Are Jesus' miracles relevant today

Answer 1

Yes, miracles do happen in 1979 my younger brother who was 18 at the time was given only days to live. He had an inoperable brain tumor. The tumor was as big as a golf ball and next to the optic nerve. After visiting him in Christies cancer hospital, in Manchester, England one Saturday afternoon, realising they had laid him out to die. Days before he had lost his hearing and his awareness about what was going on around him. After shouting his name I could get no response. It seemed that he was at the edge of dying.
After leaving the Hospital I felt the urge to visit a Pentecostal Church, called the Sharon Church in Moss Side, one of the poorest districts of Manchester; I had read in the Manchester newspaper that many miracles had been witnessed in this church.
By God's mercy or 'God incidence', the Pastor of the Church was preparing the Church for Sunday morning services. I had never met him before but he was a kindly old gentleman. I told him about my brother and that I had become a Christian only six months earlier and that despite my brother deteriorating so quickly I felt a peace in my heart that he was going to be alright. The pastor invited me to pray with him for my brother. As I prayed I felt the pure love of Jesus Christ through His Spirit, touch me and fill me in an overpowering way; as I prayed for a miracle asking for my brother to be healed. The supernatural presence of the Holy Spirit was very real and like nothing I had ever experienced before.
That same evening my brother's girlfriend phoned me from the hospital, she was all excited she said, 'isn't it great about D...... we were shouting his name and he said 'why are you shouting? I can hear everything you are saying', at the same moment he got out of bed and said 'I am going to the toilet'. (He hadn't walked unaided for weeks). I knew at that moment my brother had been healed. A miracle had happened that day, through faith in Jesus Christ and asking and believing in prayer.
Over 30 years later my brother is alive and well. I thank God every day for the miracle of his healing. Yes, miracles do still happen today if you have the faith in the living God; Jesus Christ.
It is easy to have some form of religion but to deny the real supernatural power of a living God.
I think that a woman giving birth to a new life is a miracle, and that happens every day.

To the above comment, clearly you have not read The Bible. Biblical miracles include things like the parting of the red sea, dead people who come to life, leper's cleansed in the blink of an eye, blind people that receive vision instantly I could go on and on but I think/hope you get the idea.

To answer your question, no they do not. The sole purpose of New Testament miracles was to confirm what was being preached. There was no Bible at this time. If you were a Jew following the jewish law and someone came to you and told you, hey throw out the old law I'm going to give you the new one and then proceeded to do nothing more than tell you the gospel, you wouldn't believe him, and rightfully so I believe. The old law was what they were to follow.

However if I told you I have a new law for you to follow and I proceed to raise your dead wife from the grave ... well its time to listen up. Miracles served their purpose and are no longer needed. We have the Bible.

Also, if you read the Bible and see how the gift was given to people for miracles to be possible today there is either an apostle still alive or someone that was given the ability to do miracles from that time period.

If you look at the "miracles" you see modern day false prophets doing on TV you can see the HUGE difference in the type of miracles they are claiming to do. In the bible the man who could not walk leaped with joy instantly healed. The "healers" I have seen on TV have never raised someone from the dead. Made a mutated and mangled limb instantly cured and look like new. The heal a painful back.

If any of them truly had power they could prove it by visiting a local cemetery and raise someone from the dead. Or maybe take a can of tuna and feed a few hundred people with it.

Answer 2

Whether Jesus ever performed miracles is a matter of faith, not necessarily shared by all Christians. Many Christians believe that the "age of miracles" finished long ago, while others, particularly the Catholic Church, say that miracles still happen.

That Jesus performed miracles is attested in the four New Testament gospels. However, the Gospel of Thomas tells of no miracles performed by Jesus, discloses no fulfilment of prophecy and announces no apocalyptic kingdom at the end of time. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus simply reveals wisdom and knowledge so that people may be enlightened.

In stories of the Apostolic Age, the apostles start to look a lot like Jesus. They were imagined to have performed miracles as he did, preached and taught as he did, confronted the authorities as he did, and died as he did.

The fourth century, when Christianity was at last preparing to dominate the Roman Empire, was an age of supposed miracles. The direct intervention of God or gods, angels or demons, figured in most stories of great events, whether narrated by Christians or pagans. And the belief in visions was related to extremely widespread belief in miracles, as well as in magic.

Throughout Christian history, the saints were credited with the ability to perform frequent and extravant miracles. Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) says he could not produce a single instance where a saint asserted that he himself possessed the gift of miracles. He gives the example of Bernard of Clairvaux, who recorded so many miracles of his friend St. Malachi, but never took any notice of his own which, in their tum, were carefully related by his companions and disciples. It seems that acknowledging one's own powers to perform miracles made the risk of being asked to perform one such miracle just too great.

At the time of the Protestant Reformation, Catholics said that the possession of miraculous gifts proved that Catholicism was the authentic Church. Protestants replied that such "spiritual gifts" were just another form of demonic magic, and proved the wrongness, not the rightness, of the Catholic Church.

John Shelby Spong (Jesus for the NonReligious) says, although he remains a committed Christian, "I, for one, can no longer pretend that the theistic God of yesterday is still real, still waiting for an opportunity to intervene in human history in a miraculous way." He says that he does not believe that anyone can, with supernatural powers, cause the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the mute to sing and the lame to walk in any literal way. If that were possible, the development of medical science would have been quite unnecessary.

Even in the present age, the Catholic Church is dependent on modern-day miracles. Its own doctrines require the performance of two well-attested miracles for a saint to be canonised. So the Church finds itself unable to break free from its history without renouncing its privilege of adding to its list of saints.

Answer 3

Yes there are still relevant. He promised if we believe in him greater things awaits us.