The greatest miracles of all

This blog is based on articles by Frank Turek and Duane Caldwell.

Many people find it difficult to believe that miracles are possible, particularly when they are influenced by materialism.

Number one – creation

The creation of the universe out of nothing is the greatest miracle of all. Space, time and matter had a beginning out of nothing. Nature had a beginning.

The law of cause and effect says that events do not occur without causes. A more accurate version is, everything that had a beginning had a cause. Applying this to the universe gives:
– The universe had a beginning,
– Therefore, the universe had a cause.

What could have caused the universe? Whatever created nature must transcend nature.

It can only be a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and powerful moral personal intelligent Creator. From the cosmological argument (the universe had a beginning), and the teleological argument (the universe is fine-tuned to allow life to exist so it must have a fine-tuner, and life appears to be designed), and the moral argument (we know through our conscience that whatever created the universe has a moral standard), we can conclude that there is a theistic God. He created all things and sustains all things.

Things can’t create themselves because they don’t exist prior to creating! So, the physical universe can’t create itself. And gravity doesn’t create anything – it just acts on pre-existing material. And if there is a multiverse, what created that? The greatest miracle has already occurred – that is the creation of the universe out of nothing. Christians believe, that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen 1:1NIV). It’s really hard to conclude that miracles are not possible when we’re all living in a miracle!

Number two – resurrection

But have any miracles occurred since the first miracle? The next greatest miracle would be the resurrection of Jesus.

If Jesus didn’t resurrect, He would have been in a tomb. And the tomb would have been opened by the Jews and the Romans, because they didn’t want Christianity to flourish. They would have discredited Christianity by parading Jesus’ dead body around.

The Bible says, “we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:7-8). The rulers didn’t know who Jesus was. And the disciples were not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead. They didn’t really understand who Jesus was until He ascended to heaven. Then by saying that Jesus had risen from the dead they got themselves beaten, tortured, and killed. And they also abandoned many of their ancient Jewish beliefs (like animal sacrifice, the Sabbath, male circumcision, a conquering Messiah, and strict monotheism).

This miracle was predicted in the Old Testament prophecies. While they weren’t clear looking forward, they certainly are clear looking backward. In fact, the New Testament is the box top to the puzzle of Old Testament prophecy. When we look at the events of the New Testament suddenly so many of the Old Testament prophecies (like Micah 5:2, Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, and Isaiah 9) jump out and fit together to show that the Old Testament predicted the Messiah (Jesus of Nazareth). And that He would be cut off in 33 AD according to Daniel 9. That He would be a suffering servant according to Isaiah 53. That He would be born in Bethlehem according to Micah 5:2. That He would come to the temple according to Malachi 3:1. That had to happen before 70 AD because the temple was destroyed in 70 AD. But looking forward it was veiled (1 Cor 2:7-8).

Miracles by definition have to be rare if they’re going to get our attention. If miracles occurred all the time, they wouldn’t be miracles. We’d say they happen all the time, this is just natural law. The only way we could recognize a miracle as a special act of God is against the backdrop of natural laws which do the same thing over and over again. For example, everybody who dies stays dead.

Natural laws are formulated in isolated systems. But if God exists, there is no truly isolated system. He could cause other forces in addition to the normal ones. So, miracles involve an addition to natural laws  (Sarfati, 2015).

The other resurrections in the Bible are not like the resurrection of Jesus. Those people died again. But Jesus didn’t die again. Jesus got a glorified body which was indestructible. So, He’s the first fruits of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20-23).

The truth of Christianity

Only two major facts need to be established to show that Christianity is true. Number one God exists, and number two Jesus rose from the dead. If those two facts are true, the rest are details. If God exists and Jesus rose from the dead, then Christianity is true even if we can’t answer every objection to Christianity.

Seeing and believing

Many people say, “I need to see in order to believe”. But atheists believe things they haven’t seen. They believe that the universe came into existence out of nothing and by nothing. Have you ever seen anything come into existence out of nothing and by nothing? No. But they believe it. They believe the universe is fine-tuned to allow life to exist, but there was no fine-tuner. Have you seen anything designed that didn’t have a designer? They believe that life came from non-life without any intelligence. We’re using all our intelligence today to create life, and we can’t do it! Yet we’re believing that a non-intelligent process brought forth life!

And we can’t see the laws of logic. We can’t see the laws of mathematics. We don’t see our mind. We don’t see justice. We don’t see love. We don’t see gravity. We don’t see morality. But we know that all these things exist.

They have never seen animals evolve into other completely different animals. They’ve never seen macro-evolution take place. We don’t even have transitionary fossils. If macro-evolution is true, the fossil record ought to be filled with transitional forms. But we don’t see any of that. They haven’t seen the subatomic particles that make up our body. Yet we believe they exist. They haven’t seen hardly any of history and hardly any of the world and hardly any of the universe. Yet we all believe it exists.

There is a supernatural part of our world. The fact that we are thinking human beings shows that this world is not completely natural. Our thoughts are not just the result of chemical reactions in our brain. If that was the case, we could not trust our thinking to be true. Unless we believe in God we can’t believe in our thoughts and so can never use them to disbelieve in God.

If that’s the case, why can’t you believe something else that’s supernatural, like the creation of the universe or a resurrection from the dead?

We know that God exists by His effects. The creation is an effect. It had a Creator. And if space, time and matter had a beginning, then its cause must be spaceless, timeless and immaterial. The design in the universe and in life is the effect that is caused by a designer. The mortal law within us is the effect that is caused by a moral lawgiver. Our mind is an effect that is caused by an even greater mind. Rationality can’t be explained by materialism.

We didn’t see the greatest miracles, but we can see the effects of these. As a result of creation, we have a universe that can only be created by a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and powerful moral personal intelligent Creator. God’s existence is obvious from the things He has made (Rom. 1:19-20). As a result of Christ’s resurrection, we see the radical change in His disciples (the apostles) and growth of Christianity even though it was suppressed by the Roman Empire.

Evidence for worldviews

According to atheists the universe came into existence out of nothing by nothing. It’s fine-tuned by nobody to allow life to exist. There’s a multiverse out there we haven’t seen. First life came from non-life without intelligent intervention – we haven’t seen that. We haven’t seen new life forms evolve into other new life forms. In fact, all the experiments we do on it show that they can’t do that. There are natural laws, but no law giver. There are messages (like DNA), but no messengers. Yet atheists believe all those things (see Appendix A). What evidence do they have for those? None.

Conclusion

The creation of the universe out of nothing is the greatest miracle of all. This shows that God exists as a powerful creator of life. The next greatest miracle is the resurrection of Jesus. This shows that God exists as a loving savior who has power over death. These two facts are the foundation of Christianity.

Some other great miracles are mentioned in Appendix B.

We ought to have evidence for what we believe. What is the evidence you have for your worldview? And have you proven your case?

Appendix A: The atheist’s worldview

The atheistic worldview has also been summarised as follows.

1. There was nothing.
2. Without a cause, the nothing exploded and created everything—space, time, energy/matter.
3. Everything was chaos and, out of chaos with no intelligence and contrary to the second law, order was created.
4. Out of the lifeless chaos which was somehow miraculously ordered into our universe and solar system, lifeless matter did three impossible things.
   1. Created information (only intelligent beings can create information).
   2. Imposed on lifeless matter the information needed to allow the lifeless matter to live. (Material objects cannot act on immaterial entities like information so this is another impossibility.)
   3. Lifeless matter somehow became alive. (This is another impossibility. Life always comes from life. No one has ever witnessed or documented life coming from nonliving things.)
5. Somehow, the formerly dead, now living, matter miraculously acquired consciousness, language and morality among other things. These are more impossibilities for mere matter.

Atheists are asking us to believe at least six miracles, without any belief in a miracle worker.

– that something came from nothing
– that order came from chaos
– that life came from non-life
– that the personal (human beings) came from the impersonal
– that reason came from non-reason
– that morality came from matter

Appendix B: Other great miracles

Some other great miracles are the incarnation and the forgiveness of sin.

At the incarnation (see link) God became human. The Creator, became one of His creatures. About 2,000 years ago, the God of the universe became an unborn child in the womb of a young woman named Mary in the Middle East. The Bible says, “the Word became human and made His home among us” (Jn. 1:14NLT). And Jesus came “to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45).

A changed destiny is a miracle that anyone can experience (see link). Like the cripped man, our sins can be forgiven (Lk. 5:20-25). The Bible says, “to all who believed Him [Jesus Christ] and accepted Him, He gave the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12NLT).

References

Duane Caldwell, 2025, Only morons would believe in an invisible magic sky-daddy like God.
Frank Turek, 2025, HELP! I want to believe! Atheist woman shares her struggles on the quest for truth
Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, 2004, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist”, Crossway.
Sarfati J D, 2015, “The Genesis account“, Creation Book Publishers, 5-6.

Acknowledgement

The main text comes from Frank Turek and Appendix A comes from Duane Caldwell.

Posted, July 2025

Also see: The greatest miracle