He called himself Orange. It must have been because of his bushy crop of reddish orange hair--though nobody ever asked. Jay talked to him only one time and never learned his real name, but he would never forget their conversation.

Orange was an enthusiastic go-getter in his midtwenties, eager to inform everyone around him of two facts: he was an atheist, and he was a seminary student. In all fairness to the seminary, a liberal one on the East Coast, Orange claimed he went there to escape the draft (back when it was possible to do that). Beneath his superficial atheism seemed to beat a sincere heart of true atheism. He embraced a genuine pity for people who went to seminaries that were narrow-minded enough to teach the Bible as true.

Orange, along with six of his anti-religious friends, showed up at a discussion party about life and God led by Jay in a majestic old home in the central are of Memphis. Orange and company added significantly to the discussion. Their opinions were welcomed by the Christians and applauded by some non-Christians twice their age. The lively confusion produced several people looking for answers; as well as Jay could recall, four of them received Christ--one was a guy who came with Orange.

After the discussion was over, Jay talked with several people, working his way toward the dessert table. He ran into Orange next to the punch bowl. Having done so much talking during the discussion, they felt like old friends.

"Say, Orange," Jay began, "tell me something. What would God have to do to prove to you that He existed?"

"I want to see an angel," he answered without the slightest hesitation, "a twenty-foot-tall angel, shining in brilliant green standing right here in this room, pointing his finger at me, and saying, 'Orange, the Bible is true!'"

"Really?"

"Really!"

"How come you don't think the Bible is true?" Jay inquired.

"Because it's full of fairy tales."

"You mean miracles?" Jay asked.

"Yeah. Why don't I see any miracles? Where's my twenty-foot, shining, green angel?"

The ceiling of the room where Orange pointed seemed almost twenty feet high, so Jay proceeded as if he were serious. "OK, Orange," he agreed. "Let's suppose you saw a twenty-foot-tall, shining, green angel right now pointing his finger at you, saying, 'Orange, the Bible is true!' What would you conclude? Be honest, now."

"I'd conclude somebody spiked the punch!" Orange chuckled.

"Exactly," Jay continued. "I appreciate your honesty. But then don't tell me that's what God needs to do to make you believe in Him."

"I suppose you have a point," Orange admitted. "But it seems to me the people who saw Jesus do miracles had an easier time believing than we do."

"That may be true," Jay answered. "The miracles often served as a sort of catalyst to help people believe, but that's not why they occurred."

"Then why did they occur?"

"They authenticated what God was doing," Jay explained, "but they didn't create faith. Jesus claimed to be God. His miracles were important because they were something anybody could see as evidence that He was not lying or having delusions of grandeur. They were not done to generate faith in people who had already decided that He was wrong."

Orange and Jay consumed enough punch to satisfy a thirsty camel. It seemed the more they talked, the more they drank. Fortunately, it was made just out of fruit juices and some sort of carbonated soda. When the hostess arrived to refill the punch bowl, they decided it was time to stop making pigs (or camels) of themselves and leave the dining room. The room with the snack table adjoined a huge foyer which had, among other things, a stairway reminding Jay of the front of some capitol building. It led to a landing and then branched into two stairways that circled up to the next floor. Jay and Orange perched themselves on the fourth step and resumed their conversation.

"If the miracles of the Bible are for real," Orange went on, "why weren't they recorded in history, and why don't we observe that sort of thing in science?"

"I assume you mean natural history and the natural sciences?" Jay asked.

"Uh-huh," Orange grunted, propping his elbows on the step behind him.

"Well, by definition natural history and the natural sciences include only things that are observable today. Christ's miracles are not. When natural historians or scientists consider the miracles recorded in the Bible, they immediately put them in the category of something other than natural history or natural science. Therefore, they do not accept them as data pertinent to their field of study--so, obviously, we don't find them there. We don't conclude that dinosaurs never existed simply because we don't find any at the zoo. The zoo is a collection of living animals, not extinct ones. If we are going to determine whether or not miracles existed as recorded in the Bible, we must ask ourselves if it is reasonable for those events to have happened at that time."

"You mean the Bible doesn't say there are supposed to be miracles today?" Orange asked.

"First, we have to define what we mean by miracles," Jay suggested. "The Bible says God answers prayer and gives direction to the lives of those who seek Him. If we call those things miracles, then God does miracles today. But suppose we define miracles as events contrary to the nature of our three-dimensional universe--like walking on water and crossing the Red Sea on dry land. The Bible nowhere says that you and I should expect to see these in our daily lives. Most of the people in Bible times didn't see any of those events either."

By this time they had attracted an audience. Six or eight people had gathered around just to listen in. Some sat on the empty steps below. Others leaned on the wooden railing. One guy even walked between Orange and Jay, though it seemed to Jay there was plenty of room to go around, and positioned himself on one of the steps above them. Jay felt a little like a Christian facing a lion in the arena of ancient Rome. Orange was well aware of the fact that he was now on stage, but that did not slow him up at all.

"I have people tell me that they see miracles every day," Orange continued. "They talk about he birth of a baby and the beauty of a flower, and then conclude that the whole world is full of miracles. That seems dishonest to me. They are avoiding the real issue. If those things are examples of what they mean by miracles, then they don't believe in miracles any more than I do. Isn't it being deceptive to say you believe in the supernatural miracles of the Bible and then prove it by telling me about babies and flowers?"

"Oh, yes," Jay agreed. "There are two ways to destroy the concept of miracles. One is to say there are no such things. The other is to say everything is a miracle. If everything is a miracle, then nothing is. So the real question becomes, 'Is it reasonable for contrary-to-nature events to have occurred or not?' "

"If there is a God," Jay continued, "then He can do miracles. A supernatural being is capable of supernatural activity. If you don't believe there is a God, then maybe we should talk about that first."

"No. I want to hear your answer to the miracles question," Orange decided. "Let's assume there is some sort of God and go from there."

"All right," Jay continued. "The word miracle, in one sense, is a relative term. A miracle for one type of being might not be a miracle for another."

"So what you are saying," Orange concluded, "is that if there is another type of being beyond man in the universe, then he could do things that would seem miraculous to us."

"Exactly," Jay continued. "And not only that, but if that being were an infinite creator, it would be 'natural' for Him to command dimensions far beyond the there we observe. That would make very reasonable the occurrence of events that are miraculous to us."

The question of miracles is much more crucial for Christianity than for the non-Christian religions. In other faiths, miracles can be disbelieved without affecting the message of the religion itself. In Christianity that is not the case. "If Christ has not been raised," Paul explains, "your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17). If there were no such things as miracles, the other world religions would remain essentially unchanged. But Christ's resurrection requires a Christian's belief in miracles.

Contrary-to-nature events are central to establishing Christianity as true. If there are no such things as miracles, then there was no resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and Christianity is a waste of time. In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis writes, "All the essentials of Hinduism would, I think, remain unimpaired if you subtracted the miraculous, and the same is almost true of Muhammadanism, but you cannot do that with Christianity. It is precisely the story of a great Miracle. A naturalistic Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian."¹

During their brief discussion, Orange asked five different questions:

Orange essentially wanted to know why God does not perform more miracles--assuming that, if He did, there would be more believers. But the purpose of miracles is not to produce faith. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the Bible says some believed. But it also says, "the chief priests took counsel that they might put Lazarus to death also; because on account of him many of the Jews were going away, and were believing in Jesus" (John 12:10-11). Acts 4:16-17 records that the same thing happened when Peter and John healed the lame beggar. Jesus Himself said, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets [that is, the Bible], neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead" (Luke 16:31).

If someone is willing to decide to believe, then a miracle could help him decide more quickly or easily. Lighter fluid may help your charcoal burn more readily. But lighter fluid will not start the fire. And if someone is predisposed not to believe, then no amount of miracles will create faith.

The reason God provided miracles was to authenticate that a particular message or messenger was indeed from Himself. After the author of Hebrews wrote, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" he went on to say, "After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will" (Hebrews 2:3-4). The miracles verified that the great message of salvation was indeed from God.

Science and history deal with that which is "natural" to our universe as we observe it today. Miracles are not natural; so by definition they are not part of the study of natural science or natural history. As Jay mentioned, the occurrence of miracles does not depend on our observing them in nature, any more than the existence of dinosaurs depends on our observing them at the zoo. The question is, If we had scientifically recorded facts and history as we observed the life of Jesus of Nazareth, would we have observed what the eyewitnesses of that day claimed to have seen? The question is not, Do you see dinosaurs today? But rather, Would you have seen them then?

The Bible does not claim that all people, whether they lived in Bible times or are alive today, should expect to observe contrary-to-nature events. The fact that something happened does not mean it ought to happen to everyone. God does not expect all of us to cross the Red Sea on dry land like the Israelites or walk on water like Peter did. For that matter, most of the people living in Bible times and places did not see any miracles either. Actually, miracles were most prominent at three points in history: the times of Moses and the children of Israel, Elijah and the prophets, and Christ and the apostles. But even at those periods, most of the people (even the ones who genuinely believed in God) never saw any miracles.

People commonly refer to wonders of nature as "miracles." But that only confuses the issue by using two different meanings for the word "miracle." Saying everything is a miracle destroys the concept of miracles as effectively as saying there are no such things. Certainly, there are wonders of nature that cause us to marvel at God's handiwork. But those are natural not supernatural. The Bible also describes some events that are beyond the nature we observe every day. Those are supernatural. When we say we believe in miracles and then refer to the birth of a baby or the beauty of a flower, we are illustrating the supernatural with the natural--thus denying the existence of anything beyond the natural.

How miracles happened was the final question Jay and Orange considered. The answer, of course, is that they were the normal act of a supernatural being. What is unreasonable for a human being in a three-dimensional universe might be commonplace to a creator controlling more than three dimensions.

An example comes to mind form my old days as a math teacher. Much of mathematics is designed around two dimensions instead of three. Let's call it flatland. Imagine a place like a flat tabletop, except spread out all over the room and beyond. If I, a three-dimensional being, took a bowling ball and passed it through the plane, the even would appear as several miracles to the flatlanders. First, a dot would appear. Then it would become a circle. It would get bigger, and then smaller, as I passed the ball through the plane. Finally, it would make a dot again and then disappear. Now flatlanders know dots cannot appear from nowhere. They do not become circles and then dots again by themselves. What is their explanation? It was a miracle. But if they understand that I exist in a dimension beyond theirs, what happened is not unreasonable. In the same way, if there is an all-sovereign, creating God controlling all the dimensions beyond the three we live in, it would be reasonable for Him to penetrate our world with the miraculous events described in the Bible.

A word of caution is in order here. In answering the question about miracles, it is crucial to maintain a truly biblical viewpoint. Many try to get the Bible off the hook by explaining away the miracles in some way other than supernatural occurrences. Some try to say the stories of Adam and Eve or Jonah and the whale are myths rather than actual historical events. Or they may claim that the wind blew the Red Sea back in a spot shallow enough for the Israelites to cross. That kind of thinking is clearly in conflict with the plain, normal interpretation of the Scriptures. More understanding of our three-dimensional universe may unravel some of the reasoning behind the wonders of nature, but it will never give natural explanations for the supernatural events recorded in the Bible.

Then there are some who believe God is performing supernatural events today, and they mention that to the unbeliever. The problem is, those events are probably outside the experience of the unbeliever asking about miracles. All it does, therefore, is widen the communication gap between the two of you. Besides that, present-day miracles are not the real issue. Person needs to receive Jesus Christ as his or her God and Savior; and that message comes from the Bible, not form today's activity. Therefore it is the Bible, not current events, with which an unbeliever must deal as his source of truth. A defense of modern experience adds nothing to that.

What is my advice? Do not apologize for the Bible as understood in a normal sense. Do not add modern miracles to dazzle your unbelieving friends with your experience. Just "make a defense" (1 Peter 3:15) for the truth God's Word contains.

The group of people that gathered around Jay and Orange began to ask both of them questions. Before long what had been a personal discussion became a public forum, which continued until it was time to go. Jay had only a short time to talk with Orange alone just before they left. Orange was still a long way from Christ, but he said he had thought that question through much more clearly than before. Many people like him come to Christ when they have the opportunity to "reason" with someone concerning the truth of the Word of God (see Acts 17:2-4).

^[1.]  C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 83.