Miracles, Signs, Wonders, and the Word

In the course of salvation history, God, who is the ultimate miracle worker, has enabled select individuals to perform signs and wonders to demonstrate his supernatural power to deliver and to heal and thus to bring glory to himself. In Scripture, signs and wonders are clustered around three major interconnected salvation-historical periods and six key figures: (1) Moses and Israel’s exodus from Egypt; (2) the prophetic ministries of Elijah and his successor Elisha; and (3) the ministries of Jesus and his appointed representatives, the twelve apostles, and here particularly Peter and Paul. With the writing of the New Testament documents and the closing of the biblical canon, the need for miracles ceased, as God had provided definitive revelation, though God still intervenes to bless and heal in unusual ways.

Moses and the Exodus

Ironically, God enabled Moses to perform signs initially because of unbelief: the anticipated unbelief of God’s people Israel and the sustained unbelief of Pharaoh king of Egypt. God reveals himself to Moses out of the burning bush as the I AM WHO I AM and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and commissions him to deliver the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. But Moses fears the people will not believe that God actually appeared to him. So God gives Moses a staff with which he will perform various signs and wonders both to convince Israel that God indeed sent him and to prevail upon Pharaoh to let God’s people go (Ex. 4:9, 17, 28, 30).

Later, when Moses expresses concern that Pharaoh will not listen to him, God tells him,

See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh. . . . But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them. (Ex. 7:1–5)

As this passage makes clear, Moses’s signs are in reality God’s signs and wonders. And the purpose of these signs is that the Egyptians shall know that God is the Lord who delivers his people.

Still later, when multiple signs fail to accomplish their purpose, God again tells Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord” (Ex. 10:1–2).

The references to “these signs of mine” and to the signs “I [God] have done among them” again make clear that it is God who performs the signs. And again, the signs’ purpose is said to be that the Egyptians may know that he is the Lord.

Elijah and Elisha

Still in Old Testament times, we read of the ministries of the prophets Elijah (1 Kings 17–2 Kings 2) and Elisha (1 Kings 19; 2 Kings 2–9, 13). While the word “sign” is not used in the books of Kings in conjunction with the ministries of these two men of God, when people in his hometown failed to give him the respect that was due him, Jesus tells them, “But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow,” adding, “And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:25–27).

Thus it appears that Elijah and Elisha continued to manifest God’s miracle-working power in their day. In fact, both raised people from the dead, Elijah a Phoenician boy in Zarephath (1 Kings 17), Elisha the son of a Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4). Elisha also miraculously fed the hungry, foreshadowing Jesus’s feeding of the multitudes (2 Kings 4:38-44; cf. John 6:1–15).

Non-Miraculous Signs in Old Testament Times

In addition to the signs and wonders performed by Moses prior to and during the exodus, and the miracles wrought by the prophets Elijah and Elisha, the Old Testament also refers to non-miraculous prophetic signs symbolizing impending divine judgment. A classic example is the prophet Isaiah who is told by God, “Go, and loose the sackcloth from your waist and take off your sandals from your feet.” When the prophet complies and walks around naked and barefoot, the Lord declares,

As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptian captives and the Cushite exiles, both the young and the old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, the nakedness of Egypt. Then they shall be dismayed and ashamed because of Cush their hope and of Egypt their boast. And the inhabitants of this coastland will say in that day, “Behold, this is what has happened to those in whom we hoped and to whom we fled for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria! And we, how shall we escape?” (Isa. 20:3–6)

In Isaiah’s case, therefore, walking about naked and barefoot served as a sign and portent of God’s judgment on people’s misplaced trust who as a result would be carried off into exile.

Later, the prophet Ezekiel performs a series of three non-miraculous prophetic signs symbolizing the siege of Jerusalem involving taking a brick, lying on his left side, and making and eating bread (Ezekiel 4). Similarly, Jeremiah is told to break a piece of pottery and make himself straps and yoke-bars to visually convey God’s impending judgment in a series of prophetic signs (Jeremiah 19, 27–28).

Significance of Signs in the Old Testament

These examples show that while signs in Old Testament times were often miraculous (“signs and wonders”), they sometimes were not but rather involved symbolic actions that served as prophetic portents of divine judgment. Thus signs in Old Testament served to convey both God’s authority to judge and his power to deliver.

Jesus and the Apostles

Synoptic Gospels

Moving into the New Testament period, the Synoptic Gospels indicate that Jesus, when challenged by his opponents to provide a sign of his authority, replied, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:39–40). Jesus didn’t perform signs on demand. Those who persisted in unbelief would be given no sign other than Jonah’s three-day ordeal of “burial” and “resurrection” which prophetically typified Jesus’s burial and his resurrection after three days.

John

John, for his part, doubtless aware of the earlier Gospels, centers the first half of his Gospel on seven messianic signs of Jesus.[1] In this, he likely seeks to provide a counterpoint to the Synoptics by stressing that, rightly understood, all of Jesus’s miracles were in fact signs, pointing beyond themselves to Jesus’s messianic identity. To make this point, John frequently couples a striking act of Jesus with a lengthy discourse and/or an “I am” saying. For example, while the feeding of the five thousand is featured in all four Gospels, only John follows up with the “Bread of Life discourse,” identifying Jesus as the “bread from heaven,” the antitype of the manna God sent to feed the Israelites in the wilderness (John 6).

Jesus’s seven messianic signs in John reveal his fulfillment of messianic expectations: He heals the sick (4:46–54; 5:1–15); feeds the hungry (6:1–15); opens the eyes of the blind (9:1–41); and even raises the dead (11:1–44)! He is also the heavenly bridegroom (2:1–11; 3:29).

In addition, in an instance of a non-miraculous, prophetic sign of divine judgment, Jesus clears the temple, a portent of the “destruction” of the “temple” of his body—the crucifixion—and his rising from the dead after three days (2:13–22). While not everyone agrees that the temple clearing is a Johannine sign—more commonly, scholars include Jesus’s walking on the water (6:16–21); but note that this event is nowhere identified as a Johannine sign—the temple clearing fits the profile of Old Testament prophetic signs conveying God’s impending judgment perfectly (signs performed, as mentioned, by the likes of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah).

By focusing on the sign-ificant nature of Jesus’s works and deemphasizing their miraculous character, John stresses that many in Jesus’s day were wowed by the striking feats Jesus performed while missing their true significance: the fact that these powerful manifestations pointed to Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God (see esp. John’s purpose statement: 20:30–31).

It is possible to see, or even be the recipient of, Jesus’s miracles and yet to miss their true God-intended purpose. Case in point: the thirty-eight-year invalid who was healed by Jesus yet who tragically failed to recognize Jesus as the God-sent Messiah (John 5:1–15). By contrast, the man born blind who was equally healed by Jesus on a Sabbath near a pool moved from receiving physical sight to spiritual seeing, and even worship of Jesus (John 9:38).

Pointedly, in John’s Gospel, the only person performing any signs is Jesus. Conversely, while John the Baptist’s witness to Jesus was true, he didn’t perform any signs (John 10:41); neither did the disciples or anyone else. This shows that Jesus’s messianic signs are in a category of their own. They identify him, and him alone, as the Messiah and God-sent one-of-a-kind Son (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18).

The Signs’ Christocentrism

In the Bible’s Christotelic forward movement, the signs performed by Moses and Elijah/Elisha point ahead to those of Jesus, while the signs wrought by the apostles point backward to him. Similar to Moses, Jesus’s signs authenticate him as the one God sent (though Jesus is, of course, greater than Moses; cf. John 1:17). Jesus is the climax of salvation history anticipated by both Moses and the prophets (John 1:45; see also John 5:45–46).

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus, speaking to Moses and Elijah, even refers to his impending death or departure as his “exodus” (Greek exodos; Luke 9:31). Luke also depicts Jesus as the new and greater Elijah/Elisha and includes numerous parallels between their respective ministries, such as Jesus’s healing of the widow’s son in Luke 7:11–17, which mirrors Elijah’s raising of a widow’s son (1 Kings 17:17–24). In this way, Jesus marks the fulfillment of God’s previous performance of powerful signs through his appointed prophetic representatives.

The Apostles in Acts

While Luke’s Gospel narrates what Jesus began to do, its sequel, the book of Acts, chronicles what Jesus continued to do through the agency of the apostles (Acts 1:1). This was needed because the New Testament was yet to be written. In the meantime, God authenticated the apostles’ preaching of the gospel by striking signs. In particular, the apostles proclaimed far and wide that while the Jewish authorities, along with the Roman governor, had put Jesus on the cross, God vindicated him and raised him from the dead. The apostles’ proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection dominates the entire book of Acts, and thousands respond to the gospel in repentance and faith (Acts 2:41; 4:4).

God, for his part, underscored the veracity of the apostles’ message by performing countless signs and wonders through them. In the early days of the church, Peter heals a lame man, just like Jesus did before him, and people are struck by wonder and amazement (Acts 3:1–10). Later, Peter even raises a woman named Tabitha from the dead (Acts 9:40–41). In fact, Luke narrates that “many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. . . . they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed” (Acts 5:12–16).

Later, Luke reports that “God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them” (Acts 19:11–12). In the ensuing narrative, Paul raises a young man named Eutychus to life after a fatal fall from a third-story window (Acts 20:9–12). There is no doubt that God performed numerous striking miracles through the apostles in order to authenticate their preaching of the resurrected Jesus.

The Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Eras

The apostolic era marks the period following Jesus’s resurrection and ascension until the completion of the New Testament canon. The signs and wonders performed by the apostles, similar to those wrought by Jesus, marked them as God’s chosen representatives and spokespersons. They also identified them as Jesus’s true successors who were authorized to carry on his redemptive mission. The apostolic ministry also included the production of inspired holy Scriptures, new covenant documents that recounted the story of Jesus and laid out the implications of his cross-work for believers individually and for communities of believers, the church, corporately.

Once the canon was closed with the publication of the final New Testament book, the book of Revelation, the Scriptures became the abiding authoritative norm for all believers. The need for further signs and wonders effectively ceased, as any such additional miracles would only detract from the uniqueness of the person and work of Jesus and the uniqueness of the apostles’ role in forming the foundation of the church along with the apostles (Eph. 2:20).

Conclusion

In the end, as we’ve seen was the case throughout biblical times, it is not human agents but God who performs miraculous signs and wonders. This God is eternal, unchanging, and all-powerful. He can work miracles today as he did in the past. As the apostle John aptly cautions, however, we shouldn’t get sidetracked by an undue focus on the miraculous and miss that which alone matters in the final analysis: our glorious redemption in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, and the definitive revelation of God’s power and truth in him. Jesus is the incarnate Word and the one-of-a-kind Son who made the Father known (John 1:18). In this way, the incarnate Word and the written Word are forever linked in providing a way to the Father and revealing his glory effectively to those who become his spiritual sons and daughters in him by faith.

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[1] See my book, Signs of the Messiah: An Introduction to John’s Gospel (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021).

NOTE: This piece originally appeared in TableTalk 49, no. 11 (November 2025): 4-9.