Miracles can be either an aid to faith or a stumbling block.  Our Bible Study group recently considered the story of Peter, James and John being called by Jesus to be His disciples.  The story begins with Jesus borrowing their fishing boat in order to more effectively teach the crowds that have gathered on the seashore.  He then tells these men to move into deep water and cast out their nets.  Peter tells Jesus that they’ve been fishing all night without success – hey, he’s the fisherman, Jesus is only a carpenter.  However, with a shrug he tells Jesus that they’re willing to have another go if that’s what He wants.  The outcome is an amazing catch of fish.  Peter, recognising that a miracle has taken place, falls at Jesus’ feet in worship.

Miracles can stimulate and encourage faith.  I think of a young man who had befriended a young lady from our church.  He tagged along with her to church even though he was not a believer.  Slowly he began to take an interest in this man Jesus who was supposed to be God.  Shortly afterwards he was riding his motorbike down a steep bit of road when he suddenly lost control.  He tells how he saw the cliff-edge over the handlebars of his motorbike.  In that split second his thoughts turned to Jesus whom he assumed he was about to meet face to face.  But the next instant, to his amazement, he was back on the road and in total control of the bike.  That miracle was a turning point in that young man’s life.  Miracles can be an aid to faith.

But miracles can also be a barrier to faith.  There was the retired scientist I visited in a nursing home.  He loved discussing religious issues with me but very early in our discussions he told me that as a scientist he balked at the idea of the virgin-birth of Jesus and His bodily resurrection.  Both of these he regarded as unscientific.

Of course those two particular miracles are not the only ones that are barriers to faith.  There are plenty of other miracles in the Bible that are equally problematic for sceptics.  One that readily comes to mind is Joshua calling for the sun to stand still while he wraps up a battle against the Canaanites.  In answer to Joshua’s prayer we have the Scriptures recording that “The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day.”  Anyone looking for scientific explanations is going to have quite a job finding an answer to this miracle.  Did the earth simply stop rotating for almost a day?

Of course sometimes there are perfectly natural explanations for the miraculous.  In the case of this one at the time of Joshua, the cosmologist, Immanuel Velikovsky, has presented quite a credible solution.  He discovered evidence from the other side of the globe in records from ancient peoples of an extremely long night.  His argument is that a huge comet swept close to the earth and effectively tipped the earth upside down on its axis.  For him this solution answers at the same time the problem of there being evidence in some rocks that the north and south poles of the earth have swapped over at some point.

So has this explained away the miracle?  Not really.  That fact that God uses various means to work out his purpose does not diminish the power and wisdom of God in the slightest.  God – in whatever way He did it – intervened in nature so as to give Joshua the longer day he needed to deal with his Canaanite enemies.

The point I would make is that if our God can control the orbit of heavenly bodies and do that to fit in precisely with Israel’s conquest of the Promised Land, then why should a virgin birth, or the bodily resurrection of Jesus, be a problem for Him?  Miracles are simply evidence that God is at work in this world – even if it is in ways that He does not normally do things.  They ought to lead us to worship Him, the true God of heaven and earth.

John Westendorp