Sunday School - Teaching On Baptism (Miracles) - Part 7

Miracles as God’s Interventions, Not Mere “Awesome” Events

So we finished this short four-week curriculum in continuationism, or secessionism. We've been following Sam Walter's book. It's going to be continued with the question mark. There's been a base of it.

We've kind of gone outside of it. But we've followed his line of reasoning. We're going to finish this and talk about miracles. And the big question is going to be, are there miracle oracles? Now, notice the question.

I didn't say, are there miracles? Are there miracle oracles? Very important distinction. And I've got some introductory material. But we're going to go to 1 Corinthians 12, I think it's 20, 29, December 29, in a little bit.

And we're really going to talk about what the Apostle Paul was saying there. But miracles is an interesting thing to think about. I mean, we live in an age like none of any generation has really ever seen.

Miracles is a word that gets called to us like awesome. Oh, that's awesome. This is awesome. We talk about things that really kind of bind us. But usually, you find that word awesome. God is awesome. Oh, yeah, he's awesome.

Football game is awesome. God is awesome. Miracles aren't just these good things that happen. They're interventions by God into the normal course of his laws of nature, if you will. Now, let's talk a little bit about this age we live in.

Things are so amazing. Incredible things happen. And we lose the sense of what a difference it really is. Let's think about it. When I was a kid, when I first went for my first surgery, it was a heart transplant.

You didn't think about this per se. Now, this is commonplace. This is all about miracles we have today. So barely a generation ago, I had an open chest. I wouldn't see a minor from TV who was doing it.

But today, it's pretty common, right? You take out my heart. What do you say? You think I'm dead, right? No, you take out my heart. You've got a machine that keeps me alive. You put in somebody else's heart.

They no longer exist. But you put that in, hook it up, close me back up, take it off the machine, and set me down alive for the next number of years. Incredible. And people say, well, that's a miracle.

In a sense, it is. Acts 17 says that God chose the times that we live in and the time that we live in. We have available to us technology and medicine and other things that we don't have. I was talking about Dick Tracy.

Remember Dick Tracy? No, I don't remember Dick Tracy. A cartoon on TV. And when he finally got in trouble, and finally all the bad guys were all shooting at him, and he was all by himself. He pulled up and he had another phone.

He pushed the button. I'm calling all cars. Wow, is that ever going to happen? The age we live and beyond. One last example. He said, when we're talking about miracles, I want you to think about the times we live in.

The things that people today call miracles. On 60 Minutes last week, they had a segment about a guy whose arm got crushed in an industrial accident. I forget if she was working on it. Got it. And they put a hand on him.

I don't remember how much of it was. It was replaced. It was like a $6 million man, a violent woman, Terminator, this sort of thing. And they showed him using this hand to put the fluids in his wrists, and his brain was able to work this mechanical hand.

And he could take the brain off a bunch. He could peel and behave with it. He could shake hands without crushing anything. He could crush things because his body was mechanical. Incredible. So, what do we do with miracles today?

Work gets tossed around so easily, tossed around so much. What do we do with miracles? I said at the beginning, are there miracle workers? And they made it very clear. The first time we started this a few weeks ago, and we have made it clear every time, we're not saying that miracles don't occur.

I absolutely, unabashedly, unashamedly, would affirm that there are miracles today. The question is, are there miracle workers? When we were surrounded by the innovators, Buddha's ideas had become realities of certain things I'm talking about.

Miracles as Attestation to Prophets and Apostles

So, what do we do with miracles? First, we believe in miracles. As we form Baptist Christians, we take the Bible seriously, and so, absolutely, we believe in miracles. God does miracles today. He didn't stop doing them when the last period was put into the beginning of the Scripture.

Okay? And the second part of the answer is, we believe in them because the Bible says God does them, and He didn't stop doing them. The second part of the answer is, we believe in miracles on a rational and biblical basis.

Believing in miracles is rational and it's biblical. God didn't stop doing miracles when the last Amen was written in the Bible. But that final Amen represents that final word, that final revelation of God and His purposes for us in Christ Jesus, which we believe, that's what the Scripture is, and that's what the Scripture contains.

Then, I'd love to take a second. If we believe that that final Amen represents the last word, as we do, then miracles are attested to that authority of that last author in Scripture, with that last Amen, our God.

As I said there, the miracles that are attested to that man who wrote that last Amen, and put the period on it, the miracles that are attested to that authority, to that credibility, those are done. It's an important word that I use there, it's attested.

Miracles in the Bible are attested to something. They prove something. They prove someone is a better way to put it. God was working through a man to advance redemptive purposes. Or, God worked through a man to advance His redemptive purposes.

So the miracles did what? The miracles certified the man. And the miracles continue the trajectory of redemption in Christ as we go along with some of the Scripture. What are miracles? It certifies a man, and it advances God's redemptive purposes to showcase the life of Christ, or whatever we are in the Scripture.

You're somewhere in that trajectory of Christ Jesus. Sorry, Genesis 3 .15, which is the early evangelium, the first page of the Gospel, when it says, You shall bruise your heel, and you shall crush his head.

So it's got to be somewhere in there, and it has a purpose. It's not just things that happen, things that God does. And this brings us to Sam Walton's point. In the book that I showed you, at the end of this short series on Psalms 101, we begin to find miracles, and then we're going to distinguish between a miracle and a miracle of order.

So what's important? A miracle and a miracle of order. So a miracle is a redemptive, this is Walton on page 100, quote, A miracle is a redemptive, extraordinary, external, astonishing manifestation of the power of God.

As is important, a miracle is a sign done by a prophet or apostle who attested to the divine origin of this message. A miracle is a sign done by a prophet or the apostle that attested to the divine origin of what he said.

The speaker for God is God speaking to the prophet or the apostle. And you can imagine the person saying, How do I know that you're speaking for God? He said, By the power of God. God is just like God giving him the Word.

God gives him a miracle. Think of it this way. Who are you to tell me that God wants me to do this or that? Or God's going to act in this way? Whatever the question is. Who are you? Come on. Let me show you.

And so a miracle is performed. Any time you have a comment or a question, please.

Can a miracle be redemptive? Yes.

Why? Because a miracle attests to the speaker, the apostle or the prophet. He's speaking for God. So that's what?

You mean like vindicated? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. He said a miracle is. Repeat what he said. A miracle is a redemptive. Okay.

Let's make sure. Yeah. Yeah. A miracle is a redemptive, revelatory, extraordinary, astonishing manifestation of the power of God by itself.

Forgetting that it vindicates a prophet or a prophet. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. I don't see why it doesn't make sense. Making the iron axe head float. Redemptive. Well, it's certified by Elisha.

We're not talking about that. If you want to define a miracle, now you're saying that the miracle itself has to be redemptive. I'm picking on the definition of a miracle.

I don't know how to answer that. He didn't make the axe head float just to entertain or to.

No. If the miracle was the axe head float. Yeah. Does that define that? I would have a very limited. A miracle is a supernatural act of God against natural law. It's not redemptive. Making somebody walk, you know, does that, that would also make him redeemed, say, in a sense.

Maybe I'm using the word redemption.

I think that's a good example. So in Acts 3, Peter is going to the temple of John. They see the man with the lame legs, right? So they said, the name of Jesus Christ, stand and walk. It wasn't redemptive about that.

Peter's going to go in a moment and preach the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And now by that miracle, they know that that's somebody's listened to. He's been tested by the miracle. By telling the man to stand and walk, they knew he was an alms beggar.

And so it's redemptive. It advances the trajectory of the redemptive purpose of God. Christ, now he's just going to go and preach. So why would I listen to Peter? Who's this guy? He's a gallant lad. He's just a fisherman.

No, he just made that guy stand and walk. He just did a miracle. God just did a miracle to him,.

I should say. Well, I guess I don't like that because looking at today, God does miracles. I would argue. But those miracles, you're saying now, he would only do miracles. Like if we were praying for someone's health and it happened, that would be redemptive in the sense that we all glorify God.

We're going to get to that. I work with that a little bit in these notes. It's still redemptive. God doesn't just do it. It encourages the church. It glorifies Christ. We've got some examples here of things we've prayed for and confounded the medical professions with healing.

Is that going to advance God's purposes in Christ the way it would with a prophet? Or is it impossible? No, because we have to find work. So there's no more advancement in that sense. Redemptive in terms of encouraging us to bring sin into repentance.

I think by redemptive, you're taking meaning salvificly redemptive. It's been a long time since I've read Walter's book, but I don't think that's the point. The idea behind redemption is removing shame, taking someone out of the situation that they've been bound in.

So when a man's leg gets healed, yeah, he's removed from that situation. When an enemy gets destroyed, people are freed from that situation. When the axe head floats, it frees the man. So in all the redemptive directly, not self-ethically, but also not only by way of consequence that eventually this will be done.

We wouldn't call that a miracle. It's still supernatural. It still defies the Bible when we're talking about God's miracles.

Okay, yeah. It's like the demons you believe in. Shudder.

The man has supernatural strength. But we wouldn't say that's a miracle if he hasn't strength. That supernatural instantiation is not redemptive. That gives me the words to the answer to that.

Yeah, I take your point. And if we could carry that out one more step, the miracle of Jesus casting out, that's redemptive. It's a certifying gift. Most of us have seen it. Walter goes on, he says, the miracles of the Bible, God's works, powers, wonders, and signs are connected with the work of redemption.

And so maybe we're getting mixed up a little bit. We're still in the miracles of the Bible, not the miracles of today. Okay, so we're going to work around what the Bible has, and those would have specific purpose in that, redemptive purposes.

I doubt that trajectory I'm talking about. Miracles, to be understood and applied most correctly, cannot be divorced from the one through whom God did the miracle and the redemptive purposes it was meant to communicate.

So if God does a miracle today, let's kind of wait until we get through the miracles of the Bible, which are pushing towards Christ. To understand them correctly, they can't be divorced from the one through whom God does the miracle and the purposes it was meant to communicate.

And that takes us to Walter's point that while God remains a God of miracles, it's time for miracle workers has come to an end. That's the distinction we're trying to make. So we get the third wave, charismatic word of faith and all that, and miracle workers.

In the Bible, the miracles we have in Scripture. Distinguish that from the miracles that God does today in the human heart, in the church, or wherever. Somebody tell me where I was going with this. We're distinguishing between the miracle worker and her miracle.

Okay? Why so? Why do we distinguish between a miracle and a miracle worker? One is because the cannon is closed. And in the Scripture, the miracle starts with the one who did the miracle. And the Scripture, if you will, is the English that comes from that particular example.

Like the tax head floating, like the red sea party. The big point there, though, is that the cannon is closed. So we don't need that certification anymore. There's not an apostle who is going to go and preach the gospel of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

And people are going to say, okay, listen to him, because God just did such and such. It was really God. Okay? Jude 3, beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write a petition to you to contend for the faith that was once fully delivered to the saints.

And it's closed. No more attestation is needed. Revelation 22, 18 and 19, I warn everyone who hears the words of this prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the place described in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words of the book, he has this prophecy, God will take away from his share in the tree of life and in the holy city which are described in this book.

That's Revelation. And it's commonly referred to in the scripture. Now, John's gospel, to give you a recognition of that,.

The Gospel of John as the Book of Signs

John's gospel is often called the book of signs. Have you ever heard it called that before? The book of signs? It goes through seven signs that Jesus did. He was very careful in telling them, such as when he turned water and wine, this was the first sign that Jesus did.

And when Jesus did the merchants out of the temple, John says it's now the second sign that he did. From water and wine to the resurrection, each sign proves something about God's purposes in Jesus. So why did he turn water and wine?

Why that miracle? That's the first sign. John says it explicitly. It's the first sign that Jesus did. Just to look at that one specific case, that miracle. How does that convince you that the purpose is as I was trying to argue a moment ago?

Listen to Jesus because he just did this. What did it prove? What does that do for that trajectory? That had the water, the return of wine. John says specifically that they were purification lights. That they were part of the traditions slash purification laws of the Old Testament Jews.

And when Jesus turns that water to wine, that miracle, John calls it that. It's the first sign. Sign, wonder, power. Our English group can talk about this a little bit more. Those are really, it is hard one to debate to the words that are used in the scripture.

But it's the first sign that the temple rites are no longer necessary.

Or even needed in any way.

Because Jesus is our purification. So those lights are used for that, right? They're used for wine. It attests to something. It shows something. At the end of John's Gospel it says, Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of disciples which are not written in this book.

These are written so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing he may have life in his name. So what is the purpose of the signs? To show that Jesus is Christ.

To attest to something. Each time he did something, he attested to something about him. It advanced the trajectory towards his coming death and his resurrection. And there are also indemnificences to Dale's point.

In believing you have life in his name. Believing these signs, these miracles that Jesus did. So what we need to prove then is that because the kingdom is closed, when the final attesting sign, wonder, power, miracle has occurred, we need no more attestation regarding his coming.

Nobody else can come along that we need to believe, to speak with God, and give him the scripture and tell him something about Jesus Christ. And therefore he's going to do a miracle. And we're going to say, okay we're going to listen to this guy because obviously God is working through him.

That's not going to happen anymore. Because the scripture is closed. Christ again, not just the scripture is closed, that's very important, but also everything that it tells us about Christ. How God's purposes in Christ has been completed.

Any questions there? Lots of comments. Here Walter makes the point that our English word for miracles is not exactly equivalent to any of the words used in the Bible to attest to our nature. Signs, wonders, gifts, works, and so on.

So miracles, a little bit, a little bit of a compromise in a lot of ways. The exegetical argument about this. Will we talk about this? Miracle versus miracle. Remember the cascade argument that we had in the beginning.

No apostles, no prophets, no tongue speakers, no miracles. Christ is risen, and the scripture is attested to that. So 1 Corinthians 12, 28, 29. And God has given, God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of talents.

All apostles, all prophets, all teachers do all work in miracles. 1 Corinthians 12, 20, 29. Now the continuationist, one who believes these miracles continue. Remember we can't enforce a miracle from the miracle order.

The continuationist points to this verse as a really strong point in their favor. This would say that they continue. God has appointed miracles, that's verse 28. So if we're in the church, God has appointed miracles, and we're going to do them, right?

That's what the continuationist would say. And then in verse 29, Paul asks whether every member of the body works miracles. What does that imply? He says, do all of them work miracles? What does that imply?

Some do. That's the way they look at this. We have to remember this whole chapter in 1 Corinthians 12 leading up to this, it's leading up to this, it's about how God has given the church with the diversity of spiritual gifts and everything it needs to accomplish is His purposes for us in Christ.

Which would be simply,.

First to grow in Christ. So the diversity of gifts, you're the hand, you're the eye, you're the mouth, you're the tongue, all those things, is what's leading up to this verse.

And the big point is, God has a purpose. He's given us what we need. Verse 18, but as it is, God has a purpose. In 12 .18, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as He chose. Verse 24, God has so composed a body, so it's His will, He directly and actively puts each of us here with all the gifts of the world.

Back in the day of the Corinthians, where it says, the world worked miracles. And He appointed miracles in the church. So verse 28 simply says miracles. 1 Corinthians 12 .28, and God was appointed in the church first a prophet, second a prophet, third a teacher, and then to miracles.

Okay? It just says miracles, and it has no immediately apparent reference, it's just miracles. God was appointed to miracles. Some say that therefore, miracles are a gift given to the church to be done by specially gifted members.

Okay? Because it's in there, and He appointed miracles, and therefore, the implication, some say, would be that therefore, God is appointed them to work miracles. So verse 29, where He said, we'll all work miracles, that takes some explanation here.

Remember, the idea is miracles versus the miracles of workers. In Greek, it is simply, you won't all miracles. You won't all miracles. Most English versions do a little interpretation by adding work or workers.

It gives the idea, you won't all work miracles. King James, are all workers of miracles. It's a rhetorical question. That's a very necessary way of translating the original and just adding to it. We have to add those words.

You won't all miracles. You won't all workers. It's the agent of implied miracles. Because if we didn't have that, if we didn't have workers or work miracles, all we'd have is our own miracles. It's each one of you a miracle.

And that's nonsensical. We have to add that. And adding the word workers, as we do, keeps us assisted with the other gifts, which are performed by men in the church. God didn't just pour out gifts under miracles.

He screwed with them. Rather, he invested miracles in them. So a miracle, by definition, has to be something rare. A miracle is often high as God, intervening in the natural law in order to make particular money or accomplish particular purposes.

So let's just stop here and talk about this a little bit. Can you think of a miracle, and we can try together to find out who did the miracle, why God did the miracle, and what's the redemptive purpose behind it?

Think of a miracle in the Bible. Just call it out. This isn't to test you. We're going to do this together.

I'm going to say a miracle. Well, I was going to say when Peter walked in the synagogue and healed a crippled man outside and then kind of was sleeping as he was testifying that a miracle happened in his life and everybody saw it.

Okay, Acts chapter 3. In the name of Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, that's how he said it, stand and walk. And again, how does that depend on redemptive purposes? Because when he preached the gospel in a few moments, which he was going to do, they said, oh, this is the guy who told him he wanted to stand and walk.

So there is a purpose behind it. It attested to something. Another miracle.

Didn't the body of the prophet end up in the grave? Didn't it cause someone to... Can you think of an easy one?

No. Okay. 2 Kings 13. Okay. So Elisha has just died. And there's some Israelites who are out about the place. I forget what they were doing. It was a many types of king. And... I don't know what to say.

I don't know what to say in 2 Kings 13. Ah, there. Was it? No. Elisha died. So when Elisha died, they buried him. Now man took more light. Jesus went and bathed the lamb in the spring of the year. And as the lamb was being buried, behold a roaring lamb was seen.

And a man was thrown into the grave for light by Elisha. And as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet. Wow. Thanks, Joe. Is that a miracle? What does it prove? Why would God do that miracle?

Throw a dead man in there, he touches Elijah's bones, back to life. Elijah was truly a prophet. Elijah was truly a prophet. A little bit more than that. The guy came to life. This guy's dead. Throw him in a grave.

Boom, he comes alive. What else? Elijah was a prophet. God raises the dead. God raises the dead. Points to the resurrection. I would say. So, there's a redemptive purpose behind that. I would go back in Elijah's ministry, and very early, after Elijah was taken away, and Elijah and the school of prophets, the team of prophets came to him, and they said,.

Oh, Father, there's a death in the pot.

Wouldn't you throw a sprig or something in the pot? Like, throw some flower in the pot. There's those guys. So, it attests to Elijah as Elijah's true successor, speaking the word of God, and a God of life.

And I'd argue that Elijah, more clearly pointing to the resurrection than Elijah, he succeeded. I don't know how to argue about that. There's a lot of that happening. So, we can see that. One more miracle.

Give me one of the easy ones. Come on. How about the sun standing still? Is that a miracle? Now, I don't know if the earth stops spinning around the sun, but if the sun stops moving, it doesn't matter.

Okay? The sun stood still. Who did he work that miracle through? Who called for it, if you know what I mean? Joshua. Joshua called it. Joshua. Right. What's the redemptive purpose behind it? Because the sun stood still with him.

They won the battle. They won the battle. Wiped out the Amalekites.

Okay? Redemptive purpose. Okay? God is going to provide a place for these people. It's going to be a land. It is what he calls a land of milk and honey. They're going to be able to live in peace on the land and so forth.

There's a redemptive purpose behind that. And as we, as religious believers, look at that, how would we apply it? How would you teach that to your children? How would you preach it? That God provides.

God keeps his word. The temple is going to be a holy place. The church, the temple of the Lord God, is a holy people.

So when the prophet ran away, was staying with someone and had no food. Say it again. When the prophet ran away and stayed with the woman who had no food, was waiting for her son to die. Yeah. And he provided.

They never ran out of food. Right. It benefited her. I guess, how could it…. She thinks he's a prophet now, but no one else does. Or is it because it's recorded? It's because it's recorded.

You talk about…. Is that Elijah? There's actually both of them. I think it's in the Bible. Elijah provided the oil and Elisha the food. I think…. Well, that's similar. Okay. Yeah. Is that…. And I think also the incident would be known.

Like, where did you get all the soil? Well, the prophet said these guys would not run out. There's still that certification. And if you go to Elijah and Elisha, you've got to get off that. You're going to get bogged down.

Each one of them was solely the Word of God in Israel at that time. So when they went outside the borders, especially Elisha, when he was at the book of the children, they went to the Sire of Phoenician.

Not the Sire of Phoenician. Where was she? When we went to that Gentile woman, it was judgment on Israel. That the Word of God was taken away from the people of Israel. There's a lot more there that you can get if you Google in the Bible about Elijah.

About…. Was the sun setting still? The red sea parted? The water from the rock? The miracles are really kind of bunched up. They're very condensed. It's not a miracle every single day, every week, every year.

They're very bunched up and condensed. If you take the whole Exodus with them, then we can still have that same trajectory happening. There's an interesting point that Walter makes that really caught my eye.

I never really thought about this. But in Genesis 1, in the beginning…. What beginning? The beginning. It's not a timestamp. God created the heavens and the earth. Now, that seems like a pretty big deal, right?

But don't worry about it. It's not called a miracle. It's just this. I was thinking about that a lot. There are no natural laws yet to overrule. There's no redemptive purposes yet because sin had happened.

It's really interesting that that was so matter-of-fact that God did that. In the beginning, God did this. Now, to continuationism now. We talked about it in 1 Corinthians 12, about the miracles, the verses, the miracles of the workers.

Walter cites a man named Sam Storms, who's the defender of continuationism. And what Sam Storms does is he cites a true incident that happened to Charles Spurgeon. Okay? Yeah, we have time to read this.

Okay, he cites the example of C. H. Spurgeon, a great reformed Baptist preacher of the mid -19th century. A number of times in preaching, Spurgeon appeared to his hearers with supernatural insight. Maybe read his diagonal Spurgeon biography.

It's very encouraging for Baptist preachers like I think we have here. Because it's like, why am I so mundane compared to Spurgeon? Well, if you read his biographies, you'll see that Spurgeon was really a genius.

He was just a super, super intelligent guy in almost everything he touched. So supernatural insight. He was strikingly and particularly described the sense and circumstance of individuals unknown to him who were sitting in the congregations.

This sometimes led to the perversion of those individuals. These may be instances in which Spurgeon was miraculously guided in his choice of illustrations and words. It does not trouble this sensationist to admit that we have a miracle.

What, however, Storms does not show and cannot show is that Spurgeon will ever claim on the basis of these events to be a prophet or a miracle worker. I wonder if there were many times when Spurgeon used the same exact kind of language and there was no one matching his description was present.

Perhaps there were many such times. Storms certainly cannot prove that there were not. The point is that God may have performed miracles in connection with Spurgeon's ministry. But this fact did not make Spurgeon a miracle worker.

So Storms looks and says, okay, he speaks with supernatural insight right to a person who says, oh my goodness, that's exactly what's happening to me today. Storms says, Spurgeon was therefore a miracle worker.

Do you get the point of where he's going with that? What Waldron is saying is that Spurgeon used that kind of language over and over again. But that God used a miracle in connection with what Spurgeon did or was saying.

That did not make Spurgeon a miracle worker. I was thinking about this one too. A real thing that happened here. My wife was present at the time. I was counseling with a woman.

She's not here. Has never been a member. Don't have to worry about who it was. We knew her quite well.

And she was on the verge of adultery. We were connecting with someone. Texting. She was unhappy with her husband. All these other things. And I work at it and I can't get her to see how wrong it is. I'm having a real hard time as a Christian woman getting her to see what's wrong.

And at one point, having heard all these different things that she said. I'm trying to avoid some of the details here. I suddenly murdered out. Not murdered out. I said to her, did this or that happen to you in your home?

I was very specific. And she just stopped. How did you know that? Well, God didn't give me a piece of knowledge. I had pieces of information. Data points that she was giving to me. And I was having a hard time getting her to see those data points and go forward and repent.

And see that the Bible says you're going the wrong way. So I would argue. That God did a miracle. By giving me the confidence to put those pieces together. It's like, yeah, okay, you got it. You're right.

You are correct. Now just say it. And I did. My wife almost fainted. She couldn't believe it. How do I know it was a miracle? How do I know it was from God? Not me, the miracle worker. But God working the miracle through me in that sense.

Because she repented. It brought glory to Christ. She saw her sin and she stopped. The idea was there. No, don't text me, say goodbye. Done. And she finally got it. So this thing that I had learned about, if you will, was it from God?

Well, not he gave me a piece of special piece of knowledge. He gave me a confidence that I was correct. And the confidence I have to get back on it. There's still a son. A couple. She repented. And it didn't go far enough.

You see what I'm saying? Christ gets the glory, not me. And her husband grew together as a couple more. And had a very Christ-only result. I think it's very similar to what we have in this version. So did I work a miracle?

No. Did God? Well, he certainly intervened and caused me to say something. He gave me confidence to say something. Otherwise, I would not have. Any questions about that? And I would argue that's very much like what you saw.

And very different from Spurgeon.

When you're telling this story in response to Sam Stone's argument, Spurgeon worked a miracle. But given our earlier definition of the redemptive, defying law of nature, what we say, yes, this is God in a province with orchestrated behavior that brought about redemptive effects.

But it's still kind of a different nature than the prophets and apostles. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm sorry, I didn't make a good transition from what the prophets and apostles did to what it is today. Because the point here is prophets and apostles died directly through them. So the prophet or apostle wasn't a miracle worker.

It was Elisha who made the accident. It was Joshua who called for the world to clear, to stop turning, et cetera. So those were miracle workers. Big difference. I'm not not a miracle worker. None of you are.

But God can work miracles. 101 Waldron says, strictly speaking, biblical miracles are called signs, as well as wonders, powers, and works, and thus are intended to attest to the new revelation given to the miracle worker.

Okay, so that's an important distinction. In the Bible, miracle workers, we've said this over and over, attested to something, to a new revelation through the miracle worker that advanced God's causes for us in Christ.

So is there miracles today? Can we say yes, absolutely, there are. Do miracles advance God's purposes? Can we still say yes, not advance purposes in telling us about Christ and his life and his death for us and his resurrection?