One of the criticisms though sometimes negatively mixed with mockery against the Lord’s Chosen Christians is that they over emphasize miracles against preaching salvation.
However, this is not the burden incurred only by the Lord’s Chosen on Christianity but also majority of Christian communities today whether Lord’s Chosen, Zion, etc, and it is fast and surreptitiously cripping into the Catholic Church, at least the one in Nigeria.
Have I in any way meant that miracles are not part of our Christian life? By no means for if the Lord grants miracles, who are we to refuse? However, many of us are centering the goal of Christianity on miracles instead of on salvation.
Miracles in the strict sense are signs and every sign points towards something. In the New Testament these four Greek words are principally used to designate miracles:
1. Semeion, a “sign”, i.e., an evidence of a divine commission; an attestation of a divine message (Matthew 12:38,39; 16:1, 4; Mark 8:11; Luke 11:16; 23:8; John 2:11, 18, 23; Acts 6:8, etc.); a token of the presence and working of God; the seal of a higher power.
2. Terata, “wonders;” wonder-causing events; portents; producing astonishment in the beholder (Acts 2:19).
3. Dunameis, “might works;” works of superhuman power (Acts 2:22; Romans 15:19; 2 Thess. 2:9); of a new and higher power.
4. Erga, “works;” the works of Him who is “wonderful in working” (John 5:20, 36).
Generally therefore, miracles points towards the fact of God’s grace and love towards humanity. It means that God is still with us. He is not Deus Absconditus or Deus Otiosus-A God that is neutral or hidden away or not interested in the affairs of the world he created. In fact this gives more further meaning to “…and the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us” (John 1:14), almost in answer to human troubles in Isaiah 45:15. God is not hidden in human affairs, rather it is human beings who hide away from God.
Advertently, God is present in some works of the scientists like the medical agents and even the more some of them try to deny it, he emphasizes it. Nevertheless, human ignorance, ego, hatred, etc block them from knowing, seeing, appreciating, etc His presence.
Yet, we already saw in the scriptures that miracles could be performed and yet the one through whom such miracles were wrought looses salvation, and this is were the devil is holding us hostage now. Have we then forgotten the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:22-23:
“When the day comes many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, work many miracles in your name? Then I shall tell them to their faces: I have never known you; away from me, all evil doers!”
THESE VERSES SIMPLY TELL US THAT THE AIM AND GOAL OF CHRISTIANITY IS NOT MIRACLES.
This devil’s trick is the reason many of us are becoming too selfish that they would even want the ministers of the gospel to plunge themselves into priding their achievements in the Lord’s vineyard on how much miracles they have done or are doing, beginning from themselves.
Yet, if a child could actually get healing through the hands of the Holy Father while himself the Pope remains on the wheelchair, it logically proves one point:
“The power of true healing comes from the Lord Jesus Christ himself and not from any human being. Human beings are mere instruments like drums which without the beater(God), produces no sound.”
If this is so, the question of why ministers of the gospel should remain sick while God works miracle through them should actually be directed to Jesus Christ himself and not to the ministers, if actually there were true healing and miracles.
God works miracles, not man.
I am Fr. Henry Charles Umelechi, Fr. Truth Series. I value truth and live to lead people to the truth.