Lots of Christians are cessationist—they don’t believe God does miracles (or big miracles) any longer. He did back in bible times; they don’t accept he still does. Sometimes they have bible verses to justify their unbelief. Sometimes they don’t, but it matters not: They don’t believe.
Why don’t they believe? It’s not the bible verses. It’s their experiences. More accurately, their lack of experience.
They don’t think it happens because they’re convinced their Christianity is a valid Christianity. (And let’s give ’em the benefit of the doubt; it probably is.) Within their Christianity, they’ve never seen an honest-to-God miracle. They’ve never been on the receiving end of one.
So they permit their theology, their interpretation of scripture, even their whole Christian lifestyle, to be based upon their missing experience. The very same folks who would be really irritated if any other Christian, in any other area, demanded, “I gotta see it to believe it,” commit the very same thing when it comes to miracles.
The folks who lack the experience tend to fall into two categories: Those who’ve experienced nothing whatsoever, and those who’ve experienced something wholly unconvincing.
The closed-minded.
I grew up in a cessationist church, and when I was there, this was what I saw: People who avoided the supernatural. Avoided it as if it was an unclean thing. Because, according to their beliefs, God doesn’t do miracles anymore—and anything which looks miraculous is, by definition, not God. Therefore devilish. Therefore flee.
So if they ever set foot in a charismatic church—unintentionally, of course—they turned right round and stepped back out. They weren’t about to stand there and see anything ungodly. Like Jesus said, fake prophets and messiahs would try to fool even God’s people, and they’d never assume they were beyond fooling. No indeed. Better safe than sorry. They were outta there.
Same deal with stumbling across any faith-healers, any tongues-speakers, any prophets, anything which violated their cessationist beliefs. Those people were false. End of discussion. They cast out demons by the power of Beelzebul, not God; the Pharisees were absolutely wrong about Jesus, but absolutely right about these holy rollers.
So of course they never experienced the supernatural: They went out of their way to avoid it.
Now, I didn’t. I knew charismatics. I wasn’t one myself, but I wasn’t anti-charismatic. The idea God still did stuff made more sense to me than the idea God stopped. I was willing to visit the Pentecostal churches, so I saw stuff. Later I experienced stuff, and became charismatic myself.
Others absolutely weren’t willing to visit the charismatics, so they saw nothing. And if all you ever hang around are anti-charismatics, your chances of seeing a miracle are far lower than average.
And if all you ever hang around are skeptical pagans—around deists who assume God would never interfere with the natural workings of the cosmos; around materialists who assume there’s no such thing as the supernatural, and every “miracle” has a scientific explanation; around naysayers who lump supernatural together with the paranormal, and say it’s all bunk—you’re in the same boat. You’re unlikely to see, and believe.
For there’s no point in God showing us anything if we won’t believe anyway. It’s why Jesus wouldn’t do on-demand miracles for doubters.
The unconvinced.
Then there are the folks who may have seen something like the supernatural. Some of them grew up charismatic. Or, like me, they weren’t anti-charismatic, and wandered into a charismatic church, and saw stuff… but they have some trouble with what they saw.
They saw illnesses get cured. But the illness wasn’t cured enough. Fr’instance some woman would get up and claim she was healed in Jesus’s name, but she sure didn’t look healed—and really she wasn’t; she was claiming to be healed “in faith,” in advance of the actual healing, because she knew it was coming. Funny thing was, God never, ever got round to confirming her assertion. She remained uncured.
Or some man would get up and claim he was healed in Jesus’s name, but it wasn’t really all that miraculous-looking an incident. It was an invisible ailment—pain before, but nothing now. Or kidneystones before, but nothing now. Or nausea before, but nothing now. No evidence this wasn’t psychosomatic to begin with. No physician’s report proving he had something before, but it was inexplicably gone.
They saw people who claimed to be prophets. But these prophets were too vague. All they ever gave were horoscope-style predictions, which could mean anything or nothing. Or they gave absolutely clear claims… which never came to pass. Like the woman who came to my church who stated before the year was out, we’d fill every seat and even have people standing in the aisles. Didn’t happen. It’s been years now; still hasn’t happened. Yet people still listen to her prophecies.
They saw tongues-speakers. And these folks were just too weird. They exhibited neither self-control, nor gentleness, nor patience. Tongues is a form of prayer, but they didn’t act like people of prayer; they acted like people who’d just escaped the nuthouse. Bluntly, there are a lot of charismatics who use people’s belief in the supernatural as their excuse to be weird for weirdness’ sake.
All the onus was on them to “just believe”—to believe really hard—that all this shady stuff was legitimately from God. Not on the healers to prove they’d really healed. Not on the prophets to prove they’d really prophesied. Not on the tongues-speakers to at least exhibit fruit of the Spirit.
In the end, they’re entirely sure all the charismatic stuff they saw was self-delusional. Not some of it; all of it. And not just in that particular church; all the churches. ’Cause they visited that church’s sister churches, and those churches were just as impotent.
They might still be open to the possibility the real thing exists. After all, God is almighty and can speak to Christians and heal us if he so desires. They won’t be so foolish as to claim the supernatural is altogether impossible. But they’ve been burned, badly. If the supernatural exists, they figure it’s rare. So rare.
Christians behaving badly.
As you can see, the reason Christians lack divine experiences is simple: They’ve met the wrong Christians. They’ve met skeptics, or they’ve met fakes. If not entirely skeptical, those Christians were at least more willing to lean into their doubts instead of stepping out in faith. If not entirely fake, those Christians were at least shirking their responsibility to hold prophets accountable and disciple the undisciplined, and permitted the charlatans to run amok and destroy faith.
If you’ve had the experience, the way to help out our cessationist sisters and brothers is simple: We gotta show them the real thing. Show them, not just tell them about it: They need an experience, not your hearsay. They need to see for themselves.
And we need to show them the real thing. Not some faith-healer with a rotten track record, nor a prophet who sometimes gets it right. If you don’t know any such miracle-workers—if you’re one of those folks who defend them, and claim, “Well, not every prophet is 100 percent”—that’s not biblical. Mistakes in the beginning of their ministry, when God’s first teaching them how to listen to him, is one thing. Mistakes when they’re no longer apprentices, when they’re supposed to be mature, when they’ve even erected a faith-healing or prophetic ministry but are still batting .400, means they’re fake. Stop following them. If these are the so-called “prophets” you embrace, I hate to tell you, but you’re one of the irresponsible Christians who are permitting sloppy supernaturalism, and helping them destroy people’s faith. Repent.
And if you’ve not had the experience: The real thing does exist. Really.
I know; you have your doubts. I don’t blame you. Frauds are everywhere. Many are simply immature but think they’re fully equipped, like a kid who thinks video games have prepared him for actual military combat. Many are true con artists, who know they can’t do a thing but know how to fake it convincingly. It’s like living in a lawless country, where there are so many counterfeiters, it’s hard to tell which money is the real thing anymore. I’m not at all telling you to turn off your doubts; keep right on testing ’em for truth. But allow the possibility the real thing is out there. (And in my experience, it’s not rare. Not at all.)
Trust the scriptures when they tell you God’s people can actually do this stuff. Keep asking God to reveal himself to you. And keep your eyes open. He’ll show you.