Again, I’m curious as to your take on the back-and-forth when Moses and Aaron go before Pharaoh. It’s presumably the power of the Almighty that turns a stick into a snake – at which point Pharaoh has assorted ‘miracle workers’ respond by turning sticks into snakes likewise. And then comes water turning into blood, the feat we’re told is the In This Thou Shalt Know That I Am The LORD signifier – which promptly gets followed by a quick “the magicians of Egypt did in like manner”. And ditto for then whipping up a duplicate plague of frogs, even.
And then, for some mysterious reason, Pharaoh’s guys admit they can’t match the sand-into-lice bit. But ignore that last part for a moment: were the prior responses counterfeit miracles? Who powered those, and why?
Well, then, wouldn’t that be a fine brisk answer for the OP? Whenever someone pulls off a seeming miracle, just figure it was Satan unless God gets the credit.
(Out of curiosity, is there a Sunday-school answer for why Satan stopped powering the effects right when “sand-into-lice” came into play? Is it that he can’t do tricks with sand, or lice, or that he could’ve kept going plague-for-plague but decided he’d done enough, or that God was only putting up with it for a while and for some reason waited until then to block the guy behind the scenes?)
My take:
God turns the Pharaoh’s stick into a snake because one of God’s ‘small children’ has unknowingly given his power up to Pharaoh and Pharaoh gets to use it.
The world system is build on a pyramid of power where the person at the top (pharaoh in this case) rules because he has all those underneath him who hold him up. Pharaoh gets to use all the ‘spiritual’ power that is contained in his pyramid. After all Pharaoh was worshiped as a god though it was not any spiritual power of Pharaohs that he was using (or minimal)
On the lowest level of any pyramid are the ones who bear the entire weight of the structure and in general are the weakest in this world, yet they are the strongest in the power of God. These are the ones that God works through, but the power structures try very hard for these people from realizing who they are.
In the case of Moses and Pharaoh (the same story is with Elijah and Jezebel BTW) what you have is the children of God (the peasants of Egypt) unknowingly serving Pharaoh, because they don’t know any better (the worldly powers have preventing them from knowing who they are). They are the ones who empower Pharaoh’s magicians because they give that level of power to them. The magicians are preforming counterfeit miracles, in that they are real miracles, but it is not them who are doing it.
When Pharaoh needs some magic done, God hears the hearts of the peasants, who are God’s children, and because God wants to comfort His children, and give some sense of order that His children need at that stage of their lives, He allows the magic and their mis-belief that the magicians have the power.
Though after a while God needs to set His children free from the bottom of that pyramid, when He is ready He can withdraw the power from the pyramid hierarchy and give it to another. This total withdrawal can been seen in the above mentioned Elijah vs. Jezebel with the competition of Gods (Jehovah vs Baal)
I’ve seen more than one answer. One common answer is that the gnats from dust gag was an act of actual creation rather than transformation (the distinction here is fuzzy as to why the bugs were being “created,” but not the frogs or snakes), and that Satan can’t create life. Another common answer is that God had just had enough and decided to squelch the sorcerers’ powers to make his point loud and clear. Another explanation is the sorcerers knew they would not be able to avoid being afflicted by the lice themselves, so simply chose to “take a dive” in the fight with God and pretend they couldn’t do it.
So how would you answer someone who said, “Why figure Jesus was performing miracles because he was the Son of God? What if he was merely charismatic enough to get empowered by his followers, working ever-more-impressive ‘spiritual’ feats as more and more people came to see him as a god?”
Jesus came to free people from the pyramid power structure of the high priest, Jesus empowered His disciples to act as He acts. This you don’t see with the priests of the day- nor do you usually see it in conventional modern Christianity priests and ministers. Jesus did not come to form a pyramid but destroy it by giving the people at the bottom (‘sinners’, prostitutes and ‘tax collectors’ scriptural) their true power, recognition and identity.
So the results of what we read of Jesus speak to the tearing down of the world system and placing the lowest first.
Now you can argue that Paul started to form a pyramid, but you would not get a argument out of me on that.
Jesus, like Moses, and Elijah and many others set people free from a oppressive power structure. Those who could not free themselves.
Again, though, it wasn’t actually the Pharaoh who duplicated the stick-into-snake miracle or the water-into-blood miracle; even though you say that “Pharaoh gets to use all the ‘spiritual’ power that is contained in his pyramid. After all Pharaoh was worshiped as a god”, the wonders in question got worked by folks who ranked lower than Pharaoh in the “pyramid power structure”.
All those in service to Pharaoh are under his power. Like any good pyramid structure the person at the top does not do it all, but has those under him that do some of the work. It is necessary in building a pyramid that you have some ‘blocks’ in the middle levels to hold the top over the bottom. The higher you want to rise, the more layers you will need and the more you will separate yourself from the base. Which goes into Jesus, as He associated with the base directly, when the priests would not
That’s fine - I do that sort of thing all the time.
A point of clarification - I wasn’t attempting to use ‘reasonable’ as a derogatory reference, I was simply trying to differentiate two views.
How can the person ‘on the inside’ have any confidence in their view? I admit, this is a hang up for me. It’s not that I’m expecting certainty, it’s just if I put myself in your viewpoint I find that I am mired in skepticism. How do I know that what I believe (religious-wise) is true or simply a delusion from Satan (or Ahiriman or whomever)?
I suspect that, although there is no certainty, that some historical bedrock (as Licona likes to say) can be established. The trouble is, when we attempt to establish this historical bedrock, Christianity comes up short of other miracle claims.
In all fairness, I think that the typical western modern man’s view of the world is radically different than the ancient mans, as I’ve said throughout this thread. We no longer attribute lightning strikes to Zeus, we attribute it to natural forces.
So I’d say it is less frequent.
As to the claim about the Spanish ships, I’ve heard that too, but I have not been able to corroborate it - do you have a cite?
I’d say that in this case the agnostic is simply taking the ‘I don’t know’ stance - that’s what I mean when I say that in this thread.
I suppose the question comes down to: Why do you accept scripture?
So what are you learning from the OT/NT?
As to fakes - so someone could not fake a miracle that is similar to how you know God would act?
Why couldn’t the faith healer genuinely heal someone? (or am I misunderstanding what you are saying here?).
The prominent persons (faith healer) typically claim to be a conduit of God’s - they are not professing to be magical.
What sort of training are you referring to?
I think my problem with understanding your examples is that I don’t really have a grasp of anything concrete here. You refer to the OT/NT as a source to learn from, but I am entirely unclear what it is you are suggesting that we learn from them. I suspect it’s not a literal history-type lesson, that is not your intent (or not how I read it to be).
This criticism is one that I level at presuppositionalists all the time. It’s completely fatal to their worldview, IMO.
Yes, I suppose it could be.
But if that’s the case, then why can’t we rule out the NT under the same basis? Why does the NT get special treatment here?
People genuinely believed Vespasian had miraculous powers - some even called him the Messiah. If he could be a trick of Satans, then why could Jesus not be?
In case we’re not on the same page, that’s my exact point: I don’t see what rubric can discount other miracles without doing likewise for the NT stuff.
I’m lost here - you were saying, in answer to the OP, that someone could say ‘ah, but *those miracles *are simple tricks of Satan’.
My point in my last post was that if the hypothetical believer said that X miracles could be from Satan, then any miracle can be a trick of Satan, so why not the miracles/life of Jesus?
Personally speaking, the fact that there were other ‘miracles’ which were better attested to (such as Vespasian), yet were completely unlikely (I didn’t believe them) had a helping hand in ruining my faith.
If I couldn’t believe that the Vespasian miracle occurred, then how could I believe that Jesus did the exact same miracle? The Vespasian miracle was better sourced!
Yes, empower. Without the empowering Jesus would be another Pharaoh.
We have the scriptural account of Jesus, which defines the man we are talking about. Jesus sent out the disciples to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, etc. Jesus told them that they will do greater things then He did. Jesus also told them to go out and make disciples of all nations. Then Jesus left them to do their work, their instructions is to do as Jesus did. So in other words raise disciples to send out on their own.
The above is because I believe Jesus now lived through the disciples, so the story of the disciples is also the story of Jesus, and the process continues.
I’m not following you – in your explanation, Pharaoh is at the top, and those in service to Pharaoh have enough power to work miracles, right?
And the guys in service to Pharaoh worked miracles, right?
And the guys in service to Pharaoh did greater things than Pharaoh is recorded as doing?
So both Jesus and Pharaoh empowered guys under them, and your whole argument is therefore that the guys in service to Jesus empowered yet other miracle-workers and the guys in service to Pharaoh didn’t? Pharaoh only sets up two-steps, but Jesus goes for the three-step, and so is genuine?
I didn’t take it as derogatory, I was really trying to say you have absolutely no way to differentiate, until God teaches you a way.
All you can do is all you can be expected to do given your level of learning, so the above is a non-issue. Some of it is trial and error, you find out what works and what doesn’t What works sometimes and not others. It’s a learning process.
My own experience is yes a person can get off track for a time, but God will bring you around and use that opportunity to teach you further. If you are deluded by Satan you are diluted by Satan, and yes it happens. Just look to the people in Egypt diluted by Pharaoh, God allowed them to believe it for a time, but eventually God will call His children out.
In my own walk I worshiped the one who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, not knowing that was Satan. Now I realize that God pulled His children out of Sodom and I assume Gomorrah before Satan destroyed it. To me it is very clear in scripture, but back then it wasn’t, though it caused a apparent contradiction of a loving God.
Then perhaps Christianity is not the proper route for you, or perhaps it will inspire you to look deeper into it.
We have been taught to by a public school / government system (aka a pyramid - or world system) that opposes people realizing they are God’s children ). I’m not saying that looking at it in a scientific point of view is bad, but IMHO misses much of what it’s about.
It goes into how we can only see how our brains were taught to see. If we are taught to see things only naturally, that’s how we will see them, if we are taught to see more then that, that’s how we will see them.
Right now on our time we have had a effort to diminish the supernatural seeing and that’s what we get.
I wasn’t using it as a ‘fact’ but just to get the concept across of how some people may be able to see something that others can’t, because they haven’t been taught to - their brain can’t process it and thus ignores it. I though it would be more understandable then going into the Lord coming to Stephan as written in Acts. I find that the Native American / Spaniard example is easier to understand as it theorizes why some people can’t see things.
The question would be what is the point? If you said you flied in a plane yesterday, I would tend to accept that for what it’s worth. It is not spectacular, it is common. It is the same to me if someone said God healed someone, it’s pretty common, so no reason to dismiss it, though the question of placing one’s faith on that person or that person’s faith is different and the two should not be equated.
It’s possible that God could use that faith healer. I even gave Pharaoh a bit of credit above as some of his power may have come though Pharaoh. I was using the example of a counterfeit miracle where the faith healer doesn’t do it however.
(various sections lumped together)
So what are you learning from the OT/NT?
I think my problem with understanding your examples is that I don’t really have a grasp of anything concrete here. You refer to the OT/NT as a source to learn from, but I am entirely unclear what it is you are suggesting that we learn from them. I suspect it’s not a literal history-type lesson, that is not your intent (or not how I read it to be).
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I use the scriptures because they work for me (and I’ve been called to it), they help me define things in this world and life. In any discipline such as in careers, there are certainly books of reference to use and refer back to, in many ways the scriptures are no different for me. They are my course study books and I know where to find certain things.
The scriptures as I’ve been taught are useful among other things for building the neural pathways to see beyond what we have been taught was possible to see, thereby breaking the limitation that was discussed with the Spaniards ships and the native Americans.
What you can learn from scriptures? I really don’t know. It may or may not be your book to learn from. You may never have a deep understanding of it, you may excel at it.
Jesus empowered His disciples to take Jesus’ place, to become God’s sons (and daughters), as Jesus is - Jesus gives them equal status, Pharaoh does not. With Pharaoh it is unlikely that any one of those in the service of Pharaoh would ever be on top if Pharaoh got his way. Pharaoh would generally have one successor.