Quick Challenge Answer: What About the Miracles in Other Religions?

Christians are often accused of an unusual double standard. They say, you believe the miracles found in the Bible without question. At the same time, you will reject, or be highly skeptical of, miracle accounts from other religions like Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, etc. If you’re going to accept some miracles, don’t you have to include all the other stories as well? What about the miracles in other religions?

Why We Believe the Bible

The first important thing to establish is that we are not just arbitrarily picking and choosing the miracles we believe. There are Christians who do blindly believe everything in the Bible without asking questions, and that should be acknowledged. But the advantage of Christianity is that we have historical support for many of the miraculous claims made in the Bible. While some of the more obscure events found in scripture might not have the same level of support as something like the resurrection, they have the advantage of being in the same document. If we can trust the Bible’s claims on some miracles, it makes it easier to trust it in others. Further, if the resurrection really occurred, proving Jesus to be God, and Jesus also accepted the Old Testament and its miraculous claims as authoritative, we have even more reason to trust them.

What about the miracles in other religions though? We can’t go through individual accounts right now. However, you don’t necessarily need to examine every story to have a consistent worldview. You need to go on a case by case basis and answer two questions.

Question 1: Did the Miracle Happen

Simply put, do we have good reason or evidence to believe the miracle actually happened? Did many witnesses back it up, or was it private? Did the alleged witnesses have motivation to lie or go along with a narrative that could skew the account? Were the events documented and attested early, or were they added into the narrative centuries later as legend after anyone who could have been there was dead? Was this really a miracle or simply a con artist performing for the easily misled? Was this truly miraculous or just a really big coincidence? These questions are often tossed at the Bible, and it has managed to stand up. Not every religious story can say the same.

Question 2: Where Did the Miracle Come From?

Say the miracle passes every test and we have reason to believe it’s true. What that proves really depends on the purpose and source of the miracle. As Christians, we believe that while God is in control, there are other darker supernatural forces on this Earth. Many times throughout the Bible, such as Pharaoh’s sorcerer’s in the book of Exodus, it is made very clear that there is power to be found from sources other than God. And while we don’t want to go around seeing the Devil in everything, it would be foolish to not keep him in mind when considering supernatural events. Did the miracle have a point that serves God, or was it just a weird unexplainable phenomenon? Both could be called miracles, but only one would be from God.

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