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Bible - Miracles authenticating Divine Revelation
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Bible - Miracles authenticating Divine Revelation

In both the Old and New Testaments there is an expectation that miracles are capable of authenticating divine revelation. For example Jesus authenticated His authority to forgive the paralytic man of his sins, something only God could do, by performing the miracle of healing him (Luke 5:17-26). Likewise, when John the Baptist questioned whether Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus authenticated His claim by performing many miracles in front of John’s messenger.(Luke 7:18-23). Indeed Jesus severely rebuked the cities of Galilee, who had observed His miracles but failed to repent (Matthew 10:20-24). Furthermore this approach to miracles can be seen in John’s gospel where Jesus on a number of occasions reminds His hearers that they should listen to His words and believe what He says about Himself because of the miracles He has performed (John 10:37-38 & 14:10-14). In the Old Testament it is the miracles of the exodus that the Israelites are to remember so that they can have confidence that the law that they are to obey comes from God (Deuteronomy 4:9, 6:20-24, 7:17-19 8:2-6 11:1-8). In all these verses we see that from the Bible’s perspective God expects miracles to provide sufficient proof for rational belief that the revelation in question has divine approval/origin. With regard to the church age the apostle Paul expected the preaching of the gospel would be accompanied by miraculous power  (1 Corinthians 2:4-5 & Galatians 3:5). We see examples of this miraculous power in the book of Acts (Acts 3:1-10, 5:15, 6:8, 8:6-7, 9:33-42, 14:3,9-10 19:12-13) and Acts 4:29-30 showed that Peter and the apostles expected miracles to accompany the preaching of the gospel - the purpose of these miracles was to authenticate that the gospel was a divine revelation.With regard to modern miracles their existence can be seen as evidence that confirms that the Bible and the gospel it contains are in fact a divine revelation - something Jesus alludes to in John 14:12 when he talks about his disciples doing greater works. However, from the Bible's perspective modern miracles are not expected to authenticate any new doctrinal revelations; for example Galatians 1:8-9 indicates that even the appearance of an angel could not authenticate any departure from the gospel that Paul had received. Likewise Matthew 24:24 shows that Jesus warned his followers to not follow deceptive versions of the gospel even if they are accompanied by miracles.