Out of all the miracles that Jesus performed, Luke 8:43-48 ESV is my favorite miracle because the woman in this miracle, it  reminds me a lot of myself  living in today’s world, still believing that what was good for this woman will still work for me today… It is so…

“And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. …”

Miracles

Today as we continue on our 40 days of prayer and honor the resurrection of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, we honor him always and especially during these 40 days of Lenten season as well.   I’ve personally been enlightened on this journey for the past 27 days..  Can somebody say “Miracles”… Today’s prayer and topic of discussion is miracles! In my heart, if you interviewed half of the Christian population and some and asked a question to the effect of what is the greatest miracle you have ever witnessed?  I’m sure the answer would revolve around themselves, or a close family member that relied on their faith in God and believed that the almighty God is a miracle worker in their lives…   Well that is my story too….  I’m so glad that God saw fit to let a little old average girl like myself live.   I realize from birth what makes me a miracle… First of all, I was never suppose to be conceived or born… Then, I had some medical issues when I was born, that I do believe spilled over into my teen years, and now adult life… Nevertheless, God just keeps right on showing me his grace and mercy and performing miraculous miracles in my life.. .Yes, in my life, right here in Irvine, California… I’ve seen many of miracles in my prior 45 years of living with my own eyes on various family members and close friends….  Asl I read my bible daily and study God’s word, he performed miracles throughout the entire bible, making a die hard believer out of me..  He is yet and still performing the same mighty acts on today… I’m reninded off the top of my head of the many heroic storyies of Jesus miracles her performed in the 33 years he walked on this earth… Just the mere fact that he hung, bleed and died for our sins is the bottom line miracle I love the most and the reason why I can still write on today about his goodness… Not only did they beat him up a hill in Golgotha, and pierced him in the side, and nailed him to that old rugged cross, between two theives from the sixth to the ninth hour, but that aint how the story ends..  See what man did know was the God that we serve, had all power in his hands…  He said “Father Forgive Them, for they know not what they do”… Awe, help me Holy Ghost…  See, I’ll say it again, that’ not how this miracle story ends… See, these folks that crucified Jesus, then proceeded to put him in a borrowed tomb, not knowing that he  did not need a tomb at all…  He said Can’t no power on earth keep me down, I rise, and he did on that third day of the atonement with all power in his hands.. That’s a mircle story of a lifetime that keeps me rising everyday… To know that I serve a miraculous God that heal the sick and raise the dead…. I think I better stop because I have not shared the many other miracles that came before this great Passion of Christ…

Miracle stories in the Bible: These are only the  miracle stories of the New Testament that I share, and the can be separated into several different categories, each of which is significantly different from the others. Within each category, however, most of the stories have certain formal similarities: 

Periscope	Mark	Matthew	Luke	John
Healing Simon Peter’s Mother-in-law	1:29-31	8:14-15	4:38-39	—
Cleansing a Leper	1:40-45	8:1-4	5:12-16	—
Healing a Centurion’s Servant	—	8:5-13	7:1-10	—
Healing a Paralytic	2:1-12	9:1-8	5:17-26	[cf. 5:1-18]
Restoring a Man’s Withered Hand	3:1-6	12:9-14	6:6-11	—
Healing a Woman’s Hemorrhage	5:25-34	9:19-22	8:43-48	—
Restoring Sight to Two Blind Men	—	9:27-31	—	—
Healing a Syro-Phoenician Girl	7:24-30	15:21-28	—	—
Healing a Deaf Mute	7:31-37	—	—	—
Giving Sight to a Blind Man at Bethsaida	8:22-26	—	—	—
Restoring a Woman Crippled for Eighteen Years	—	—	13:10-17	—
Healing a Man with Dropsy	—	—	14:1-6	—
Cleansing Ten Men of Leprosy	—	—	17:11-19	—
Giving Sight to a Blind Man (or 2 Men) at Jericho	10:46-52	20:29-34	18:35-43	[cf. 9:1-41]
Healing a Royal Official’s Son at Cana	—	—	—	4:46-54
Healing a Man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem	—	—	—	5:2-47
Giving Sight to a Man Blind since Birth	—	—	—	9:1-41
Healing a Slave’s Severed Ear	[14:47]	[26:51-54]	22:49-51	[18:10]

Restoration Miracles:

Pericope	Mark	Matthew	Luke	John
Raising from the Dead a Widow’s Son at Nain	—	—	7:11-17	—
Raising from the Dead the Daughter of Jairus	5:21-24,35-43	9:18-19,23-26	8:40-42,49-56	—
Raising Lazarus of Bethany from the Dead	—	—	—	11:1-44Nature Miracles:

Pericope	Mark	Matthew	Luke	John
Catching Unusually Many Fish in the Sea of Galilee	—	—	5:1-11	[cf. 21:1]
Stilling a Storm on the Sea of Galilee	4:35-41	8:23-27	8:22-25	—
Feeding Five Thousand People	6:32-44	14:13-21	9:10b-17	6:1-15
Walking on the Water	6:45-52	14:22-33	—	6:16-21
Feeding Four Thousand People	8:1-10	15:32-39	—	—
Finding a Coin in the Mouth of a Fish	—	17:24-27	—	—
Cursing a Fig Tree near Bethany	11:12-14	21:18-19	—	—
Turning Water into Wine at a Wedding in Cana	—	—	—	2:1-11
Catching Numerous Fish at the Sea of Tiberias	—	—	[cf. 5:1]	21:1-14

Evangelists’ Summaries of Jesus Ministry:

Pericope	Mark	Matthew	Luke	John
Jesus Proclaims a “Jubilee Year” (cf. Isa 61:1-2)	—	—	4:16-21	—
“Physician, Heal Yourself” Proverb	—	—	4:23	—
Many Healed/Exorcized One Evening	1:32-34	8:16-17	4:40-41	—
Brief Summary	1:39	4:23	[cf. 5:15]	—
Jesus Heals Many by the Sea of Galilee	3:10-12	4:24-25 [cf. 12:15-16]	6:17-19	—
Response to the Baptist’s Question	—	11:2-6	7:18-23	—
The Beelzebul Controversy	3:22-30	12:24-29 [cf. 9:32-34]	11:15-22	[cf. 8:37-59]
Jesus Preaches and Heals	[cf. 6:6]	9:35	[cf. 8:1]	—
Healings at Gennesaret	6:53-56	14:34-36	—	[cf. 6:22-25]
Jesus Heals Many People	[cf. 7:31-37]	15:29-31	—	—
Jesus Heals the Blind and Lame in the Temple	—	21:14	—	—

Evangelists’ Summaries of the Ministry of Jesus’ Disciples and Others:

Pericope	Mark	Matthew	Luke	John
Jesus Chooses 12 Apostles to Preach and Heal	3:15	—	—	—
Jesus Sends the Twelve Out on Mission	6:7, 13	10:1, 8	9:1-2, 6	—
Why the Disciples Could Not Heal/Exorcize	9:18, 28	17:16, 19	9:40	—
Another Exorcist, not Jesus’ Disciple	9:38-41	10:42	9:49-50	—
Jesus Sends 70 (or 72) More Disciples out on Mission	[cf. 16:17-18]	—	10:9, 17-20	—
False Prophets Will Show “Signs and Wonders”	13:21-22	24:24	—	—
Herod Hears of Jesus’ Exorcisms and Healings	—	—	13:32	—
[Believers Will Perform “Signs”]	[16:17-18]	—	—	—

Cited: Reference: http://godslittlemiraclebook.blogspot.com

Bible Verses about Miracles

Cited: Reference: / Scriptures: OpenBible.info

• Individual Narratives of Specific Miracles (and associated controversies):
  • Exorcisms  (casting out demons and unclean spirits)
  • Healing Miracles  (healing physical illnesses & impairments)
  • Restoration Miracles  (raising the dead; restoring to life)
  • Nature Miracles  (feeding multitudes, calming storms, etc.)

• The Evangelists’ Summaries of Miracles and Related Actions:
  • Summaries of Jesus’ Ministry  (exorcisms, miracles, and related works)
  • Summaries of Other’s Works  (the disciples and/or other exorcists)
  • Consider what Jesus does, for whom, and/or why?
  • How do people react? some positively and some negatively!

See also Form Criticism of Healing Miracle Narratives  and  NT Miracles: Jesus Gives Sight to the Blind

 Cited and reference material on miracle scriptures: Miracle Stories in the New Testament  by Felix Just, S.J., Ph.D. – http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Miracles.htm As I began my research on what other thought about Miracles, and I ran across the wonderful website called Skeptic’s Dictionary – http://www.skepdic.com/miracles.html – which is very knowledable in many areas.  Let’s see what he says about miracle… You already know what I think about miracles from my perspective…  “A miracle is “a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent” (Hume, 123n). However, these days people use the term much more loosely to mean something like “against all odds.” The rest of this article is not about people who call themselves or their experiences miracles because the odds seemed stacked against them. Here we will discuss miracle in the theological sense. Theologians of the Abrahamic religions consider only a god-willed contravention of the laws of nature to be true miracles. However, they admit others can do and have done things which contravene the laws of nature; such acts are attributed to diabolical powers and are called “false miracles.” Many outside of the Bible-based religions believe in the ability to transgress laws of nature through acts of will in consort with paranormal or occult powers. They generally refer to these transgressions not as miracles, but as magick. All religions report numerous and equally credible miracles. Hume compares deciding among religions on the basis of their miracles to the task of a judge who must evaluate contradictory, but equally reliable, testimonies. Each religion establishes itself as solidly as the next, thereby overthrowing and destroying its rivals. Furthermore, the more ancient and barbarous a people is, the greater the tendency for miracles and prodigies of all kinds to flourish.

…it forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors, who transmitted them with that inviolable sanction and authority which always attend received opinions (Hume, 126).

While there are still many people today who believe in miracles, no modern historian fills his or her books with accounts of miraculous events. It is improbable that the report of even a single miracle would find its way into such texts today. Indeed, only those who cater to the superstitious and credulous, such as theWeekly World News and a good portion of the rest of the mass media, would even think of reporting an alleged miracle without taking a very skeptical attitude toward it. No scholarly journal today would consider an author rational if he or she were to sprinkle reports of miracles throughout a treatise. The modern scholar dismisses all such reports as eitherconfabulations, delusions, lies or cases of collective hallucination. Hume was aware that no matter how scientific or rational a civilization became, belief in miracles would never be eradicated. Human nature is such that we love the marvelous and the wondrous. Human nature is also such that we love even more to be the bearer of a story of the marvelous and the wondrous. The more wondrous our story, the more merit both we and it attain. Vanity, delusion and zealotry have led to more than one pious fraud supporting a holy and meritorious cause with gross embellishments and outright lies about witnessing miraculous events (Hume, 136). Hume’s prediction is borne out every time there is a natural disaster that kills thousands and renders hundreds of thousands homeless. There is always some survivor who calls his survival a miracle, while ignoring the fate of the thousands of equally worthy fellows buried in the rubble all around him. The media, perhaps trying to find a small ray of hope amidst the despair of massive earthquakes or floods, love to print such ‘miracle stories.’ Hume’s greatest argument against belief in miracles, however, was modeled after an argument made by John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury. Tillotson and others, such as William Chillingworth before him and his contemporary Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, had argued for what they called a “commonsense” defense of Christianity, i.e., Anglicanism. Tillotson’s argument against the Catholic doctrine oftransubstantiation or “the real presence” was simple and direct. The idea contradicts common sense, he said. The doctrine claims that the bread and wine used in the communion ceremony is changed in substance so that what is bread and wine to all the senses is in fact the body and blood of Jesus. If it looks like bread, smells like bread, tastes like bread, then it is bread. To believe otherwise is to give up the basis for all knowledge based on sense experience. Anything could be other than it appears to the senses. This argument has nothing to do with the skeptical argument about the uncertainty of sense knowledge. This is an argument not about certainty but about reasonable belief. If the Catholics are right about transubstantiation, then a book might really be a bishop, for example, or a pear might actually be Westminster Cathedral. The accidents (i.e., properties or attributes) of a thing would be no clue as to its substance. Everything we perceive could be completely unrelated to what it appears to be. Such a world would be unreasonable and unworthy of a god. If the senses can’t be trusted in this one case, they can’t be trusted in any. To believe in transubstantiation is to abandon the basis of all knowledge: sense experience. Hume begins his essay on miracles by praising Tillotson’s argument as being “as concise and elegant and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine so little worthy of a serious refutation.” He then goes on to say that he fancies that he has (118)

discovered an argument of a like nature which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures; for so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.

His argument is a paradigm of simplicity and elegance (122):

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.

Or put even more succinctly (122):

There must…be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.

The logical implication of this argument is that (123)

no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.

What Hume has done is to take the commonsense Anglican argument against the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and applied it to miracles, the basis of all religious sects. The laws of nature have not been established by occasional or frequent experiences of a similar kind, but of uniformexperience. It is “more than probable,” says Hume, that all men must die, that lead can’t remain suspended in air by itself and that fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water. If someone were to report to Hume that a man could suspend lead in the air by an act of will, Hume would ask himself if “the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates.” If so, then he would believe the testimony. However, he does not believe there ever was a miraculous event established “on so full an evidence.” Consider the fact that the uniformity of experience of people around the world has been that once a human limb has been amputated, it does not grow back.¹What would you think if a friend of yours, a scientist of the highest integrity with a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard, were to tell you that she was off in Spain last summer and met a man who used to have no legs but now walks on two fine, healthy limbs. She tells you that a holy man rubbed oil on his stumps and his legs grew back. He lives in a small village and all the villagers attest to this “miracle.” Your friend is convinced a miracle occurred. What would you believe? To believe in this miracle would be to reject the principle of the uniformity of experience, upon which laws of nature are based. It would be to reject a fundamental assumption of all science, that the laws of nature are inviolate. The miracle cannot be believed without abandoning a basic principle of empirical knowledge: that like things under like circumstances produce like results. Of course there is another constant, another product of uniform experience which should not be forgotten: the tendency of people at all times in all ages to desire wondrous events, to be deluded about them, to fabricate them, embellish them, and come to believe in the absolute truth of the creations of their own passions and heated imaginations. Does this mean that miracles cannot occur? Of course not. It means, however, that when a miracle is reported the probability will always be greater that the person doing the reporting is mistaken, deluded, or a fraud than that the miracle really occurred. To believe in a miracle, as Hume said, is not an act of reason but offaith. It is interesting to note that when the Roman Catholic Church collects data on potential saints, whose canonization requires proof of three miracles, the authorities ignore negative evidence. Millions may pray to a potential saint and all but one seems not to have had his wish granted. The Church counts the one who seems to have had her wish granted and ignores the millions who came up empty and died without intercession. Likewise, when the media report on natural disasters, they are fond of the story of the survivor who thanks some god and basks in the glory of the miracle that saved him, but they never print a story blaming a god for the thousands or hundreds of thousands who were killed in the earthquake or the tsunami. It doesn’t occur to the survivor or the media that if it was just circumstance that led to the deaths of thousands, it was also merely circumstance that led to anyone surviving.   1. I see myself as the biggest miracle to ever live because of my life story and all of trials and struggles of life that I have overcome… Yes me, Minister Evelyn Diane Thomas, born 4/11/   Books and articles The Holy Bible is filled with the greatest miracles of all times and still today miracles are being performed as we speak by our soveirn and most mericful Holy Father, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!!! I also want to recommend these two books as a must read.. This author and retired college professor got me going really good, as I did research on the various miracles… I’ve always though that critical thinking is a must to make it out alive in this world we live in….

A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives

The Skeptic’s Shop

Hume, David. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X “Of Miracles,” (1748), Bobbs-Merrill, Library of Liberal Arts edition. Nickell, Joe. Looking For A Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions and Healing Cures (Prometheus Books: Buffalo, N.Y., 1993). de Spinoza, Benedict. A Theological Political Treatise, ch. 6, “Of Miracles” (1670). websites Miracles and Modern Scientific ThoughtProfessor Norman Geisler “Miracles” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Examining Miracle Claims by Joe Nickell Worcestor Bishop Releases Preliminary Findings in Audrey Santo Case by Joe Nickell Miracles from the Skeptiseum Lourdes finds cure for lack of miracles: a less strict definition by Angelique Chrisafis and Luc Torres  March 9, 2006 The Guardian Rationalists Doubt Mother Teresa’s Miracle Oct 8, 2002

 

Cited and credit given to:  ‘The Skeptic’s Dictionary – http://www.skepdic.com/miracles.html

Cited: Reference Scriptures: OpenBible.info