A God of Miracles

There’s a really great passage in Mormon 9, verses 15 to 28, about how God is a God of miracles. This chapter was actually written by Moroni, finishing his father’s record. It starts thus:

And now, all ye that have imagined up unto yourselves a god who can do no miracles, I would ask of you, have all these things passed of which I have spoken? Has the end come yet? Behold I say unto you, Nay; and God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.

Mormon 9:15

Moroni then lists a few major miracles openly available to our senses or recorded freely in scripture: the creation of the earth, the creation of man, and the miracles wrought by Jesus Christ on earth and by the apostles. His next point is that if God performed miracles in the/our past, then why would He no longer do so?

And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.

Mormon 9:19

There you have it. I love his succinct, firm argument. I’m going to draw it out a bit, to show why it’s such a strong argument.

God cannot be ‘changeable’ in how He operates with us, because He is a perfected Being. Changing would imply one of two things:

1. that He wasn’t complete, and lacked some change, which He needed, or
2. that He had regressed – become less; gone backwards and done what we do: act according to a weakness, decide to do wrong, or be lazy and not do the necessary work to do right.

Of course, as Moroni teaches, both of these options are impossible. If they did occur, then God would, obviously, no longer be God – and He cannot cease to be God. He is God because, as I pointed out, He has reached a state of perfection; completeness. There’s no more progression, no more change, needed or possible.

So, He is a God of miracles, because that is in His nature and is how He works. If He performed or gave power to others to perform miracles in any past age, then He still does – until His plan for our salvation is completed. The conditions haven’t changed. Knowing that God doesn’t live ‘in time’, as we do – not according to the time of this world, which only exists for those of us living here – makes that clearer. If He did miracles in what is ‘the past’ to us, it’s still all ‘now’ to Him. So, if He was a ‘God of miracles’ then, He still is, because it’s still ‘now’ and always to Him (in His sphere, or reckoning of time, whatever that is). Nothing has changed.

This is the argument for why God must, necessarily, be a God of miracles, from beginning to end of this world’s time. Until the Plan of Salvation has played out for this world and its inhabitants, miracles will continue, because they existed at the beginning and in the middle.

Moroni gives the real reason for why miracles might appear to have ceased, or why they might ever cease (for a time, or among a people):

And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.

Mormon 9:20

The changeable beings in the universe are… us. We are the ones who act upon our impulses, desire to do good but do not, change our minds and opinions, and are still learning. So, if anything in this situation has changed, it’s certainly not God, but people. If miracles no longer occur among a population or for an individual, or in the world at large, it’s because the faith needed for them has disappeared. An absence of miracles only exists when people no longer believe in God or miracles, and no longer live righteously enough to observe or experience them.

God has promised that those who do believe will see, perform, and experience miracles:

For behold, thus said Jesus Christ, the Son of God, unto his disciples who should tarry, yea, and also to all his disciples, in the hearing of the multitude (referring here to the visitation of the Saviour to the people in Bountiful, in the Americas, and His words to the apostles He chose there, heard by everyone gathered): Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;

And he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved…

And these signs shall follow them that believe – in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues… they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover;

And whosoever shall believe in my name, nothing doubting, unto him will I confirm all my words, even unto the ends of the earth.

Mormon 9:22-25

That last promise is unto us all: if we believe in Christ, and in His power to save, we will know that He lives, that His gospel is true, and that He will save us if we continue faithful in Him. This is the great miracle; the saving of a human soul and its exaltation in Heaven.

Moroni, finally, invites his readers – he is writing to people in our day, who have stopped believing in both God and miracles, and those who ostensibly believe in God, but not as He is – who think He does no miracles in this day – to take up the promise given then by Christ:

O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need. Doubt not, but be believing, and begin as in times of old, and come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your salvation with fear and trembling before him.

…. [A]sk not, that ye may consume it on your lusts (i.e. don’t ask for miracles in order to satiate your sinful desires – ‘prove to me’, or asking for wrong things), but ask with a firmness unshaken, that ye will yield to no tempations, but that ye will serve the true and living God.

Mormon 9:27, 28

To the people of our day, Moroni calls to abandon their skepticism about God and spiritual realities; to no longer think that they know better than the ancients, who acted ‘with fear and trembling’ before God, knowing He existed and of His power. To seek, anew, the Christ, and gain the gift of a new heart; a heart that believes and that humbles itself before God. As we each do this, miracles will continue to spread across the earth, reassuring those who do and who desire to believe, and bringing hope and relief to many.

Our God is a God of miracles. I believe Moroni (he’s a believable person), and I know it from the miracles I experience.

What miracles have you seen, and continue to see, in your life?