the context of the tragedy in Garland, is fraught with difficulties. Such a statement can be true in only one of three ways:

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It could be true in the sense that God is the ultimate source of everything and thus allows everything that exists to exist, and everything that happens to happen. But we cannot conclude that we should therefore attribute everything that happens to the purposeful action of God. God through His natural law sends sunshine and rain on the just and unjust. However, such is not a sign either to the just or to the unjust that God is with them. Every false religion in the world attributes the random good things its adherents receive as proof that God favors them. The true Christian has no need or excuse to fall into such nonsense. "And hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments" (1 John 2:3).

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Or it could be true in the sense that what happened was a MIRACLE. But the miracles of the Bible were signs. They were confirmation that certain ones were God's spokesmen. A miracle was therefore the PURPOSEFUL, DIRECT, and OBVIOUS intervention of God into the chain of cause and effect He put into place when He created this world. We call that chain of cause and effect natural law. The miracles of the Bible were the result of extraordinary gifts from God. They were for the purpose of revealing and confirming God's Will. "And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed" (Mark 16:20). "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation? which having at the first been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard; God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his own will" (Hebrews 2:3-4). They were to cease when God's Word had been completely revealed and confirmed (1 Corinthians 13:8-13). To use the word "miracle" carelessly is to confuse ourselves and others and to compromise the integrity and authority of the Scriptures.

|||||--THREE--|||||

It could be true in the sense of PROVIDENCE. This, like the miracle, is the purposeful intervention of God into the chain of natural law, but unlike the miracle it is not DIRECT or OBVIOUS and, thus, is not a sign. Providence is hidden behind the veil of cause and effect. When God acts providentially, we cannot know at what point in the chain of cause and effect God has intervened, or in any particular instance if God has intervened. If we could know these things, it would not be providence, but a miracle--a sign.

There are those in this 20th and 21st century, when science is almost universally worshiped, where man is ridiculously proud of his knowledge and his puny control of the material world, and where he is so ignorant of his own ignorance, who claim that they cannot believe in the miracles of the Bible, because they were contrary to the laws of nature. But the miracle was not anti-natural. It was super-natural. It was the intervention of a higher law and a higher power, perhaps the same power that is hidden in the exercise of the providence of God today.

We today believe in God, His Word, and His power. It is "alive and active," (Hebrews 4:12).

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DRL NOTE: I think brother Conley has written a very understandable and powerful explanation of these matters. I would encourage you to study the article carefully. If you would like to subscribe to this free publication in which this article was found, you may write to: Matters of THE Faith | E. Alameda church of Christ | 13605 E. Alameda Avenue | Aurora, CO 80012-1302.

When our first two children were being born, the hospital was keeping fathers out of the delivery room. Now, I promised not to faint, but they wouldn't go for it. But when our youngest came, Daddy was there. Dr. Steinberg and I had formed a good relationship over the months, and after I coached Karen through the natural childbirth, the doctor let me hold our newborn son as soon as he arrived. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life. Well, the doctor does this sometimes several times a week - I guess I figured it must lose some of the thrill when you've been there so many times. But I was struck by his statement when the delivery was complete - he simply said, "Ron, this is the greatest miracle known to man."

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Greatest Miracle Known to Man."

The amazing birth of a baby is actually the second greatest miracle known to man. The greatest miracle is another birth - one which I hope you have experienced for yourself.

Jesus talks about it in John 3:3, it's our word for today from the Word of God - "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." Now that phrase "born again" can be confusing to people in our world. Some people think "born again" is a cult ... or a phrase thought up by some preacher ... or some spiritual rhetoric that is just hard to understand. But obviously Jesus is the one who introduced the idea of being "born again" - and whatever it is, He says you can't go to heaven unless it's happened to you. So it's pretty important to understand.

Just like delivery is the only way to get into this world, being "born again" is, according to Jesus, the only way to get into heaven. Our son entered our family by being born into our family. You enter God's family - not by having Christian parents or going through some Christian ritual - but by this spiritual process of being born into God's family. Born again.

So how does this happen? Well, only two chapters earlier, God answers that question in John 1:12. Speaking of Jesus, God says, "To all who received Him, to those who believe in His name, he gave the right to become children of God." So it's at the point that I receive Jesus and believe in Him that I am born again. The Bible makes clear that "receiving" and "believing" are more than just agreeing with Jesus in your mind. Romans 10:10 says, "It is with your heart that you believe and are justified" (that means getting right with God).

It's a total personal commitment of you to the Man who died to pay for your sins on the cross. It's throwing open the door of your heart and saying, "Jesus, I'm Yours! I give up running my own life. I'm putting my total trust in You to get my sins forgiven and to get to heaven." The moment you do that, Jesus moves into your life and you experience that new beginning of being born - again. And you know if you did it. If you don't know you've consciously given yourself to Jesus, well then you probably haven't.

But today could be your spiritual birth day. Just as God starts moving a baby along to be born, He's moving in your heart right how to be born into His family. You may know about being born again. You may have watched it happen to others - but you've never experienced it yourself. You can right now. Just tell Jesus that you are beginning your personal relationship with Him right here and right now. And if that's what you want, I would love to send you the booklet, "Yours For Life," that I wrote about beginning life's most important relationship.

This could be the day you become God's newborn child ... the day you experience for yourself the greatest miracle known to man.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. 'Practical Answers to Real Life Issues'

*

Miracles, do you believe that they actually happen? Did Jesus really walk on water? Did He really change the water into wine? In a day such as ours, where science triumphs and her handmaiden technology permeates our lives, can we even seriously ask such questions? Does the success of science with its cool rationality demand that we count such stories as mere hopeful tales?

You know, many of us often feel that the answer is yes, yes, we do have to give up our hope in miracles. We feel the pressure of naturalism, and we retreat hoping that we can at least maintain the religious meanings behind the miraculous events we heard about in Sunday school or from a parent.

We find ourselves in this predicament because we have unwittingly accepted the intellectual mindset of our time. Science, we believe, has stated unequivocally that nature is a self-sustained, orderly system governed by incontrovertible laws, and, furthermore, that miracles destroy this order.

But we need not accept this supposed antinomy between the natural and the supernatural. Science, if you pay close attention, does not demand it, nor does philosophy. A more helpful, and I believe truer, casting of the two can be found in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man. Although a technical term, it does embody the ultimate example of what it is to be human. He is the fullest expression of humanity in perfection. To put it differently: Yes, He's divine, but He's also supremely human. More correctly, He is God's expression in human features. He shows us what is possible for humans who are attuned to God and His activities in this world.

His miracles, then, do not destroy the order of nature. The mere existence of this world is a miracle - slow ones should be as impossible by sheer naturalism as immediate ones are. Jesus' miracles just more dramatically demonstrate the super-possibilities in the realm of nature and in our lives. The supernatural, then, is super-nature realized. Nature is not merely a quasi-coherent set of mathematical laws. It is richer than that. It is the arena in which God does His work that points us to His power and His grace. That miraculous work can begin in you to make you conform to the image of His Son. That transformation is in itself a miracle, for there the natural and the supernatural blend wonderfully.

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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Keep in the faith Like any good mother, when Karen found out that another baby was on the way, she did what she could to help her 3-year-old son, Michael, prepare for a new sibling.

They found out that the new baby was going to be a girl, and day after day, night after night, Michael sang to his sister in Mommy's tummy. He was building a bond of love with his little sister before he even met her.

The pregnancy progressed normally for Karen, an active member of the Panther Creek United Methodist Church in Morristown, Tennessee. In time, the labor pains came. Soon it was every five minutes, every three...every minute. But serious complications arose during delivery and Karen found herself in hours of labor. Would a C-section be required?

Finally, after a long struggle, Michael's little sister was born. But she was in very serious condition. With a siren howling in the night, the ambulance rushed the infant to the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Mary's Hospital, Knoxville, Tennessee.

The days inched by. The little girl got worse. The pediatrician had to tell the parents, "There is very little hope. Be prepared for the worst." Karen and her husband contacted a local cemetery about a burial plot. They had fixed up a special room in their house for their new baby but now they found themselves having to plan for a funeral.

Michael, however, kept begging his parents to let him see his sister. "I want to sing to her," he kept saying. Week two in intensive care looked as if a funeral would come before the week was over. Michael kept nagging about singing to his sister, but kids are never allowed in Intensive Care. Karen made up her mind, though. She would take Michael whether they liked it or not! If he didn't see his sister right then, he may never see her alive.

She dressed him in an oversized scrub suit and marched him into ICU. He looked like a walking laundry basket. But the head nurse recognized him as a child and bellowed, "Get that kid out of here now! No children are allowed." The mother rose up strong in Karen, and the usually mild-mannered lady glared steel-eyed right into the head nurse's face, her lips a firm line. "He is not leaving until he sings to his sister!" Karen towed Michael to his sister's bedside. He gazed at the tiny infant losing the battle to live.

After a moment, he began to sing. In the pure-hearted voice of a 3-year-old, Michael sang: "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray ---"

Instantly the baby girl seemed to respond. The pulse rate began to calm down and become steady. "Keep on singing, Michael," encouraged Karen with tears in her eyes.

"You never know, dear, how much I love you, Please don't take my sunshine away-"

Baseball fans will talk about the first game of the 1996 American League championship series between the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles for years to come. The game was played in New York. Going into the bottom of the eighth inning Baltimore led 4-3. With one out and Armando Benitez on the mound, Yankee Derek Jeter hit a towering blast to right field. Orioles right fielder Tony Tarasco ran back to the wall and timed his jump perfectly to snatch the ball before it hit high off the right-field fence.

But before the ball landed safely in his glove, the unexpected happened. “To me it was a magic trick,” said Tarasco later, “because the ball just disappeared out of midair.”

Not quite. A twelve-year-old boy from New Jersey named Jeff Maier had skipped school that day to come to the game and was seated in the front row in right field. When that towering fly ball fell straight in front of him, he did what any Yankee fan would do: he reached out over the wall with his baseball glove and scooped the ball into the stands.

The “magic” continued. The umpire erroneously called it a home run, tying the score. The game went into extra innings, and in the bottom of the eleventh Yankee Bernie Williams hit the home run that won the game, giving the Yankees a 1-0 lead in the series. Afterward the Orioles called the fan interference an outrage. Yankee fans called it a miracle. The Yankees went on to win the series 4 games to 1.

Like the Yankees, sometimes we need outside intervention. We need God to reach out and break the rules of nature to help’ us. Miracles are possible for those who pray and believe.

________

Craig Brian Larson, CHOICE CONTEMPORARY STORIES & ILLUSTRATIONS FOR PREACHERS, TEACHERS, & WRITERS (Baker Books), p. 176.

The newborn boy emergency workers call a miracle baby -- born in the midst of a grisly highway wreck -- is in good condition Thursday after being torn from his mother’s womb as she was killed in the crash in Kentucky.

The baby, found blue and motionless in the snow, survived with only a scratch on his knee. The father, who was driving the tractor-trailer at the time of the accident in Louisville, also survived Tuesday’s accident with minor injuries.

“For the way this baby came into the world, through the hardships this baby survived, it’s a miracle baby,” rescue worker Jeff Landers said.

When paramedic Charles Shepherd pulled back a blanket on the snowy embankment, he found the baby still attached by the umbilical cord to the torso of his lifeless mother, 31-year-old Olga Maria Nunes Bera-Cruz, whose body had been cut in half when she was thrown through the windshield.

The infant lay in the snow, covered by a blanket provided by Trisha Welch, 18, who rushed to the scene from her grandfather’s house nearby after she heard the crash. The baby’s father, Furtado Boaventura of Miami, was hovering over both mother and son, sobbing hysterically.

Shepherd grabbed the umbilical cord, and the baby started crying. “I praised the Lord and started to work,” Shepherd said. He cut the cord and gave the baby oxygen. During the 15-minute dash to the hospital, “I prayed more on that run than any I’ve ever prayed before,” he said.

The baby was named Patrick, a male version of Patricia, after the teen-ager who helped care for him until rescue workers arrived.

Shepherd said he hoped to visit the baby later this week and arrive bearing gifts, including a Bible. He said other rescue workers said they found an open Bible near the crash. “He is truly a miracle from God,” Shepherd said.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

EARLIER! Date - 2,000 years ago! Jesus Christ was miraculously born through the incarnation! Beyond comparison, this was the greatest miracle birth of all! “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35) Impossible? But “with God nothing shall be impossible.” (Luke 1:37)

AND NOW WHOSE BIRTH? Date? - Perhaps today!

A tiny baby was violently torn away from the protection of his precious mother’s womb. Tragedy! In stark contrast, I wonder, have you been torn away from your unbelieving past and the clutches of the devil and born into the eternal family of God? What is the likelihood of seeing hardened sinners becoming humble enough to trust Christ and experience the new birth (without egotistical feelings like the REJECTED Pharisee)? Humanly - no more so than a crash killing a pregnant woman while sparing her unborn! But it is through times of serious danger that some do cast themselves upon the Lord’s grace and live! Without the One who was present at the conception of the Christ child, the Holy Spirit, none of us would experience the New Birth at all - not you, not me, not them! Impossible?

It took an earthquake, but then one sprang in with a totally different attitude, pleading! “Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” (Acts 16:30)

“The history of the life of Christ is concerning Him, Who being the holiest among the mighty and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hands empires off their hinges, turned the stream of centuries out of its channel and still governs the ages!” - Jean Paul Richter

Hurricane Pauline blows fisherman to safety

ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuter) - Three people who had been lost at sea for 15 days surviving on raw fish and a bottle of water were blown to safety by Hurricane Pauline, a Mexican television network reported Friday. Carlos Serna, a 32-year-old fisherman, and his brother and niece had been lost and presumed dead until Wednesday, when the approaching hurricane blew Serna's dinghy closer to shore. He was then picked up by a passing boat.

"I thank God. We were very lucky," Serna told the Televisa television network as he recovered from severe dehydration at a local hospital.

Serna and his two companions survived on raw fish and a bottle of water, Televisa said.

Some 400 people died as a result of Hurricane Pauline's savage assault on the resort city of Acapulco and coastal villages along the southern Mexican coastline, the Red Cross said Friday.

^REUTER@

I still remember the day Marta walked into my office, plopped herself down and asked me to pray that she and Ward would be able to have children. I promised to pray, and did, regularly. In time, they had three of the brightest, sweetest children you've ever seen. They are young adults now and barely know me, but I take special joy in having prayed them into the world.

For Mack, I prayed that God would send him a wife. I said, “Lord, Mack is a truly fine person. He has kept himself faithful to you all these years. You must have a godly woman out there somewhere who would be right for him.” He did. I performed Mack and Kathleen's wedding last winter.

My son Neil was on an outing with his three children. The day before, he had suggested they pray for good weather. On their way to the park, he asked 10-year-old Grant if he had prayed for this beautiful day. “No,” he said. “I forgot.” He asked 7-year-old Abby. “I forgot too,” she said.

“Oh, good,” said her twin Erin from the back seat. “Then it was my miracle.”

I pray for Graham, the 8-year-old son of Ed and Sherry. Over two years ago, he had surgery for a brain tumor which was followed by various complications. Eventually, Graham came home from the hospital normal in every way except one: He had lost his eyesight.

The medical team could find no reason for the blindness. In time, Ed and Sherry enrolled Graham in special classes for the newly blind here in New Orleans, and he was even featured on the evening news. He has adapted well, and the family has been an incredible witness to the rest of us on how to handle life's setbacks. We all continue, however, to pray for God to restore Graham's vision.

“One of these days,” I tell Ed and Sherry, “Graham is going to open his eyes and see. When he does, I want to be one of the many who prayed for that miracle.”

In Erin's words, I want it to be my miracle. Put another way, I do not want to miss the blessing of having asked the Father for this miracle.

Ed asked me one day, “What if it happens in the middle of a worship service? Is it all right with you if Graham comes walking down the aisle of the church?” We both laughed at such a precious picture. I assured him a revival would break out in the congregation.

When tennis star Arthur Ashe came down with cancer, the world took notice. Struck down in the prime of his life, Ashe demonstrated great courage and faith. He said one thing, however, that has troubled me all these years.

“I have not prayed for my own healing. That would be selfish.”

Is it selfish to pray for your own healing, for a special blessing from the Heavenly Father? Perhaps. It probably depends on your heart. Arthur Ashe was the father of some children he dearly loved. From here, it seems he could have prayed for healing for their sake. As a recovered cancer victim, he would have been given a megaphone, so to speak, to direct the world's attention to cancer research, to the power of prayer, and to the special concerns of patients. He could have asked for healing for their sake.

Is it possible God does not heal (or fill other needs) because we do not ask? How we answer says volumes about what we believe concerning prayer.

James 4:2 answers our question. “You have not,” we read, “because you ask not.”

We all remember the famous prayer of Jabez, from 1 Chronicles 4:10: “Oh, that thou wouldst bless me indeed, and enlarge my border, and that thy hand might be with me, and that thou wouldst keep me from evil that it may not pain me.” Over the past decade, millions have debated whether Jabez' prayer was selfish. But it's worth noting that God answered it. Plainly, the Lord decided this man could be trusted with the blessing he desired.

Give God credit for blessing, but give Jabez credit for asking.

I encourage people to go ahead and pray for their healing or that special need. Let God sort it out as to who gets the miracle. It's not like my little prayer is going to upset the balance of the universe. Ask Him! To those who asks, “But what if it's not God's will?” I say, “Then He won't do it.”

In the late 19th century, American evangelist Dwight L. Moody was vacationing in England. His ministry schedule had exhausted him and friends thought the voyage to Britain would do him good. One day, a pastor read in the newspaper that the well-known American evangelist was due to arrive in London on such-and-such a ship. He contacted Moody and invited him to preach in his church. The sermon was so well-received that they agreed to continue holding services indefinitely. Word spread and crowds gathered. Lives were being changed as people turned to Jesus Christ at the preaching of this unlettered American layman.

One morning, the host pastor asked Mr. Moody to accompany him on a house call. An invalid woman in his church would welcome their visit.

That day, in a humble cottage, these two men of God received the shock of their lives. The sickly woman showed them newspaper clippings of the ministry of Dwight L. Moody which she had cut out over the previous several years and saved. She said, “For a long time, I have prayed that God would send you to England, Mr. Moody. We need the touch of God in our land, too.”

The religious awakening that swept over much of England through the preaching of Dwight Moody was her miracle.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #886]

In a volume of world history written by forty professors at a respected university, a professor of geology flatly states, “We reject the miraculous.” [1]

Ravi Zacharias once recalled a professor of his, a quantum physicist, describing the first few microseconds of the creation of the universe. The contraction and expansion ratio had to be so exact and the margin of error so small. His professor described it profoundly. He said the exactitude demanded of that moment was such that it would be the equivalent of taking aim at a one square inch object twenty billion light years away, and hitting it bull's eye.

I wonder what we can call that if not miraculous? Can you call it chance? Tightly knit and intelligible seems fitting.

Now think of the fantastic glory of the universe which surrounds us: the marvel of creation, the wonder of love, the beauty of relationships. Yet somehow we have reduced it so much that we now believe it can all be explained by random cause, and we just happen to be here — the product of a mindless collocation of atoms. When that is all it is — the process of impersonal chance — it is wonder we have extracted.

Charles Darwin described something fascinating in his autobiography. He said that when evolution had become absolutely entrenched into his consciousness, he lost all interest in the arts and in music. Isn't that interesting? The romance of life was drained of usefulness, when the focus became the mechanization of it all.

Moreover, if we are merely thrown together as products of chance, can we have value? Or meaning? If we came into existence through such impersonal measures, why do we have this desire to be personal? To be loved? To be known? This concept of wonder is built into life, and when we take it away, life becomes something less.

Few have captured the meaning of wonder more eloquently than the words of Henry van Dyke put to the music of Beethoven. That magnificent hymn proclaims,

All Thy works with joy surround Thee,

Earth and heav'n reflect Thy ways;

Stars and angels sing around Thee,

Center of unbroken praise;

Field and forest, vale and mountain,

Bloss'ming meadow, flashing sea,

Chanting bird and flowing fountain

Call us to rejoice in Thee.” [2]

Wonder surrounds the Truth of God.

Gerard Manley Hopkins proclaimed, “The earth is full of the grandeur of God!” And the Psalmist urges you to see it: “Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see — how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him.” (Psalm 34:8) Blessed are you who run to Him. That is both true, and wonderful.

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The preceding "Slice" was inspired by a sermon by Ravi Zacharias.

1. John A. Garraty and Peter Gay, eds., The Columbia History of the World (New York: Harper, 1972), pp. 14.

2. “Joyful Joyful We adore Thee,” words by Henry Van Dyke, 1852 - 1933, music by Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770 - 1827.

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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

Recipe for a Miracle

1 cup Tension

2 cups Stress

1 teaspoon of Guilt

2 heaping cups of Limited Time

3/4 tablespoon of Urgency

A dash of “No Other Choice”

3 heaping cups of Faith

Fold ingredients gently into a bowl. Mix vigorously and add a few tears. You’ll sweat a little as you knead the dough. Pack it firmly between your hopes and dreams and form into a perfect little ball. Sprinkle it with a little faith (I recommend Hebrews 11), rolling the ball in the flour until fully covered.

Place it under a veil of belief and allow it to rise.

Put it in an oven that has been pre-set at the perfect temperature for the heat of trials and tribulations.

Allow it to brown under the warmth of God’s love. Remove after due season and allow to cool in the confidence of His promise.

Garnish with your praises. Arrange neatly on a platter of thankfulness and serve to friends, families and, oh yes, strangers … invite them too!

Pass on the recipe to all who request it and let them know that with this recipe, they have the makings of a miracle!

“Business or pleasure?” I queried.

The salt-and-pepper-haired traveler to my right lowered his WALL STREET JOURNAL and smiled at me over half-spectacles. “Business,” he said. “A conference on advertising. And you?”

“A church meeting,” I said.

“Church?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a minister.”

He folded his newspaper on his lap and turned toward me. “I’m not religious myself,” he informed me. “I do believe in God. But there’s so much in the Bible that is just unrealistic.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like Jesus Christ,” he said. “Undoubtedly He was a very nice fellow and a wise teacher. We’d all be better off if we did unto others as we’d like them to do to us. But the whole ‘Son of God’ thing — a virgin having a baby, miracles, rising from the dead. That’s way too much for me.”

“So, the God you believe in,” I observed, “really isn’t a very capable God, is He?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.

“I mean that your God doesn’t seem to have power to do what he claimed to do.”

He looked intently at me while the stewardess set ginger ales in front of us. “I’ll have to think about that,” he said, turning toward the plane window.

NOTHING TOO DIFFICULT

If God is really God, then He has the power to do anything. And what Scripture claims is that God did some amazing, one-of-a-kind miracles to bring salvation to this world.

Take, for example, the virgin birth. Though Jesus was born from the womb of a human mother, the Bible claims that He did not get there in the usual way. An early prophecy of the Messiah tells the manner of His conception: “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son.’”1 Later writers understood that this was a prophecy of Jesus. Three times Luke reminds us that Mary had experienced no sexual intimacy with a man when an angel told her she’d give birth to the Messiah.

“‘How will this be,’“ Mary herself asks the angel, “‘since I am a virgin?’”2

Her husband, Joseph, Matthew says, “had no union with her” until she gave birth to Jesus.3

Although modern scientists have made fantastic strides in reproductive technology, we know of no other instance in which a human being has reproduced without the benefit of genetic material from both a male and a female. If such happened to Mary, clearly a Scientist greater than any of ours was at work in Mary’s life.

Given the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, though, we should hardly be surprised that skeptics questioned His paternity. The aspersions began during His lifetime. When He visited His hometown, Nazareth, people sarcastically asked, “‘Isn’t this Mary’s son?’"4 By pointedly omitting Joseph, they meant to imply that Jesus was of illegitimate birth. To the extent that His life did not begin in the usual way, they were right. What they didn’t realize — or didn’t accept — was that Jesus was the Son of another, far greater Father than Joseph.

I can think of at least three reasons why God began His Son’s life on earth in such an unconventional way.

1. THE VIRGIN BIRTH GAVE EVIDENCE OF JESUS’ DIVINE ORIGIN. When God’s people first understood that God would send them a Messiah, they anticipated a man of great power: a charismatic king or a powerful general — someone who could take political and military leadership and mold a mighty nation. What they didn’t expect was a wise teacher, a gentle healer, and a martyr. It was not Jesus’ human power that made Him our Savior. It was His relationship with God.

His was more than a friendship with God, though. Scripture asserts that Jesus WAS God. While human life normally begins with conception, Jesus had existed in heaven long before He made His home in a human body. “He was with God in the beginning,”5said the apostle John. Since God has existed eternally, then so has Jesus. He was in fact a unique combining of humanity and divinity. Fully God and fully human.

In order to save us, God needed someone who would pay the penalty for sin. So, “God presented [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement.”6 Had He been merely a man, we might justifiably say, “Many human beings have been martyred for their faith. Why should this person’s death matter?” Jesus’ death matters because He, being both human and divine, was uniquely qualified to pay the price for our sins. Jesus, the God-man, could act as the Substitute for the sins of all humankind, so that we needn’t ever die the final, eternal death.

The virgin birth is evidence that Jesus is more than merely a good man and a wise teacher. Said the great Christian thinker C.S. Lewis, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic ... or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse..... But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”7

2. THE VIRGIN BIRTH REVEALS JESUS AS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN GOD AND HUMANKIND. I have a rose in my garden that is a cross between two very different rose “parents.” One side of the family tree is a rough, thorny, weedy variety, with much vigor and disease resistance, but flowers of no special beauty. My rose’s other parent has large, glorious blossoms, but is a weak grower that gets all the foliage diseases that so bedevil roses. The “child” got the best of both parents: lovely flowers and vigorous growth.

The analogy isn’t perfect, yet it conveys something of Jesus’ special place as a bridge between the human world and the divine world. Jesus carried the essential qualities of both sides of His family tree. As God, Jesus knew His Father’s perfection, His hatred of sin, as well as His love of humanity, and the glory He longs to grant us. As a human being, Jesus knew our weaknesses: how temptation overcomes us, how suffering and sadness can devastate our lives.

The virgin birth proves Jesus to be the only One in the entire universe who knows intimately both humanity’s experience and God’s. On our behalf, He proves that He understands our difficulty in meeting temptation, and He demonstrates that we can overcome it. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin.”8 Now “seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,”9 He draws on His experience as a human being to help Him plead for our forgiveness to His Father.

In the words of the apostle Paul, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,”10 — restoring the relationship between Himself and struggling, suffering humanity.

3. JESUS’ UNUSUAL CONCEPTION GAVE HIM UNUSUAL AUTHORITY. At a medical meeting, one after another well-dressed and well-credentialed physician came to the microphone to discuss the technicalities of an experimental surgery that none of them had yet attempted. Suddenly, a man in the audience stood. He was an ordinary-looking man, dressed casually, and he spoke without polish or pretense. Yet the observation he made about the procedure under discussion was an astute one.

The presenter behind the microphone seemed displeased at being so forthrightly challenged. He glared at the questioner and demanded, “Who are you, sir?”

“I’m the physician who pioneered this surgery,” he answered. “The only one in this room who has actually performed it.”

In an instant the presenter’s confrontational demeanor changed. And the audience became alert. It didn’t matter to them how the man looked or was dressed. What mattered was that he could speak with authority!

Throughout Jesus’ life, when people wanted to disregard Him, they denigrated His authority. “Who does He think He is?” they asked, in many different ways. “Where does He get the authority to heal people, to teach new ideas, to contradict old doctrines?”

While some questioned the legitimacy of Jesus’ birth, those who knew that Jesus’ mother Mary was a pious and chaste woman realized she was telling the truth: since the Child she bore was not the son of a human father, He must be the Son of God. And it was undoubtedly those who believed in Jesus’ divine origins who told the story of His miraculous conception to others. Soon many came to see that Jesus came to this earth with more than human authority.

GREAT POSSIBILITIES

“I think I see your point,” my seatmate said to me some time later. “God surely is capable of doing such a thing as the virgin birth, so it only makes sense to believe that His claim to actually have done it is true.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Otherwise, He’s not only weak, but also a liar.”

And may I add that if that claim is true, then so are all the rest. Just as God proved He could put divinity into human form at the virgin birth, so at Jesus’ resurrection He proved that He could bestow an infinite future upon humanity. If one claim is true, so is the other. If the virgin birth was possible, so is eternal life — for all of us.

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1. Isaiah7:14, NKJV.

2. Luke 1:34.

3. Matthew 1:25.

4. Mark 6:3.

5. John 1:2.

6. Romans 3:25.

7. C. S. Lewis, MERE CHRISTIANITY (New York: Macmillan), 56.

8. Hebrews 4:15.

9. Hebrews 8:1, NKJV

10. 2 Corinthians 5:19.

Loren Seibold pastors the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Worthington, Ohio.

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Can a true Christian deny the virgin birth? This question would perplex the vast majority of Christians throughout the centuries, but modern denials of biblical truth make the question tragically significant. Of all biblical doctrines, the doctrine of Christ's virginal conception often has been the specific target of modern denial and attack.

Attacks upon the virgin birth emerged in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, with some theologians attempting to harmonize the anti- supernaturalism of the modern mind with the church's teaching about Christ. The great quest of liberal theology has been to invent a Jesus who is stripped of all supernatural power, deity and authority.

The fountainhead of this quest includes figures such as Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann. Often considered the most influential New Testament scholar of the 20th century, Bultmann argued that the New Testament presents a mythological worldview that modern men and women simply cannot accept as real. The virgin birth is simply a part of this mythological structure and Bultmann urged his program of “demythologization” in order to construct a faith liberated from miracles and all vestiges of the supernatural. Jesus was reduced to an enlightened teacher and existentialist model.

In America, the public denial of the virgin birth can be traced to the emergence of Protestant liberalism in the early 20th century. In his famous sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Harry Emerson Fosdick -- an unabashed liberal -- aimed his attention at “the vexed and mooted question of the virgin birth.”

Fosdick, preaching from the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church in New York City, allowed that Christians may hold “quite different points of view about a matter like the virgin birth.” He accepted the fact that many Christians believed the virgin birth to be historically true and theologically significant. Fosdick likened this belief to trust in “a special biological miracle.”

Nevertheless, Fosdick insisted that others, equally Christian, could disagree with those who believe the virgin birth to be historically true: “But, side by side with them in the evangelical churches is a group of equally loyal and reverent people who would say that the virgin birth is not to be accepted as an historic fact. To believe in the virgin birth as an explanation of great personality is one of the familiar ways in which the ancient world was accustomed to account for unusual superiority.”

Fosdick explained that those who deny the virgin birth hold to a specific pattern of reasoning. As he explained, “...those first disciples adored Jesus -- as we do; when they thought about his coming they were sure that he came specially from God -- as we are; this adoration and conviction they associated with God's special influence and intention in his birth -- as we do; but they phrased it in terms of a biological miracle that our modern minds cannot use.”

Thus, Fosdick divided the church into two camps. Those he labeled as “fundamentalists” believe the virgin birth to be historical fact. The other camp, comprised of “enlightened” Christians who no longer obligate themselves to believe the Bible to be true, discard this “biological” miracle but still consider themselves to be Christians.

More contemporary attacks on the virgin birth of Christ have emerged from figures such as retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong and German New Testament scholar Gerd Luedemann. Luedemann acknowledges that “most Christians in all the churches in the world confess as they recite the Apostles' Creed that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary. Now ... modern Christians completely discount the historicity of the virgin birth and understand it in a figurative sense.”

Obviously, the “modern Christians” Luedemann identifies are those who allow the modern secular worldview to establish the frame for reality into which the claims of the Bible must be fitted. Those doctrines that do not fit easily within the secular frame automatically must be discarded. As might be expected, Luedemann's denial of biblical truth is not limited to the virgin birth. He denies virtually everything the Bible reveals about Jesus Christ. In summarizing his argument, Luedemann states: “The tomb was full and the manger empty.” That is to say, Luedemann believes that Jesus was not born of a virgin and that He was not raised from the dead.

Another angle of attack on the virgin birth has come from the group of radical scholars who organize themselves into what is called the “Jesus Seminar.” These liberal scholars apply a radical form of interpretation and deny that the New Testament is in any way reliable as a source of knowledge about Jesus.

Roman Catholic scholar John Dominic Crossan, a member of the Jesus Seminar, discounts the biblical narratives about the virgin birth as invented theology. He acknowledges that Matthew explicitly traces the virgin birth to Isaiah 7:14. Crossan explains that the author of Matthew simply made this up: “Clearly, somebody went seeking in the Old Testament for a text that could be interpreted as prophesying a virginal conception, even if such was never its original meaning. Somebody had already decided on the transcendental importance of the adult Jesus and sought to retroject that significance on to the conception and birth itself.”

Crossan denies that Matthew and Luke can be taken with any historical seriousness, and he understands the biblical doctrine of the virgin birth to be an insurmountable obstacle to modern people as they encounter the New Testament. As with Luedemann, Crossan's denial of the virgin birth is only a hint of what is to come. In “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography,” Crossan presents an account of Jesus that would offend no secularist or atheist. Obviously, Crossan's vision also bears no resemblance to the New Testament.

For others, the rejection of the birth is tied to a specific ideology. In “The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives,” Jane Schaberg accuses the church of inventing the doctrine of the virgin birth in order to subordinate women. As she summarizes: “The charge of contemporary feminists, then, is not that the image of the Virgin Mary is unimportant or irrelevant, but that it contributes to and is integral to the oppression of women.”

Schaberg states that the conception of Jesus was most likely the result of extra-marital sex or rape. She chooses to emphasize the latter possibility and turns this into a feminist fantasy in which Mary is the heroine who overcomes. Schaberg offers a tragic, but instructive model of what happens when ideology trumps trust in the biblical text. Her most basic agenda is not even concerned with the question of the virgin birth of Christ, but with turning this biblical account into service for the feminist agenda.

Bishop Joseph Sprague of the United Methodist Church offers further evidence of modern heresy. In an address he presented on June 25, 2002, at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, this bishop denied the faith wholesale. Sprague, who serves as presiding bishop of the United Methodist Church in northern Illinois, has been called “the most vocally prominent active liberal bishop in Protestantism today.” Sprague is proud of this designation and takes it as a compliment: “I really make no apology for that. I don't consider myself a liberal. I consider myself a radical.” Sprague lives up to his self-designation.

In his Iliff address, Bishop Sprague claimed that the “myth” of the virgin birth “was not intended as historical fact, but was employed by Matthew and Luke in different ways to appoint poetically the truth about Jesus as experienced in the emerging church.” Sprague defined a theological myth as “not false presentation but a valid and quite persuasive literary device employed to point to ultimate truth that can only be insinuated symbolically and never depicted exhaustively.”

Jesus, Sprague insists, was born to human parents and did not possess “trans-human, supernatural powers.” Thus, Sprague dismisses the miracles, the exclusivity of Christ and the bodily resurrection as well as the virgin birth. His Christology is explicitly heretical: “Jesus was not born the Christ, rather by the confluence of grace with faith, he became the Christ, God's beloved in whom God was well pleased.”

Bishop Sprague was charged with heresy but has twice been cleared of the charge -- a clear sign that the mainline Protestant denominations are unwilling to identify as heretics even those who openly teach heresy. The presence of theologians and pastors who deny the virgin birth in the theological seminaries and pulpits of the land is evidence of the sweeping tide of unbelief that marks so many institutions and churches in our time.

Can a true Christian deny the virgin birth? The answer to that question must be a decisive “No.” Those who deny the virgin birth reject the authority of Scripture, deny the supernatural birth of the Savior, undermine the very foundations of the Gospel, and have no way of explaining the deity of Christ.

Anyone who claims that the virgin birth can be discarded even as the deity of Christ is affirmed is either intellectually dishonest or theological incompetent.

Several years ago, Cecil Sherman -- then a Southern Baptist, but later the first coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship -- stated: “A teacher who might also be led by the Scripture not to believe in the Virgin Birth should not be fired.” Consider the logic of that statement. A Christian can be led by the Bible to deny what the Bible teaches? This kind of logic is what has allowed those who deny the virgin birth to sit comfortably in liberal theological seminaries and to preach their reductionistic Christ from major pulpits.

Christians must face the fact that a denial of the virgin birth is a denial of Jesus as the Christ. The Savior who died for our sins was none other than the baby who was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. The virgin birth does not stand alone as a biblical doctrine; it is an irreducible part of the biblical revelation about the person and work of Jesus Christ. With it, the Gospel stands or falls.

“Everyone admits that the Bible represents Jesus as having been conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. The only question is whether in making that representation the Bible is true or false.” So declared J. Gresham Machen in his great work, “The Virgin Birth of Christ.” As Machen went on to argue, “[I]f the Bible is regarded as being wrong in what it says about the birth of Christ, then obviously the authority of the Bible in any high sense is gone.”

The authority of the Bible is almost completely gone where liberal theology holds its sway. The authority of the Bible is replaced with the secular worldview of the modern age and the postmodern denial of truth itself. The true church stands without apology upon the authority of the Bible and declares that Jesus was indeed “born of a virgin.” Though the denial of this doctrine is now tragically common, the historical truth of Christ's birth remains inviolate. No true Christian can deny the virgin birth.

__________

R. Albert Mohler Jr. is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Adapted from his weblog at www.crosswalk.com.

There is a story about Tony Campolo, who was asked to preach at a national women's organization. The theme of the gathering was the need to help in some way that is unique to women.

The chairperson ended her speech with an admonition that their group needed to raise $5,000 “today” in the offering for this cause. As she gave up the podium to Tony Campolo, she asked him to pray that God would meet the $5,000 need in the offering. Tony came to the podium and declared that he would not pray for God to meet the need.

Instead, he pulled out his wallet, took out every bill he had and placed it in the offering. He said, “God is not going to do by a miracle, what He has empowered us to do by our own hands.”

With that, Tony turned to the chair-lady and said, “Now it's your turn. Take out your wallet and place your money in the offering plate.” With some hesitation, (but what could she do but comply?!), she put a large wad of bills in the offering.

He then looked to the audience and said, “Now it's your turn. Take out your wallet and place your money in the offering plate.” They did. And in just a few moments they learned they had raised $7,000 for that urgent need!

__________

Source: The Timothy Report, Copyright (c) 2004 Swan Lake Communications, http://www.timothyreport.com

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate in KeruxID 25837-26027]

We may look with some envy on first-century believers who seemed to have miracles as part of their daily lives. Certainly, there were dramatic miracles that took place during their time. We read of great things happening, such as the man at the gate Beautiful who received the ability to walk. Peter was released from prison by an angel. A woman was raised from the dead. We can look back on that time with some fondness and say, "Those were the good old days."

Realistically, though, I think we should recognize that the Book of Acts is a record of what God did over a 30-year period. As we read it, it almost appears as though miracles happened every 12 minutes. But the truth is that it's a record of miracles that took place over a long period of time.

Some Christians may think that if they could perform a sign or miracle for the unbelievers they know, then they would believe. But here is the sign they need to know about: what Jesus accomplished on the cross. It is the preaching of the cross that will make the difference. "We preach Christ crucified," Paul said. That is our message. That is what we have to say. Paul said, "For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2)

Though I believe in miracles and hope to see more in my lifetime, one thing will never change: the simple message we must proclaim.

Spring in rural Indiana is a time of seasonal transition, from the cold ambience of winter, to warm, humid days interspersed with welcome rainstorms. It was only a week before Easter. Already the grass was green, flowers were budding, and the dogwood in the front yard had bloomed.

Sitting in church on Palm Sunday morning, it was hard for this 12 year old to remain undistracted from the sounds of kids playing outside in the unusually warm temperatures. Besides, I couldn't wait to get home and out of the starchy clothes -- cousins and relatives were coming over for Sunday dinner.

Though sunny and hot, it was a relaxing afternoon under the shade trees sipping on lemonade with family. As dusk approached, the familiar sight of dark clouds were accumulating in the west. Distant sparks of lighting could be seen on the horizon, meaning a typical Midwest storm was brewing. The family had gone indoors and were watching TV when news of a tornado warning scrawled across the screen. Such warnings are frequent and didn't generate much concern until the program was later interrupted by a urgent news bulletin. They reported that moments earlier, a twister had devastated a community 15 miles to our west, and was headed due east, directly in our path. We were alarmed and realized it was time to take refuge in the basement.

My dad was the last of us to arrive below when the lights suddenly went out. We were fumbling to find a flashlight, when there was a hush. "Do you hear that?" Mother whispered. We stood motionless, straining to hear what seemed to be the increasing sound of a distant roar. But in mere seconds, the noise had become a rumbling vibration that was now shaking the structure above and around us.

Instinctively, we each knew the danger that was upon us, but there was no time to react. My heart was pounding in my chest. Behind me I could hear my mother's soft, familiar voice calling out to the Lord for His help. "Dear Jesus, please help us!"

Then suddenly we heard and felt the impact of a massive collision. The house shook violently -- we were deafened by the sounds of breakage and the groanings of timbers being twisted and torn. Suspended in shock, all eyes peered out helplessly from the small basement window. In the dim light we could see a blurry collage of objects hurling past from the wind's great force -- trees, farm machinery , huge objects. Near the window, a small tree bent completely to the ground without breaking.

Then as quickly as it had begun, there was silence. The tornado had apparently passed. We carefully emerged from the basement, and to our surprise, we found the house intact. But when we pushed the front door open, the surrounding devastation was beyond belief. It appeared that a nuclear bomb had exploded. Fallen trees, portions of buildings, automobiles, clothing, home appliances -- mangled debris of every kind covered the ground and hung from disfigured trees in all directions.

We had no injuries, but later we would discover the toll was more severe just a few miles up the road, where thirteen of our neighbors and friends were killed. All together, this and several other twisters in Indiana took the lives of 60 on the same day.

I knew that we were fortunate to be alive, but didn't realize the divine significance of this until later hearing the account of our neighbor from across the road. When he saw the funnel cloud coming, he quickly gathered his family in the car and raced away from its path. After reaching a safe distance away, he stopped and watched as the twister destroyed his home, then proceeded toward ours. "I knew that if you were there, it would be all over for you," he said. "But a strange thing happened. When the twister reached your driveway, I saw it lift up over your house and come down on the other side!" As he said this, a tingle went up my spine! I realized this was same moment that my mother was praying, "Dear Jesus, please help us!"

That day, my life was forever changed. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I understood that prayer really works. Its power became a living reality to me, through the legacy of my mother's faith. Never would I forget this tremendous revelation, nor the miraculous answer to prayer which saved our lives on Palm Sunday, 1965.

Over the years, I've come to value the power of prayer more and more. Each day, as well as in times of crisis and distress, I've discovered that He is always there to strengthen and help His children, to respond to their pleas. And regardless of the size of problems that we may face -- whether the fierce winds of a cyclone or the daily challenges of life, Jesus is there for you. Just call upon His name in faith and put your trust in Him.

"He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation." (Psalms 91:15-16).