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Bible Denies that Miracles are Signs

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THE BIBLE AND SIGNS

On philosophical and commonsense grounds we Atheists know that no miracle can be a sign that verifies any religious doctrine. The Bible teaches the same thing but, typically, forgets itself and then makes a dogma out of the complete opposite. Miracles are not great signs when they back up a book that can’t even consistently back itself up.

The Bible purports to be the word of God and infallible for he is its source. The Bible claims to be the written word of God and speaks with God’s authority and all Christians believe that if God does miracles it is to point to it.

Jesus Christ said that his miracles and good works were done by God through him to show that he who claimed to be – the Son of God and the Saviour of the World etc. – he was (John 5:36;10:25). He made a paralytic walk again to convince bystanders that he had power to forgive sins (Mark 2:10-12). He cured lepers so that the Jewish priests would see them and know that a sign from God had come (Mark 1:44). He spoke of the sign of Jonah that he would perform (Mark 16:4). If you read his words you will see that he stated that the sign of Jonah, meaning his resurrection for Jonah probably died inside a fish and came out on the third day just like Jesus rose on the third day from the dead, would be the only sign, that is the only real miracle, he would give – this slip indicates that the gospellers invented all the other signs. The apostles preached that Jesus’ miracles proved his word and were his credentials (Acts 2:22). Jesus was the Son of Satan if he didn’t offer evidence that he was God’s Son. It is wrong to follow the leader blindly.

OCR Philosophy of Religion for AS and A2, Matthew Taylor, Editor Jon Mayled, Routledge, Oxon, New York, 2007 page 322 observes how there are so many stories about Jesus' miracles in the gospels which the book takes to indicate that the gospels were overemphasising the miraculous nature of Jesus' miracles rather than dwelling more on their nature as signs and what their meaning was. It gives the example of Jesus healing a crippled man in Mark 2. There Jesus heals the man to prove that he can forgive sins. The book concludes that this is linked with the belief that being paralysed or ill could be caused by sin. So Jesus heals the man to prove that the man must be forgiven when he is healed. In other words, the man brought his paralysis on himself as punishment for sin. Taking away the sin was the cure.

In relation to this, it is true that the gospels focus on the wonders as wonders and often give no explanation of how they are signs and what they mean. I would say that the belief of critics that stories were invented about Jesus to make him match the pagan gods in magical powers is correct. Their treatment of Jesus' miracles isn't even dignified.

It is certain too that the bystanders of Jesus healing miracle would have taken the interpretation the book took. Jesus encouraged the malicious view that suffering was a punishment from God. Obviously he never expected to end up on a cross himself. What adds probability to the book being correct in its interpretation, is that Jesus didn't need to prove to anybody he could forgive sins. The man needed to be forgiven but he didn't need to know it was Jesus who was forgiving him.

The gospels say that Jesus only did what God wanted him to do (John 5:19). He healed people and told them not to tell and made them promise they wouldn’t, but they went and spread it all over the land anyway. They were far from honest when they promised and broke it. (You don’t disobey and let down a miracle-worker in case he reverses the miracle. It is no wonder I think their behaviour shows that the whole story is a fabrication.) They were ungrateful to him for the favour for he must have enjoined secrecy for his own sake. Nobody mature or sane would have believed in Jesus on the witness of such unreliable people though I am contradicting the gospels here for they wouldn't have set these stories down on paper if they didn’t. This shows that Jesus did not have magical powers for he couldn’t stop them telling by psychically manipulating their thoughts and feelings. These miracles contradict the fact that if miracles happen then they are marks of the religion of truth.

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In Mark 9, the disciples tell Jesus that they tried to stop a man doing miracles because he was not in their group. Jesus told them off. The man may have been a follower of Jesus though not one of the disciples. He may not have had different religious beliefs. So it is wrong to take this episode as evidence that God can perform miracles in a false religion meaning that miracles prove nothing. We just don’t know. But it can be argued that since the gospels are not clear that he was any kind of follower of Jesus, and since the apostles would have known if he was for he would have been a popular man that it does show that miracles can take place outside the Christian context and are not signs. Jesus said that whoever does a miracle in his name cannot speak ill of him. This only means that the man was praying in Jesus’ name not that the man was a member of Jesus’ faith.

In Matthew 7, we read that evil people on judgment day will tell Jesus they cast out demons in his name and did other miracles. He will then tell them that he never knew them for he never knew them as allies. Some say, “Notice that these are unreliable people who called him Lord though he was not Lord to them so we are meant to disbelieve their boast of having miracle powers. Many people think they can do miracles when the truth is that they are only deluding themselves. The passage affords no justification for the view that these people did real miracles from God or from Satan for it does not say that Jesus agreed that they could do miracles. When they were godless it is most likely that when he rejected these people he was denying that they did any real miracles.” But Jesus never hinted that they were that unreliable. He said several times that the worst people are not the prostitutes and tax collectors but those who seem good and do loads of good works but who are not open to God in their hearts and they might preach God’s truth as if they believe in while they don’t. Jesus believed that the Devil could do miracles and trick people. So in Matthew 7, Jesus was indeed saying that people could do miracles as if they were messengers from Jesus and not be messengers at all. They call him Lord though they know they can’t fool him so clearly these are people who have used self-deceit to follow a false Christianity – their dogmas may be correct but that doesn’t mean they have been touched by God and his grace and mercy.

Jesus told the Jews to believe in his works if they could not believe in him so that they will see that God is in him (John 10:38). Does this say that Jesus’ works do not imply that he is from God? But then he said they prove that God is in him so that is not right. He meant that if they did not trust him then they should focus on the evidence that he was from God.

In Luke 16, Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus to drive home the point that only the Bible is needed to get the word of God. The rich man goes to Hell to feel the torment of fire forever and Lazarus is saved and happy. The rich man's pain is so bad that he madly desires a mere drop of water on his tongue. He asks for Lazarus to be raised from the dead to warn his brothers about the torment of Hell so that they might be avoided. He is told that his brothers don't need anybody to rise from the dead for they have the Law and the Prophets. So the Old Testament is sufficient. Catholics say this means the Bible shouldn't have the New Testament if the Old Testament is enough. So does that entitle them to ignore what Jesus taught? The New Testament claims that its message is in the Old Testament and that the gospel is in it. All the New Testament does is bring that out but it is not necessary. Nevertheless it is the word of God too according to non-Catholic Christianity which has no problem in accepting anything in this paragraph.

To stress the point that only the Old Testament is enough Jesus says that somebody rising from the dead to persuade bad people to repent is a waste of time when they have the scriptures. Then they have no excuse. He is saying he will not send visions and miracles to persuade people to turn to God. He will not send them even to draw people to the scriptures. That is people's own affair. Anybody then that does not study with and learn from the scriptures will be held accountable for it. Jesus is saying that the scriptures stand for themselves without miracles to draw attention to them and or verify them.

Would that suggest that we have a memory here of a tradition that Jesus never did miracles? I think so. But Christians would say that Jesus is saying his miracles were predicted in the Old Testament. Therefore he is only doing them to obey and uphold the Old Testament. They would have to argue then that miracles such as those of Lourdes and Fatima and Medjugorje and Garabandal, in short the miracles reported by the Catholic Church are not prophesied. They would have to conclude that these miracles are precisely the kind of miracles Jesus said are useless and therefore not from God. They are as useless as raising Lazarus from the dead to plead with sinners to repent.

When Jesus said even a saint rising from the dead with God's message is useless and not even worth thinking about when the scriptures are there we know that he indicated that less impressive things such as tradition and miracles of healing and apparitions are even more useless and beneath divine dignity. By doing them God would be denying the sufficiency of the scriptures.

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THE DEVIL CAN DO MAGIC

Though some Christians disagree, the Bible can be proved to teach the existence of a personal Devil. The doctrine of a clever Devil who has strong occult capabilities contradicts the Bible and Church doctrine that miracles show where the truth from God is.

By Satan, the Jews meant an evil fallen angel. Jesus said that Satan couldn’t be working through him so he agreed with them. He did not use Satan to mean mental illness, for the presence of sin. Some say he did. Then, he would have been a liar. He spoke about Satan as if he believed him to be a demon, a real person, and misled them if he believed Satan was something else. Jesus would have told them he disagreed with their understanding of Satan for he had to be careful to avoid telling lies. He had told enough through carelessness. So, Jesus believed in literal demons.

The Bible is clear that the Devil is able to do miracles. He allegedly turned himself into a snake to lure Adam and Eve into sin (Genesis 3).

The Egyptian magicians were able to transmute water into blood (Exodus 7:22) and make frogs overrun Egypt (Exodus 8:3). This was not trickery for it is plainly written in the Bible that they did the same as God who did these things miraculously so they did theirs miraculously too. It was a contest and they could not take part without miracles. Besides, the magicians would have been no match for Moses or tried to be if they needed props to do their tricks while Moses did not. They would have been laughed at and the whole point of the magicians’ endeavours was to make Moses and his God look small not bigger. How could tricksters cover much of Egypt in frogs and why would they want to? They wanted to show that what God did was not impressive but they didn’t need billions of frogs to prove their point. Their spells must have done more than they bargained for. The miraculous results were attributed to the Gods of Egypt so God didn’t do them for he does not trick pagans into thinking that their gods exist (Numbers 23:19). Christians reckon Satan performed these miracles. Strange that God never worried that his miracles would force the Egyptians to believe in him here. These miracles were evidently just done to correct God’s mistakes because they could not edify Israel when the magicians were able to do miracles too and when they were very vindictive miracles and when they made Egypt more stubborn in evil. Why would God edify Israel which was a small clique in the midst of the more numerous Egyptians who were corrupted and made incorrigible by what they seen God do? The miracles had mostly bad fruits no matter from what angle you look at them from. Human life is the absolute value and these miracles killed the firstborn of Egypt. When Heaven sends miracles like that, there is obviously no way of spotting the difference between them and the ones that come from Hell. By the way, Jesus proclaimed that his resurrection showed he was the infallible Son of God for whom people should be prepared to abandon everything if he required it despite the great physical miracles he believed that his nemesis Satan did in the Old Testament! What does that say about him? He hadn’t even the decency to give an explanation which is totally fatal to his claims to have divine approval. His resurrection being a false credential proves the same Devil was with him if he really rose and it also shows that The resurrection of Jesus if it is truly the most verifiable miracle ever which according to Christianity’ eccentric vision it is, then it stands forever as a testimony that miracles are never signs.

Revelation 13 says the Devil’s beast, symbol of the Antichrist will lead the inhabitants of the earth astray for it will make fire whoosh out of Heaven as people watch that entices the world into idolatry as a result. It could be literal so it is not symbolic. It is not a nuclear blast for you don’t turn to idols over one of them or look at them. The Egyptians would have seen the miracles of Satan not as evil but as showing that Yahweh was evil and their gods were better and stronger and when rubbed up the right way could be very nice friends. When Satan acts the nice guy he will do kindly miracles that could fool even the saints (Matthew 24:24). If anyone could, only a theologian with an IQ of a thousand would have any hope of seeing when a miracle is really the Devil’s work.

Jesus and his people said that the evil one will do misleading signs and wonders to delude the world someday in Mark 13:22. Paul wrote that the man of lawlessness would do incredible miracles to deceive the world in 2 Thessalonians 2:9. They say these miracles are false in the sense that they are claimed to be from God and are not. There is no hint that the wonders are not supernatural.

If the Devil does miracles that makes big complications for the Church. When the Devil was able to make water into blood and even to miraculously create frogs to torment Egypt with he could even have raised Jesus from the dead though Jesus made the resurrection his credential.

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SATAN RUINS THE SIGN DOCTRINE

The Catholic Church holds that we must believe in the miracles of the Bible to be Christians. Indeed if we don’t we end up with no reason for holding that the Bible is the word of God. The Church holds that miracles since then may be believed in if you want. The Church doesn’t approve of such miracles - it only permits them to be believed in after an investigation to authenticate them.

The Catholic Church allows the Catholic to arbitrarily believe that her optional for belief miracles are of the Devil, a personal being who used to be an angel but who now devotes his time to doing evil magic. (We know that the distinction between compulsory miracle belief and optional is arbitrary and what applies to one applies to the other.) And if Catholics believe this they will have to hold that the Church does nothing but put souls in Hell. The Devil would not assist a religion by doing miracles to attract new members and make the allegiance of present members stronger that can bring souls to and through the gates of Heaven. He would be afraid that God would turn his efforts to his own advantage if he were after anything else so he goes for what God can’t take advantage of. This option smears the reputation of all who declare a miracle to be authentic and from God by portraying them as ignorant and lacking in caution and of wilfully being in league with the Devil.

If a religion teaches that it is true that miracles are done to show what religion is true then it follows from this teaching either that all other religions that claim to have been verified by miracles have been fooled by hoaxers or that the Devil performed the miracles. Thus, miracles are being used dishonestly when presented as evidence.

Ultimately, the notion of the Devil working deluding miracles means that no miracle ever backs up any doctrine for you can never be sure if he was responsible or not. If Catholicism is good then other religions are good too or at least not obviously evil.

When God lets the Devil trap people by bestowing miraculous powers on him he could let him perform any kind of sick hoax. He did not give him the power for nothing. To say he won’t let him do this or that is to make mere assumptions and set up an arbitrary, that is useless, standard for determining which wonders are God’s and which are the Devil’s work. It would be assuming what would show that a miracle is from God and claiming that when a miracle passes this assumed test it is verified which would be entirely dishonest. The Devil might see far ahead into the future and do a good and holy looking miracle that will someday and indirectly and secretly do more harm than good. His plans may be as mysterious as God’s meaning that there is no possibility of distinguishing holy from unholy miracles. Miracles that seem to support the faith are the work of a lying spirit if not hoaxes for they promote a form of faith as good when it is evil for it is blind.

Christians teach that one is entitled to doubt that miracles come from God unless they are done to boost goodness and do good. The New Catholic Encyclopaedia says under Miracles (Theology of) that there will be at least one moral fault with a vision or miracle worked by Satan that will show it was not from God. But every single miracle is an occasion of sin for many. For example, many commit the so-called sin of unbelief in the resurrection of Jesus. But the Devil would do superficially nice miracles for a mysterious evil purpose. The Devil would have happily raised Jesus from the dead though it was a good miracle for it would do far more damage than good by upsetting blasphemers and people who are trying to force themselves to be sceptics which draws them into sin. We cannot judge others to be worse or better than ourselves because their minds are not ours so it is impossible to calculate how much sin a miracle has resulted in. The Bible says Satan to pose as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:13, 14). It is no good to object that God wouldn’t let him do good miracles that are a cog in the machinery for wreaking evil when God lets all kinds of evil happen and lets him and others seduce us with their evil advice that looks good and wise to us. Satan knows things we don’t know so he can perform sweet miracles for an evil purpose that we cannot discover. To do obviously evil miracles would be ineffective and would serve only to put people off him and his plan.

The only viable view of right and wrong comes from ethical egoists and is utterly opposed to the morality the Church has accepted and is completely incompatible with the Church and its revelation and its God therefore miracles are out to get us to do evil. Anything else is just human invention. When religious morality is just invention what use is a moral criterion? Many would think that a vision that forbade all lies was from the Devil for most of us believe in lying under strict conditions for the greater good. The criterion of the Church is too prejudiced to have any value.

It would be more reasonable for religionists to hold that if miracles are signs then they only imply the existence of God indirectly but that would mean they are not necessary for they could only imply God if reason has worked out on other grounds that there has to be a God. They might imply that there is a Devil for they happen and prove nothing directly and if there is a Devil then he is not supreme because somebody good must have him on a leash. In this view, the miracle does not tell us what to believe but tells us to do a puzzle and work out who or what might be doing it and what it would mean. But then we would have to be sure there could be a Devil first before we could consider attributing the miracle to him. And then we would not need the miracles. And the miracles being useless would not imply that there is a Devil and a God but a mad spirit.

The Catholic Church says that her miracles point one to the faith and are not the basis for faith which is the resurrection and miracle-working of Jesus as reported in scripture. The alleged miracles of Lourdes and Fatima and others convert many people to a deeper faith in Roman Catholicism. But if the apparitions or healings or whatever are not a basis of faith then they are really reducing true Christian faith and replacing it for most Catholics cannot prove the resurrection or Bible miracles were historical events so how could one believe in the resurrection more than in, say, Lourdes? And there are loads of Churches so it is foolish and lazy to take the Church’s word for it that the faith is true. When the word of the Church is enough for people the reason it is enough is because they feel it is true not because they believe it is true. Extra-biblical miracles are not the basis of faith and they lead most astray therefore they must be from the Devil or hoaxes for they are not from God.

God would not ask us to believe in miracles coming from a lying religion and many religions tell lies and seem to have authentic miracles. The Devil would.

The Devil would do a holy looking miracle to prove the existence of God when belief in God makes any wrong we do more than just wrong it becomes an act of cruelty against the God one believes in.

Dear Catholic, it is not right to call the miracles of other religions satanic works or hoaxes when your belief in your own faith’s miracles is blind and therefore irrational. It is slanderous and accusing anybody who disagrees with you of being stupid or deceitful. If that is not wilful then it is the doing of the being that manifested in the apparition you believed in.

We have proved by horse sense that instead of defending the faith, Christianity’s miracle signs tear it apart. Any religion that has miracles that you cannot see and prove for yourself is offering miracles that are anti-God. That is, satanic.

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IS EXORCISM A SIGN?

One of the things most religions have in common is an acceptance of the possibility of diabolical possession, that is, that evil spirits or demons have the power to take over human beings. Exorcism is a form of prayer to which God responds by putting the demons out. It is expulsion.

Jesus Christ claimed that exorcisms have an apologetic significance. They cannot be done by the Devil for Satan cannot put Satan out so they must be attributable only to God (Mark 3). This was a lie as we will soon see.

The Catholic Church says that her exorcisms prove that she is the true Church and is holy when God uses her to fight the Devil. If exorcisms are signs then God won’t do them through a false or untrue religion but will just perhaps let the person seem to recover naturally without them. So, religion that is evil cannot cast out demons if God exists for it is on the side of the demons. If it is not deliberately evil but still evil God would not answer its prayers to cast out demons for the demons use error to do harm and would harm those who convert to the religion thinking it has power to protect them against demons. Error is a natural evil. It would be a case of an evil doctrinal system casting out its evil teachers which is absurd. So, only the true religion can cast out demons if miracles are indeed signs.

The demons would not advertise the true religion by attracting an exorcist by abusing the victim.

Even if the true religion could cast out demons we cannot prove that it really does so because of this.

Exorcisms do not prove anything about religious beliefs for the demons might pretend to have gone to avoid expulsion. In fact, they probably would.

Possession implies that the demons don’t have much power for they can’t possess everybody or it implies that the possessed person has asked for to be possessed and you have to consent before God will let demons into you. If demons are not that numerous then it would be a better idea if they controlled and bothered a person secretly. Evil that looks good is the most deadly type.

The claim that God won’t let demons torment somebody in secret is just an assumption. He lets humans do that so why not devils? The evidence is therefore against it.

Belief in exorcism is evil for there is no evidence for exorcism – that it is real. So exorcism is evil. Evil cannot expel evil or an exorcism being evil cannot put demons out. If the demons go it is not because they are put out. The exorcist is a villain in league with the forces of evil so his work does not prove any religious conjecture apart from Satanism.

Demons would be happy to leave a victim at the bidding of the exorcist when it is necessary to do more damage with somebody else or if they see their departure will reduce the unpopularity of evil in some roundabout way perhaps. But then it would not be the exorcist who put them out. Exorcism cannot be proved. Exorcists and their supporters are know-it-all boasters. They are doing the Devil’s work.

The idea that demons would torment a person which attracts the exorcist and shocks observers into renouncing the evil ways of the Devil for a mysterious purpose that maximises evil is wrong for we don’t have free will. When they can pull our strings internally to do their bidding they don’t need complicated schemes which externally influence us. Secrecy guarantees them a better chance of success.

If God exists then he has complicated and mysterious plans. He only lets tormenting demons into a person so that he can defeat them. If the demons enter freely there must be no God for they would not do anything he lets them do for they would know he is up to something. If they are forced, which they would have to be, then it is God who should be exorcised.

If demons can be expelled by an exorcist then good magic is stronger than malign magic. But this cannot be true when the demons got control of the victim in the first place. There is no free will therefore there is no use in evil.

Exorcisms never happened immediately. The Church says they did in the time of Christ – he just commanded and the demon came out right away. Isn’t there something contrived about the exorcisms performed by the Church when it takes the Church a long time to get the demons out? A prayer that God wants to answer should be answered on the spot and the demon should be ejected immediately. It looks as if demons are happy enough to possess somebody for a while and just move on to somebody else when they feel like it while making it look like the exorcist got the demon out. But it goes on so long and the attacks of the alleged demon on the victim are exacerbated during the process for the exorcism makes the demon get really angry. No good God would stomach exorcism when it does this. So this suggests that the victim is just mentally ill and the supernatural tales about his or her affliction are exaggeration. Mental illness can often clear up eventually so is that why exorcism looks as if it worked at times?

We see that belief in possession and exorcism is blasphemous and irrational.

If exorcisms can evict demons they are no help to the person who wants a sign from God to tell him what the true religion is or that God is. They are really insults to God. If miracles are signs as religion says, then exorcisms would be the only possible way it seems to be sure that there is a good miracle power like God. But even the most convincing exorcism fails miserably so exorcisms show that miracles are not signs from Heaven.

The Gospels are full of possessed people and Jesus says that nearly everybody has a demon to some degree. He said that Satan is destroying his kingdom if Satan puts demons out meaning Satan who he said was the prince of this world has no kingdom unless he possesses. This is what a demon might say in order to spread fear. Fear is the root of all evil so if demons can increase fear they have won even if that fear makes people act like good people. If the demons are so powerful then anybody who is evil should be destroyed or harshly punished for they are giving the demons the manpower they need in their secret schemes. Even if Jesus did not succeed in causing a lot of trouble by his doctrine it is clear that if there was a supernatural power helping him it was determined to make trouble. He was supported by the Devil. Belief in demons is the most evil thing that religion has ever propagated and the suffering it has caused has been immeasurable and yet miracles boost this evil. Shun them.

Many children have been beaten to death by Christians trying to hammer the Devil and his cronies out of them. This makes sense if demons possess because the demon will be hurt by attacks on the body for the demon takes over most of the brain faculties. The doctrine of exorcism is the cause of these deaths. It is an inexcusable evil.

It is better for exorcism not to be believed in at all than for it to result in the loss of life. This is not condemning a doctrine just because it is abused. It is saying a belief should not be held if it does things like that when the belief could be lived without.

Jesus used miracles to prove that he was speaking the truth about what God had told him to say. If he fed the 5000+ crowd with a few loaves and fish which he multiplied as Christians believe, then there is a problem that the Bible says that he fed them because he felt terrible about them being hungry. It could have been a sign as well but there is still a problem. He did the miracle to feed the people as well as a sign. This contradicts the view that God will not do miracles for any reason other than signs because any other reason implies he makes mistakes in the way he has organised the world. The Church teaches that since God makes all things and holds them in existence and is almighty that even those who defy his will to sin can’t get out of his plan. This is the doctrine of divine providence and sovereignty. So if Jesus did the miracle to feed the people then providence failed. The Church will say that it was providence that worked the miracle. But still Jesus refused to feed them like God feeds everybody without a miracle. He ended up having to change nature to satisfy his desire to feed them.

Jesus said his miracle of his rising from the dead was his supreme sign and his supreme miracle and the miracle that along with the cross brings salvation to sinners. Jesus’ food miracle then if it happened was a better miracle than the resurrection. At least people saw the miracle happening and had more to go on than resurrection apparitions and they were more numerous than the handful that saw the visions. The miracle then would therefore cast doubt on the divine origin of the resurrection. It would mean that Satan was behind it in the hope of making God look a fool. Jesus’ exorcisms then would not be credible signs of divine action in the world.

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PROPHECY

Some Christians say that prophecy alone, accurate foretelling of the future, is the only test if God has spoken. The Bible says a prophet should only be listened to if he is totally accurate and if he makes one error he is to be rejected even if all the rest of his prophecies come true and even if he does miracles (Deuteronomy 18). God said a prophet doing great miracles who then says, “Come on let us pray to other Gods”, is a fake and to be stoned to death. This plainly implies that prophecy is superior to miracle. I know prophecy is a miracle so perhaps we should say prophecy is the only miracle worth paying attention to.

Many Catholic theologians believe that if an apparition is from God it will give short-term prophecies that the witness and others can see fulfilled so that they know quickly that the manifestation is from God and anybody can see for themselves that the miracle is genuine. (The decision that a miracle has happened should be the decision of each individual person so a miracle that needs a team of investigators and theologians and experts is dubious. It only leads to people following “experts” or men rather than God. The investigation must be put into the hands of the people.) This is only commonsense for God’s test that shows he does not expect us to believe in prophets unless they can show that he really gave them information about the future. This would eliminate apparitions which did not make short-term prophecies that are fulfilled in a way that cannot be explained (eg when the fulfilment was not a set-up) – not that there are any!!! That is most reported apparitions refuted. And Jesus was unable to make such prophecies when he appeared after his death. Many of the Bible prophets did not make any short-term prophecies and any that did there is the question if the prophecies were written or not after the event.

If the Devil can do miracles he can make a prediction and use miracles to make it seem that the prophecy came true. But though prophecies prove nothing they are better than just miracles for they can be more difficult to fulfil. Jesus gave no evidence of being able to foretell the future in a supernatural way. The prophecies he made about his resurrection could have been made after the event. Paul gave no evidence of being a prophet and yet he takes up most of the New Testament. The Book of Revelation has plenty of prophecy but none of it is impressive for it is too obscure so we don’t know if it was fulfilled or not. They all failed the best test and yet there have been scores of miracles reported since their time verifying that they were prophets and that Jesus rose. Only the Devil could verify the resurrection with inferior miracles and we know that we can’t rely on him at all.

Jesus’ preference for miracles than for prophecy shows he couldn’t really have been the miracle working son of God. He made no provable prophecies that show the marks of being supernatural. He certainly failed the tests spelled out by the Law of Moses which he declared to be his mentor and credential. He mistakenly thought a resurrection from the dead would be enough to mark him out as the Son of God and saviour of the world. The Law denies this for it says that if a prophet does miracles and predicts the future correctly all the time but makes one mistake in such predicting that prophet is a fraud (Deuteronomy 18). Isaiah wrote that anybody who claims to be a prophet and does not speak according to the Law and the testimony of the prophets is not of God and is to be ignored. Jesus’ resurrection testifies to us that belief in life after death in Heaven is good for us but it is not for it runs down the value of our lives here and now. Read my The Gospel According to Atheism. To say the resurrection is a sign from God is evil. The resurrection then is a false prophecy expressed in happenings not in words. I mean it is saying belief in a delightful hereafter is good and it is not.

Jesus did lead men away from God for he said he was the only one who could tell you want God wants and what God is like. That is the idolatry of seeing God through Jesus’ eyes. It is making God in Jesus’ image, just as much as it would be idolatry to make an image of God of gold and to worship that. If Jesus claimed to be God then it gets worse.

If there is a God then the only miracle we would get from him is prophecy. The prophecy would be provably made before the event and not be good guessing but something provably miraculous. The fact that many Bible books cannot be definitely pre-dated to their prophecies shows they are false scriptures. Prophecy is the best that God can do though it is not perfect. But it is better than resurrections from the dead and strange girls appearing in grottos and tumours that supposedly dissolve into fresh air. Prophecy would back up a very very simple gospel message for when things get complicated there is always trouble. The Devil would want and encourage complexity in religion. But something simple and true is hard to refute and would be less an incentive to division and the machinations of deceivers. The miracles of the world happen only in complex religions which shows that whatever they come from it is not a God of love.

Conclusion

The Bible by denying that miracles are signs shows that we have no reason to believe that it is the word of God at all. It also shows that Christianity is a religious farce. No reasonable person would believe in such a faith.

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