Do miracles happen today?

Question

Many people today claim to be miracle workers, and they believe that miracles should happen today because Jesus did them. Why did Jesus do miracles, and should we expect to see them today?

Answer

This is an important question I receive repeatedly from many places across the world.

As we look through the Bible, we discover that every miracle had a purpose, and that was to prove the authenticity of the message that was being preached. In other words, miracles were always about the message, never about the miracle.

When Moses did miracles, he was proclaiming that Israel’s God was greater than Pharaoh and his gods. When Pharaoh’s magicians did miracles, they were claiming that Israel’s God was not greater.

When Jesus and the apostles did miracles in the gospels, they were preaching that Messiah’s kingdom was ready to come. The Old Testament prophets described what that kingdom would look like (no blindness, no demons, enough food for everyone, etc.), so Jesus did miracles to prove that he was the Messiah — healed blindness, cast out demons, fed thousands of people, etc.

When the apostles did miracles in the book of Acts, it was to prove that their new message of the cross was true. If God can heal people’s physical sickness, he could certainly heal their spiritual sickness. But the miracles were always accompanied by a specific message — either the gospel or a message for that audience.

With very few exceptions (like Stephen in Acts 6), miracles were limited to the apostles (2 Corinthians 12:12; Hebrews 2:3-4). As the apostles died, so did the miracles. As the church grew and spread throughout the world, the need to prove the gospel message fell away. It has been proven for 2,000 years.

Finally, the fact that a person claims to do miracles or even does miracles does not prove that the person is from God or has God’s power. In the future, the Antichrist and False Prophet will do many miracles to support their message, but they will do them with Satan’s power (2 Thessalonians 2:9; Revelation 13:11-15). Miracles do not automatically mean that God is at work.

Let’s also remember that miracles were not normal; they were special. Those who claim that we should be seeing miracles all the time today have no biblical basis to support that claim.

Let’s stop focusing on miracles and put our efforts into preaching the pure, simple gospel of Jesus and helping people grow in their Christian lives. We don’t need miracles for any of that.