Bruce Collins, Evangelist

The personal website of Bruce Collins

Wouldn’t a Modern Day Miracle be Nice?

Luke 16:31 But he said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead."

 

The Miracles of the Lord

The Lord did unusual miracles when He was here on earth and those miracles made no difference to those who would not believe.  We don’t have miracles today unless one considers every baby conceived to be a miracle.  Oh, and we could consider every breath we take and every beat of our hearts and the ability to think and the renewal of life every spring to be miracles.  But because those things happen routinely, we tend to dismiss the fact that they are miracles because they are not “unusual”  miracles. 

 

The Book that is itself a Miracle

One of the greatest miracles that we have today is a book called the Bible.  Not only was it divinely inspired, it was providentially preserved.  The Bible tells us of the coming of Christ the first time and gives detailed information about that coming—information that was written down 400 to 1500 years before the prophecies were fulfilled.  At least one of the prophecies concerning the coming Messiah was given to Adam about 4000 years before Christ came, and was passed along orally from generation to generation until it was recorded in written form by Moses.

 

The Bible is different from other books.  It is actually a collection of 66 books.  Forty different authors over a period of about 1500 years left us with a book with a consistent theme.  In the Old Testament that theme is that Christ is coming and in the New Testament that theme is extended to exclaim that Christ has come as Old Testament prophets predicted.  The New Testament goes on to predict that Christ is coming again.

 

The Bible is the Christian Constitution

The Bible is to the Christian what the US constitution is to a lawyer in the US.  We need to read it and we need to heed it.  The Bible progressively reveals God to us.   When we come to the four Gospels and the epistles, we find that Christ is God and that He perfectly expresses God to us. 

 

But the miracle of the Bible is that it produces faith in God.  Romans 10:17 says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.  It has always been that way.  Miracles do not generally produce saving faith although they may get people’s attention.  The rich man who ended up in eternal torments In Luke 16 wanted Lazarus to be raised from the dead to preach to his brothers so that they didn’t make the same mistake he had made.  Abraham tells him that if they won’t believe what is written in the Old Testament scriptures they won’t believe if one was raised from the dead.  The Lord proved that by raising a Lazarus from the dead in John 11.  Then, in John 12, the religious leaders wanted to put Lazarus to death because his resurrection was causing people to believe on the Lord.  Lazarus’s resurrection had gotten the attention of some of the people and they believed in or trusted the Lord, but this miracle made no difference to those whose minds were already closed. These religious leaders who wanted to destroy Lazarus and ultimately destroyed the Lord, knew the Old Testament scriptures; but they did not believe what they said they believed.  For those who did believe, the miracle got their attention, but there is no doubt that they had come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah as predicted in the Old Testament Scriptures.

 

Defending and Presenting the Gospel

Over the years, I have seen the message of the Bible change the mind of open minded seekers after the truth in a miraculous way.  I realize that there is a sense in which we need to defend the Gospel.  We need to defend the truth of the Bible and those who believe that truth.  But I have found that we do our best job of defending the Gospel when we are presenting the Gospel so that the Holy Spirit can bring the person who wants to know the truth to faith in Christ. 

 

People that come to saving faith often say, “It just seems too simple.  I now know I am saved and going to heaven because the Bible says so.”  Miracles are nice but the promises of God are better.  And for those who can’t allow themselves to be confused with the facts because their minds are already made up, miracles won’t convince them.  But sometimes in a miraculous way, the reading of the Bible will.  Don’t ask me to explain that, I can’t.  But I have seen that process work time after time.

 

Bruce Collins

 

Meditation for the week of October 12, 2014

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