HAVE MIRACLES CEASED?

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 19, 1881

HAVE MIRACLES CEASED?

IN a recent number of the SIGNS we noticed the answer of a D. D. to this question showing, as we think, that his answer was not satisfactory according to the Scriptures. The Christian at Work, which is generally alive to every question going, has solicited and received an answer to it from representatives of the several denominations all over the country. They nearly all affirm their belief that they have ceased. The exceptions are so few that we can easily notice them. Dr. Whedon, Methodist (New York), says:—

“I am unable to deny that miracles have taken place since the apostolic days, but am equally unable to specify any which I positively believe to be real. I should concur with the old New England divines in holding that miracles could only be the result of a special ‘faith of miracles,’ divinely conferred. With such a ‘faith consciously possessed, the Christian may look for the miraculous answer. Whether any at the present day are endowed with that faith, I am unable to say.”

Dr. Geo. E. Pentecost, Congregationalist (Brooklyn), believes that every answer to prayer is miraculous. He says:—

“I believe that Christians pray to God, not to ‘nature’ or to ‘law,’ and that God answers prayer. I believe that God often answers prayer in so wonderful a manner as to put the answer, almost, in the category of the ‘miraculous,’ in the popular sense of that term. We are to expect that God hears and answers prayer.”

Beyond this he does not believe in miracles, such as are recorded in the New Testament.

Dr. Leon Walker, Congregationalist, (Hartford), says:—

“I think Christian people should be slow to deny the fact of post-apostolic miracles, or the probability of such answers to prayer as properly may be classed as supernatural interposition for human help. A great body of facts, all along the tract of history, seems to indicate that such interposals have actually occurred. There is nothing more irrational in the belief of their occurrence now than in the apostolic times. I do not dare to say they do not.”

Dr. Edward Judson, Baptist (Orange, N. J.), gives a brief word as follows:—

“I am not yet prepared to formulate my views on the question whether or no miracles are discontinued.

Dr. Gordon, Baptist, (Boston), is the most decided. He says:—

“I believe that the promise of the signs following those that believe (Mark 16:17) was given to believers in all time. Unless the testimony of nearly all the Christian fathers is set aside, these miraculous signs continued in the church for more than two hundred years after Christ. The statements of the fathers are most explicit on that point, and so eminent an authority as Uhlhorn declares that their testimony is such as to put the matter beyond reasonable doubt. I believe that the promise of miraculous healing of the sick is especially explicit, that the declaration of Scripture, ‘The prayer of faith will save the sick,’ is applicable to all time, and that it has been honored in many instances in our own times.

Dr. Gordon is a literalist in reference to the prophecies concerning the coming of the Lord. He repudiates the prevailing mystical views of this subject.

But Dr. Pentecost does not believe in the continuance of miracles such as Christ and the apostles wrought. So he is scarcely a believer after all. And Dr. Walker thinks that “prayer for physical blessings rests on a very much smaller basis of promise and probability than for spiritual.” Hence, he is but a partial believer. If blessings are received in measure by the Saviour's rule: “according to your faith,” the tangible blessings in answer to prayer in this age must necessarily be small and rare.