THE BIBLE REVEALS A SUPERNATURAL GOD

The statement in today’s title is not likely to raise many eyebrows. From cover to cover, with no hint of embarrassment, the Bible describes the ways in which God has supernaturally intervened in history. So we may say that God is Interventionist as well as Supernatural.

Do I need to prove this? Consider the Great Flood in the time of Noah. Consider Abraham’s wife becoming pregnant at 90 years of age. Consider Moses and the dramatic suspension of natural laws described in Exodus. Then Joshua, Samson, Samuel, Elijah, Daniel and Esther. Jesus, as God incarnate, healed the sick, raised the dead, and walked on water (when He wasn’t turning it into wine!) He taught His disciples how to do supernatural ministry and they went out and did it. Paul, in Romans 15:19, affirms that he had “fully preached the gospel of Christ” in signs and wonders.

OK so why go to all this trouble to demonstrate what we already know?

Because people are trying hard these days to make God fit into boxes formed by natural human reasoning. But a super-natural God, by definition, must be above all such reasoning.

So, on the one hand, we see modern scientists preaching that nothing can possibly lie outside the realm of science. They imagine that they can now dispense with God (or gods) completely. Now that they know so much about so many things, you see.

On the other hand, we see biblical scholars, working from a rationalist perspective, reading their bias back into Scripture and arguing that the Bible must now be stripped of all supernaturalism. Some Christian pulpits are now filled with empty platitudes about love and hope. God has been redefined as an insipid, powerless sympathiser with human suffering. A god who is nice and godly but lacking power (see 2 Timothy 3:5).

So the very people who like to discredit the Bible on the grounds that it portrays a supernatural God do so because they have already decided that supernatural has to fit with the natural. Hmm. Not hard to see the problem there. The problem is the assumption that nothing supernatural can exist.

The Bible, therefore, stands as a bold witness to a world that loves putting things in boxes where they can be mastered and controlled. Christians who live a supernatural lifestyle, through faith in a supernatural God, as revealed in the Bible, are literally living day by day in a realm that the rest of the world doesn’t think can possibly exist. No wonder, then, that they shake their heads and think we must be crazy.