Miracles on the surface would seem to present us with a very compelling case on why they would be the greatest evidence of God’s existence. However, even occasional miracles still won’t cause most people to believe that God exists. The classic case is the 40 years of wilderness wandering by the Israelites during the time of Moses.
Many, before they hit the wilderness, saw the miraculous ten plagues in Egypt and then the parting of the Red Sea. And during their wilderness wanderings saw the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, manna from the sky, and water from the rock, and yet most never came to believe in the one true God. You see despite the clear evidence that God exists, the people in the wilderness clearly acted as if He didn’t. Someone said it well when they said that it took God one day to get Israel out of Egypt but it took Him 40 years to get Egypt out of Israel. To me miracles clearly give us solid evidence for God’s existence, yet for the Israelites it didn’t do them any good for most were laid low in the wilderness. You see man’s desire to sin often will outweigh the clear signs that God gives all of us for His existence.
God, I believe, gives each of us just the right amount of evidence for His existence. But there is a fine line here. God must give us enough evidence that it will convince us that He is real, and that we are sinners in need of Him, but not so much that we would be compelled to believe He exists, because He wants us to freely come to Him and worship and love Him.
Randy Alcorn shares the following insightful comment on miracles:
“We say, ‘Show me a miracle and I’ll believe,’ yet countless people who have seen miracles continue to disbelieve. In our eagerness to see greater miracles, we regard “natural processes” as minor and secondary, missing God’s marvelous daily interventions on our behalf. Focusing on God’s ‘big miracles’—like curing cancer and making brain tumors disappear—causes us to overlook his small, daily miracles of providence in which he holds the universe together, provides us with air to breathe and lungs to breathe it, and food to eat and stomachs to digest it. Years ago, when I became an insulin-dependent diabetic, it dawned on me that I had never once, in the fifteen years I’d known him, thanked God for a pancreas that had worked perfectly until then.”1
Glen Scrivener sums up this issue well when he says: “Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Materialists believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos. Choose your miracle.”2
So, the question is not does the atheist believe in miracles, because he does, but why does he deny their reality? It all comes down to the fact that because of sin he suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. His love of sin and desire to not be accountable to our eternal God causes the atheist to clearly turn a blind eye to the greatest miracle in the universe – creation.
But just how can we reach the atheist. We need to get on our knees and pray that the Holy Spirit would convict him of sin and open his blind eyes to not only the reality of (Genesis 1:1) but of (John 3:16): “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” In this way we can be part of another great miracle – the salvation of a lost soul!
1 Charlie H. Campbell, Apologetics Quotes (Carlsbad, California: The Always Be Ready Apologetics Ministry, 2020), pp. 94-95.
2 Charlie H. Campbell, Apologetics Quotes (Carlsbad, California: The Always Be Ready Apologetics Ministry, 2020), p. 11.
“God, I believe, gives each of us just the right amount of evidence for His existence.”
What constitutes the “right amount?” The devotion says, “God must give us enough evidence that it will convince us that He is real.” Does Scripture carry the burden of convincing us He is real?
Is “enough evidence” necessary for this task? How does God “prove” He exists? We’ll, He doesn’t. Here’s what He says about His existence, “In the beginning, God.” Gen. 1:1 No proof, no argument, no convincing, no “right amount.”
How about the New Testament? Surely, it calls us to the task of providing evidences of God’s existence? It turns out the same statement as Gen. 1:1 is said a different way but still without a burden of proof. He just is and the only argument for His existence is that all men know that as a result of being born.
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” Rom.1:19
So, why do men pretend they don’t already know God exists?
“It all comes down to the fact that because of sin he suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.” They don’t lack the knowledge and evidences, even the “right amount” isn’t necessary to convince him. It’s a moral problem. You can stack evidences from here to the moon and he will reject them all because he is at war with God and his only hope is the repentance that brings knowledge, the full amount, “repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.” 2 Tim. 2:25
All roads lead back to the Gospel and the sovereign election of God before the world was created. As one theologian stated it as the title of his book on this subject, “He is there and He is not silent.”