This Book in PDF - Gary North

Introduction 3life, and they usually are unexpected. Not always, however. Godpromised Israel the miracle of genetic near-perfection: no miscarriagesof man or beast in Israel, just so long as the people were covenantallyfaithful to God (Ex. 23:25-26). They knew in advance whatwas possible, but they did not obey, and they did not receive theblessing. Neither did their animals.This book deals with miracles. It also deals with run-of-the-millactivities that involve the inevitable wear and tear oflife. In the Bookof Exodus, we find a notable verse that supports the thesis of thisbook, Exodus 3:2: "And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him[Moses] in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked,and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed."Why wasn't it consumed? Because God sustained it. But itwas the oddness of a burning bush that was not being consumed thatcaught Moses' attention in the first place (Ex. 3:3). So the overcomingof entropy had its part to play in God's plan for the ages.A similar comment applies to: 1) the manna of the wildernesswhich fed the Israelites for almost four decades; 2) the daily refillingof the oil pot of the widow of Zarephath, who fed Elijah for overthree years; 3) the widow who poured oil out of a single small potthat filled a roomful of large containers; 4) Jesus' turning of waterinto wine; and 5) His feeding of thousands with a few fish and loavesof bread. Most notably, it applies to every account of resurrectionfrom the dead, especially the resurrection ofJesus Christ.IfI were to come to you and insist that as a Christian, you havean intellectual responsibility to seek to identify the constant, universal,uniformitarian "natural law" that made any or all of these miraclespossible, you would regard me as a fool. These were miracles;therefore, the normal cause-and-effect relationships of conventionalphysical science did not govern them. 3 This biblically reasonableresponse is precisely what has long angered humanistic scientists.They deny biblical miracles.The idea that these miracles ever took place was rejected by allnineteenth-century Darwinian scientists. Very few scientists haveever affirmed faith in God's miracles, and never in their scientificpapers does the subject of miracles come up. Miracles were under-3. Sometimes I wonder if we make too much of a fuss trying to find the "mechanisms"of the Genesis Flood, or how Noah could have fed the animals, or how hesqueezed them into the ark.