OT Miracles

[Faith1960]

Why were there all these miracles, like parting of the Red Sea, back in OT days but not anymore?

 

[TimothyH]

There are miracles every day.

Bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus ten thousand times every day.

People are cured from illnesses through anointing and the other sacraments and freed from addictions through prayer and confession.

4.5 million slaves in the US were freed in 1864. Hitler was stopped. Millions of lives were saved when Ebola pandemic was brought under control. St. Pope John Paul II had a bullet miss his heart by an inch.

In May of 1991, almost 15,000 Jews were rescued from Ethiopia, brought to Israel on jet planes in only 36 hours as military forces closed in to kill them all. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/ejhist.html

Or do these things have nothing to do with God?

-Tim-

 

[pianistclare]

 

[fred_conty]

Why were there all these miracles, like parting of the Red Sea, back in OT days but not anymore?

There is the miracle of Fatima.

And there are documented miraculous cures at Lourdes.

In reference to what TimithoyH said above, C.S. Lewis says this in this chapter from the Screwtape Letters.

But since your patient has contracted the terrible habit of obedience, he will probably continue such “crude” prayers whatever you do. But you can worry him with the haunting suspicion that the practice is absurd and can have no objective result. Don’t forget to use the “heads I win, tails you lose” argument. If the thing he prays for doesn’t happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don’t work; if it does happen, he will, of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and “therefore it would have happened anyway”, and thus a granted prayer becomes just as good a proof as a denied one that prayers are ineffective.

 

[e_c]

There is a brilliant passage in the Office of Readings, I think by Origen, on exactly this topic. But I can’t find it…

The sense of his argument, if I remember correctly, is that there are more wondrous things happening now in the life of grace than there ever occurred before Christ. The direct involvement of God in our lives is now of much larger spiritual significance than the miracles in the OT. For instance, which is a greater feat, the parting of the Red Sea, or baptism? The manna, or the Eucharist? And so on. We’re just so spiritually blind that we don’t “get it.”

Augustine, I think, talks about how the need for such outward miracles has decreased, because truly faithful people will be happy enough with the good testimony of others. But occasionally God allows someone to work a sign or does one Himself directly.

If you’d like a somewhat “modern day” example of something “biblical,” research Julian the Apostate and the attempt to rebuild the Temple.