UNSAVORY OBSESSION WITH THE MIRACULOUS

By Akin Ojumu

That the whole world, secular and spiritual, is fascinated by the supernatural is no news. The enigma and mystery that shrouds the paranormal tend to engender an aura of awe and wonder in the minds of people. In the soul of man is an unquenchable fire and alluring desire for supernatural abilities. There is an unexplained craving in nearly every one of us to break free from the chain of human limitations and gain the ability to peer into the unknown realm of otherworldly possibilities.

Given this intense and all-consuming obsession with the mysterious, it may surprise you to learn that the ability to see beyond what the natural eyes can see is an ability that God has deliberately withheld from man. The reason God chose to confine man within the boundaries of the time-space-energy-matter continuum and limit him to his five senses is because the heart of man is evil and every intention of man is wicked. 

Genesis 6:5

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Jeremiah 17:9

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Even God Himself, the Omnipotent and Omniscient One, respects the boundary between the natural and supernatural. You’d be surprised to know that the Almighty God seldomly interferes with the laws of nature that He established. 

But judging by the ear-deafening cacophony of claims of miracles and the unrestrained clamor for signs and wonders, you won’t know that miraculous occurrences are the exception rather than the norm.

That’s right. 

Contrary to what you might have been taught to believe, supernatural occurrences are not normative. Only on rare occasions does God interfere with or disrupt the natural order of the universe. At those moments in the course of human history when God decides to exercise His sovereign authority over nature, He does it for a specific reason in order to accomplish an express purpose. 

When God does choose to interfere with time-space-energy-matter continuum, He does it by divine fiat and prerogative by performing a supernatural phenomenon. This supernatural feat is what we call a miracle. Still, such instances are very rare and miracles are few & far between. But before we proceed any further, let’s define what constitutes a “miracle” and distinguish it from divine providence which is the more common way in which God operates in our world.

The biblical definition of a miracle would be something like this: “an event that involves the direct and powerful action of God, transcending the ordinary laws of nature and defying common expectations of behavior.” Miracles are extraordinary occurrences that can only be attributed to the supernatural work of God and demonstrate His involvement in human history. God employs miracles in the Bible to reveal Himself, His character, and His purposes to humans through phenomena that are not otherwise explainable (Exodus 3:1–6) (Source: Got Questions).

In the Bible, a miracle is a direct, supernatural intervention where God suspends natural laws (like parting the Red Sea), while divine providence is God’s subtle guidance and governance through natural processes and human choices to achieve His purposes (like Philip meeting the Ethiopian eunuch). Miracles are overt, defying nature, whereas providence works within nature, often unseen, blending all elements of life to fulfill God’s will, making it a “greater” but less obvious work of God (Source: Google AI).

Providence, in my mind, is a greater miracle than a miracle because it is God accomplishing His own ends and His own purposes, not by suspending natural law, but by taking all the elements of natural law and blending them together in a masterful way so that He achieves His purpose but never interrupts the natural course of things. This is providence. It is not God suspending circumstances and acting, but taking all the contingencies, all the actors, all their activities, all their thoughts and words, and somehow pulling all of that together to create exactly what He wills to do. That is a far more massive miracle than just suspending natural law and acting (Source: Pastor John MacArthur).

As much as we would have loved it to be otherwise, the outpouring of miraculous events of the apostolic era of First Century Christianity was unique and not something that continued in perpetuity. The failure to understand the uniqueness of the era of Christ and the Apostles and the desire to normalize that era in Christianity is the origin of false religious systems such as the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Word of Faith/New Apostolic Reformation movements. 

Prevalent in the Church today is the fierce aversion to the objective reality that the signs and wonders and miracles of the apostolic era are over. Because there are people today who are driven to replicate the phenomenal occurrences of the apostolic era, they end up perpetrating all kinds of fantasy, falsehood, concoction, confusion, fakery, chicanery, and charlatanism of the worst kind. And the core problem is a failure to grasp what Scripture says about the uniqueness of the apostolic era and the Apostles themselves.

In the recorded Biblical history of God’s dealing with humanity, we can actually determine the number of times and epochs when there were widespread occurrences of miraculous phenomena. The instances in redemptive history where the Bible records a proliferation of miracles are limited to only three time periods, namely:

1) Mosaic Era of Moses and Joshua

2) Prophetic Era of Elijah and Elisha

3) New Testament Apostolic Era of Christ and His Apostles.

Appearance of miracles in the Bible was clustered around these three eras. After the era of Moses and Joshua, there were no major or consistent miraculous events recorded in the Bible until the time of Elijah. After Elisha, you don’t hear that miracles occurred consistently again in the Old Testament. It wasn’t until the appearance of the Lord Jesus in Matthew that the world, once again, became a blaze of miracles. By AD 100, however, following the death of the last of Jesus’s Apostles, the occurrences of miracles had once again waned.

When you add them all up, each of these periods of spectacular phenomena lasted less than one hundred years. Now, we know that God is sovereign, and He is capable of interjecting Himself into the human stream supernaturally anytime He wants. We are not trying to limit Him. What we are simply saying is that God has chosen to limit Himself, to a great degree, to those three periods of time. (Source: Pastor John MacArthur).

During the three time periods, miracles occurred for four main reasons. God caused the miracles to happen in order to: 

(1) Introduce a new era of revelation, 

(2) Call attention to the revelation, 

(3) Authenticate the revelation, and, 

(4) Validate the messenger of the new revelation.

The purpose of the miracle in the Bible is not to prove the existence of God, but it is to prove the legitimacy and the validity of an agent of revelation – of someone whom God has commissioned to speak His word. The purpose of the miracle is to verify the messenger of the Word of God (Source: Ligonier Ministries).

In the New Testament era of miracles, the Lord Jesus performed signs and wonders to proclaim the advent of the Kingdom of God, to call people’s attention to the Gospel of the Kingdom, to validate the Gospel of the Kingdom, and to demonstrate that He is the King. To understand Jesus’s miracles, you must view them through this lens.

Obsession with the supernatural and all-consuming passion for the miraculous always lead people down the rabbit hole of deception. Charlatans who pretend to operate in the miraculous prey on the human propensity for the spectacular because they crave and love the attention that such claims bring them.

Like bees to honey, miraculous phoneys tend to attract massive following. Their horde of admirers is a grift machine that provides platforms and creates opportunities for them to spread their poison to far flung places. With the wide reach and mega platforms come open channels of exploitation through which torrential floods of income gush directly into their various bank accounts which they then use to fund their ostentatious lifestyles. Charlatans live on the proceeds of their deception.

Romans 16:18

“For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.”

2 Peter 2:3

“In their greed, these false teachers will exploit you with deceptive words. The longstanding verdict against them remains in force, and their destruction does not sleep.”

I look at my life and see providence every day. Every day of my life is a day full of providence, and it’s a different providence every day. It’s something that makes me think: “Wow, how did that happen? Whatever made those circumstances come together to bring it to this point?” I think the most thrilling thing about the Christian life is providence – seeing it unfold day in and day out. If you’re in tune with the Lord and in tune with His Word, you’re really seeing it unfold and seeing God at work in ways that have no human explanation (Source: Pastor John MacArthur).

Man’s unholy quest for miraculous power is rooted in deep-seated rebellion against God. Underlying the obsession with supernatural ability is a rabid unbelief. Our relentless pursuit of miracles, signs, and wonders is the result of an earnest desire to supplant God and glory. It is the evil desire of mortal men to be gods that fuels their crusade for power.

Those who love God, surrender their lives to His will. The evidence of faith in God is not in believing, commanding, or decreeing a miracle to happen. Rather, true faith is putting all our hope and confidence in God’s providence knowing that He is able to orchestrate every event in life – even pain, suffering, failures, disappointments, setbacks, temptations, and sins – to accomplish both our temporal and eternal benefit.