Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 12:3 (Fall 1971)
Article: Does God Want Christians to Perform Miracles Today?
Author: John C. Whitcomb, Jr.

---

GJ 12:3 (Fall 71) p. 3

Does God Want Christians to Perform Miracles Today?

John C. Whitcomb, Jr.

Director of Postgraduate Studies
Grace Theological Seminary

Introduction

One of Satan’s most insidious purposes, through the ages, has been to enter a wedge between God’s people and God’s infallible, inerrant Word. It all began in the Garden of Eden when “the father of lies” asked Eve, “Yea, hath God said…?” and it continues today without abatement. Two distinct but related levels of this Satanic strategy can be detected in our day:

(1) Rationalistic doubts and denials of the supernatural acts of God as recorded in Scripture. This is being most keenly felt in evangelical circles today through various compromises with the theory of organic evolution, which attempt to reduce the great creative miracles of God to mere providential processes.

(2) The other strategy of the enemy is to encourage Christians to imagine present-day miracles where there are none, through the claims of self-appointed miracle workers.

The goal of the first strategy is to take away the Bible from us piece by piece, until we wonder what pieces of infallible Scripture are still left to us.

The goal of the second strategy is to take us away from the Bible by centering our attention on new claims of divine revelation by modern prophets, or on new and supernatural experiences and powers so that we have little time or interest in searching the Scriptures for God’s truth and for God’s revealed ways of perpetuating and promoting it.

GJ 12:3 (Fall 71) p. 4

The Pressure Is On

In every generation men have gravitated to religions that offer signs and wonders as their basic appeal. This has been a principal source of power for Roman Catholicism, which claims a continuing revelation accompanied by continuing signs. And what modern, fast-growing cult is devoid of prophets and miracle-workers? Old-line Pentecostalism, and now the “Neo-Pentecostal” movement, offer the miracle of tongues, the interpretation of tongues, and even faith-healers that attract millions. In tune with the times, Protestant liberalism has abandoned its old rationalistic formulas in favor of a more vibrant existentialism called Neo-Orthodoxy, which offers a direct “word” from God to sincere individual seekers the world over, whether they have actually heard of the historical Christ or not.

What may be considered a natural desire by men to see some token of God has surely been accelerated by the suffocating atmosphere of twentieth-century uniformitarian scientism. If Satan cannot take away the true God by the pressure of theoretical or practical atheism in th...

visitor : : uid: ()