But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith? (Luke 18:8, NLT).
The miracles of Jesus were a dominant part of His ministry. It is estimated that 40 percent of the Gospel of Mark is about miracles. One scholar writes . . .
Just as the kingdom of God stands at the center of Jesus’s preaching, so healings and exorcisms form the center of his activity.
Today, in our Christian practice, we get the teaching of Jesus without the miracles. Is something wrong? Jesus said, “Will I find faith when I return?” Paul writes about religion in the end times, “Which will have the appearance of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5, ESV).
Religion today places miracles and supernatural activity in the back seat of our faith practice. Yes, we believe, but we don’t experience the power of God that much. Not so in the Gospels, which describe 38 specific healings of sickness and deliverance.
Jesus performed many other miracles, too.
If we had followed Jesus as He walked around Israel, we would’ve witnessed hundreds, if not thousands, of miracles. We read in the Gospels . . .
He had healed many . . . that day (Mark 3:10, NLT).
Everyone tried to touch him, because healing power went out from him, and he healed everyone (Luke 6:19, NLT).
In the New Testament, people approached Jesus more as a healer and then were astounded by His teaching. Jesus listed His job description while on earth as – saving the lost, healing the sick, and setting the captives free (Luke 4:18-19).
But where have all the miracles gone? Or are we just not looking?
Craig Keener, a Biblical scholar and historian, writes a two-volume set of books entitled Miracles. In these books, Keener researches reports of miracles since the time of Jesus. He summarizes . . .
The kinds of miracle claims most frequently attested in the Gospels and Acts are also attested by many eyewitnesses today.
I have heard doubters claim “uniform experience” as a reason not to believe in the supernatural. The argument goes like this, “Miracles don’t happen because we don’t see them occurring.”
Keener debunks this thinking when he says . . .
It is no longer plausible to tout “uniform human experience” as a basis for denying miracles, as in the traditional modern argument. Hundreds of millions of claims would have to be satisfactorily explained in nonsupernatural terms for this appeal to succeed.
Yes, if you read Keener’s massive two-volume set, he finds evidence for “hundreds of millions” of claims of healing throughout the last 2,000 years.
I was raised in a church that claimed the miracles of Jesus were confined to the four Gospels and the book of Acts. The philosophy of our age is that miracles are unscientific.
And most of us are just too weary and distracted by life to care – that is until we are sick.
Discussing miracles, we know many have prayed for sickness, whether personally or for another, with no resultant healing. My point in this blog post is not to explain why prayers are unanswered but to build our faith to believe it’s possible that our next prayer will heal the sick, save the lost, or set the captives free.
Let’s grow in faith; let’s bombard heaven with requests for the power of healing to be released in these last days.