Many folks who consider themselves Christians profess to see little value in studying the Old Testament. “It’s just a collection of bloodthirsty, primitive legends,” a “progressive” friend once explained to me.
The same chap dismissed the miracles described in the scriptures for much the same reason. “I don’t need miracles to persuade me to believe in God,” he said.
The latter assertion is quite true, of course. Miracles aren’t essential to convince thinking people of the existence of God. They do, however, provide a very useful reminder of the human race’s place in the great scheme of things.
Not least, they demonstrate the vastness of God’s power in comparison with our own.
Similarly, there is no substitute for the Old Testament when it comes to explaining our relationship with God. It is, for example, impossible to understand the need for Jesus’ great redeeming act without the Old Testament.
Genesis through Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Old Testament, are known by the Jewish people as the Torah or the Books of the Law, and by Christian scholars as the Pentateuch.
Genesis, the first book, describes the beginning of man and the universe (the Creation), the beginning of sin (Original Sin), the beginning of the process of restoration of God’s creation, and the beginning of the Hebrew nation the means by which this restoration was to come.
Exodus, the second book, describes the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt. It shows the development of Israel into a real nation, as God began the first stages of fulfillment of His promise to Abraham contained in Genesis 12:2-3.
Beginning in Genesis—and continuing through Exodus and the other books of the Old Testament—we can see God actively intervening in human affairs to perform his work of redeeming mankind from the consequences of the fall from grace described in the third chapter of Genesis.
Mankind’s need of salvation and the nature of the means by which it was brought about are evident in the differences between miracles that are recorded in the Old Testament and those performed by Jesus.
Take, for example, the following five Old Testament miracles: the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21-31); stopping up the waters of the River Jordan (Joshua 3:14-17); the fall of Jericho (Joshua 6:6-25); Gideon’s defeat of the Midianites (Judges 7); and the destruction of the Assyrians (II Kings 19:35).
They all bear witness not simply to God’s direct intervention in human affairs, but of the power of God as the ultimate source of such events.
Four of the miracles can be explained by what we somewhat casually refer to as the laws of nature. In short, they are not contrary to the laws of nature, rather they co-opt nature for supernatural purposes.
Meteorologists, for example, have discovered that the Red Sea divides in the manner recorded in Exodus when the wind blows in the way described in the book.
Similarly, the stopping up of the River Jordan and the collapse of the walls of Jericho came about thanks to the fortuitous occurrence of earthquakes. The Assyrian army camped before Jerusalem was wiped out by another natural event—a sudden deadly epidemic.
The miraculous element of these four events lies in the timing. At God’s direction these natural events took place at precisely the right moment.
In the case of Gideon’s defeat of the Midianites, the miracle lay in God’s ability to instill such courage and discipline in the hearts of a small number of determined men, enabling them to overcome a vast, but disorganized host.
It is fashionable these days to treat all miracles with skepticism. But if God created us and the universe, it seems unreasonable to suppose he would be unable to part the waters of the Red Sea, organize a couple of earthquakes at Jericho, and arrange for an epidemic to strike an army camped in insanitary field conditions anytime he felt like it.
Jesus’ miracles, by contrast, are of a wholly different order. A vast majority of his miracles—of feeding and of healing, for example—are acts of creation. They are, in microcosm of course, no different from the creation of the universe.
But what else should we expect of the person described by St John as the Logos, the Word made Flesh? According to John, Jesus created the Universe and all that therein merely by uttering a word. And if he can create on such a scale, surely recreating malformed limbs, ears, and eyes would be a piece of cake.
Folks who question the miracles recorded in the Bible seem to be operating on the entirely unwarranted assumption that God is confined by the laws he devised for us, his creatures. This is not merely illogical it is highly presumptuous.
Rather than inviting skepticism, God’s miracles should evoke in us feelings of awe, humility and gratitude—gratitude that, just as God took the trouble to lead the Israelites out of bondage to the Promised Land, he is no less actively concerned about us, his latter day Israelites. GPH✠
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