Miracles - Conclusion

"Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever." [Ps 119:160]

Conclusion
There is one more thing I'd like to clear up regarding miracles before I wrap things up, and that is providence.  One might read these last few posts and think that I don't believe God works in our lives today at all, or that He doesn't answer prayers, and that's simply not true.  The root of the word "providence" is "provide", and Scripture makes it very clear that God will provide for us (Luke 12:22-34).  The difference is that today, God's providence is played out non-miraculously.  That is, He won't simply make bread manifest itself on our table, but through His guidance and involvement in the world He will ensure that it gets there.  Many things people claim as miracles today are actually the providence of God at work and there is nothing miraculous about it (ex, getting lost and still finding your way to your destination).

The passage I chose for today's post is Psalm 119:160.  The New King James translation reads "The entirety of Your word is truth..."  When trying to understand how God works in our lives and what His nature is, we must always take ALL of Scripture into account.  We can't just cherry pick one verse and say "Well the Bible says such-and-such" and think we're done, because while the Bible may say that, it also says many other things.  When taken as a whole, we can see that the purpose of miracles was to show that God was the force working behind them, thus the one doing the miracle spoke with the authority of God.  We see that miracles had a time and place, but that their purpose was fulfilled once the Word of God was completed because THAT is now our proof and authority to which we can turn.  We can also turn to God's Word to test what people claim to be miracles today to see that they simply don't hold up.  But like I said, this does not mean that God does not continue to work in our lives, only that He does so in a non-miraculous way.

Hopefully this series has been beneficial to you.  I'm sorry I can't cover everything I wanted to cover in such a short period of time, but I encourage you to study this topic more on your own.  Apologetics Press has an excellent article on the subject here, and of course the Bible has plenty to say on the matter as well. =)