Anyone vaguely familiar with the Bible will know about the miraculous phenomena associated with the long line of Jewish prophets and with Jesus and his disciples. To give some examples: Moses struck Egypt with ten plagues and split the red sea. Elijah called down fire from heaven and raised the dead. His disciple Elisha raised the dead, cleansed a leper, split the river Jordan and multiplied food. Joseph, Samuel and Daniel predicted the future with pinpoint accuracy. And of course, Jesus displayed unprecedented mastery over death, disease, demons and the elements. He also died and rose from the dead.
Fascinatingly, Jesus promised that “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father” (John 14:12). In the book of Acts, we certainly see his disciples performing miracles as a matter of routine.
In modern times, people have of course grown more skeptical about the miracles of the Bible. David Hume the empiricist philosopher famously condemned miracles as impossible acts that ‘violated the laws of nature’. But blanket denial is hard to justify when 2000 years of Christian history have produced records of countless individuals who were able to do what the early disciples of Jesus were able to do. In the Catholic Church for instance, canonization of saints is dependent on whether the saint can produce authentic miracles after death. Many of these saints were also routine miracle workers during their lifetime.
The best-known example is St Padre Pio, who died in 1968 and was canonized in 2002. During his fifty-year long ministry, he worked thousands of miracles that are exceptionally well documented. These include reading the inner thoughts and sins of others, bilocation (being in various places simultaneously), prophecy and healing. And even the most scrupulous skeptic cannot deny one of the miraculous phenomena associated with him: the stigmata. He, like St Francis of Assisi 800 years ago, was marked with the five wounds of the crucified Christ for 50 years. Every Friday, these wounds would bleed copiously and yet he managed to live without ill effects to a ripe old age of 81.
In the Pentecostal and charismatic Churches, miracles of healing, prophecy, tongues and even the raising of the dead are widely reported. A prominent figure in these denominations is Smith Wigglesworth, who had a long list of miracles attributed to him over his 30 years ministry (1907-1936).
So how are we to view all this? I think our attitude towards miracles will largely depend on the circumstances and situation of our lives (or God’s plan for the person—depending on how you look at it). People from charismatic backgrounds will no doubt be much more open to miracles than many Protestant mainstream Christians. After all the gift of tongues is asserted to be practically universal in these churches (or at least among those who have received the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’). Also many in those churches will claim to have witnessed even more dramatic miracles (fire falling from heaven, healing, prophecy etc.). Thus charismatic Christians will typically see the miracles in the Bible and the miracles of later Christians as being perfectly possible.
Catholic Christians are also very much open to the possibility of miracles--though for different reasons. No one (at least I have never witnessed it before) speaks in tongues during a Catholic mass. But a central tenet of faith in the Catholic Church concerns the transformation of the communion bread and wine into the actual Body and Blood of Christ during every mass. This is obviously a miraculous act and can only happen with the direct intervention of the Spirit of God.
In addition, for 2000 years, the Catholic Church has witnessed and recorded saints of all sorts who have worked numerous miracles during their lives and afterwards. Padre Pio is only the most recent (though he is one of the mightiest and certainly the best documented). Also bodies of many saints (like St Catherine of Laboure) are ‘incorrupt’; meaning they do not decay even centuries after their death—a powerful testimony to the Spirit of the resurrection that had touched their lives.
For myself, I have no doubt about the possibility of miracles either in the Bible or for Christians in general. The main reason for this is that by God’s grace, I have witnessed my share of miracles. As testimony, I will share two incidents here, though I emphasize that they are only the tip of the iceberg. As always, the identities of the people concerned are kept anonymous:
On September 10, 2001, I was talking with this friend who had the gift of vision and prophecy. While talking, she saw the angels Michael and Gabriel. They told us that there’s a new breed of ‘flying devils’ (exact words). I was of course quite puzzled and even amused—after all devils are always depicted in art as having bat-like wings; so why are flying devils anything spectacular?
On my questioning, the angels repeated what they have just said (or something like that, I cannot remember exactly) and added that they were in battle against the flying devils. In this spiritual warfare, they have managed to pull down a number--but they said that some have gotten through and escaped.
Both my friend and I were of course thoroughly perplexed by this vision.
The next day, on September 11, 2001, I happened to meet the person again at around 1740 (Singapore time—I remembered the clock exactly) for dinner. While eating, the Virgin Mary appeared to her. There happened to be a wilting rose somewhere near the dinner table and in the vision, Mary was holding a burnt and dead rose in her hands. She told us that the rose had been burnt-- ‘burnt to the very roots’. I was again confused: I mean the rose on the table was wilting but surely it was not turned into ashes! But Mary looked extremely sad and after a while she disappeared (I think we also talked about some other thing—but I cannot remember now).
Of course just three hours later at around 2100 (Singapore time), terrorists crashed two jet airliners into the World Trade Center towers and another into the Pentagon (incidentally I visited these places just 3 months ago). As I saw the towers crashing down to their foundations, the rose that is ‘burnt to its roots’ and the earlier vision on ‘flying devils’ came to my mind. Indeed the time when I was talking to my prophetic friend was probably when the hijackers had just boarded their doomed vessels.
And initially Osama Bin Laden planned 8 attacks. And yet mercifully only 3 planes hit their targets. The others never took off, and one of them, United 93, was literally brought down to the ground by the heroic passengers—recalling what the 2 angels had said about their victory over some of the ‘flying devils’.
In addition to predicting the catastrophe in such striking fashion, both visions hint at the deeper spiritual realities underlying the events of the world. For instance, it appears that events like September 11 are shaped not just by external physical realities, but also by the conflict of spiritual forces behind the background. The war between Gabriel and Michael and the flying devils seem to precede and shape the outcome of the day’s catastrophe. As such, human actions (like prayer and sin) that aid or hinder the forces of God play definite roles in shaping the destiny of the world.
The other rather chilling truth concerns the burnt rose. My intuition is that the rose did not refer only to the doomed WTC towers. The rose is an archetypal symbol of love and God’s grace. Specifically, I think it links back to the 1917 Fatima prophecies (Catholics believe that in 1917, Mary appeared to three Spanish children and gave a series of prophecies and performed certain spectacular miracles). One of the prophecies stated that there will be a ‘period of peace granted to the world’ after Russian communism has collapsed. I think the burnt rose could well symbolize the fact that the period of peace has ended—murdered by the sins of men.
Indeed, since that day, anyone following the evening news can see how the world has been plunged into greater and greater bloodshed. The sacrifices of Moloch have set the world aflame once more.
The second miracle concerned a person I know who went with his family to the island resort of Langkawi a week before the Christmas of 2004. In fact they were originally due to go on Christmas day (and stay there through Boxing day), but the person wanted to go for Christmas service and managed to persuade everyone to go earlier.
During the trip (or sometime after it—I cannot remember exactly) he had a dream where he was standing on the shore of a beach and there was a huge black cloud floating offshore. Ferocious blasts of lightning were hitting the sea and the storm was rapidly approaching. The person was somehow rooted to the ground and watched as the furious storm swept in, blasting the earth with lightning. Somehow, miraculously, the person was left untouched and the storm moved on. Then he woke up.
On Christmas Eve, the person had another dream. Two angels (more precisely one angel in two forms) appeared to him. These angels were science angels. They showed him on a computer screen (or OHP screen or whatever) a large lump of earth hitting the sea floor. Huge waves were rushing in all directions from the impact zone. The angel[s] said only one thing, ‘This disaster could only be prevented by science.’
Of course, a day after Christmas, there was a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean and killer tsunamis devastated the nations of South East Asia—including the island resort of Langkawi where the person and his family had been only a few days ago. Indeed, if they had followed their original plans, they would probably have witnessed (or be swept away) by the tsunami. As in the first dream, he had narrowly escaped from a massive disaster.
Also sometime later, newspaper articles report that a tsunami warning system like that used in the Pacific could have greatly reduced the monstrous death toll of 200,000 people. As the science angels have said, science could have prevented (or more accurately, ameliorated) the disaster.
It appears that the guardian angels of science are quite concerned that their gifts are used well by their protégés (presumably the scientists of the world) and the people of the world.
So are there such things as miracles? My personal answer is a resounding yes.
