Was That Thunder?
W. Carl Ketcherside
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One of the really intriguing incidents in the life of Jesus took place the day he rode an ass into Jerusalem and the populace turned out to wave palm fronds and scatter them in his path, while yelling, "Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel who comes in the name of the Lord!" It may get to you a little when you realize that a few days later some of the same ones were yelling "Crucify him!" But you should not be too cynical. It is always that way. It is the nature of mobs to crown you one week and crucify you the next.
One thing that heightened the excitement on that Sunday was the fact that several people who had been present when Lazarus was summoned from the grave still wrapped in his shroud, were in town, and buttonholing everyone on the street, telling them what had happened. This honed the curiosity of the folks to an edge as sharp as a razor, and they were elbowing their way into good vantage points from which they could get a firsthand glimpse of the wonder worker.
Then something strange happened. A group of Greeks who had turned up in the city for the feast looked for Philip and said to him very politely, "Sir, we would like to have a look at Jesus." This probably unsettled Philip a little so he consulted with Andrew and the two of them personally relayed the request to Jesus. The result was electrifying. Realizing the importance of the desire of these "other sheep" Jesus pointed out again the necessity and imminence of his death and subsequent glorification.
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Immediately, according to John, a voice spoke from heaven, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again." The people who heard it were at once divided in sentiment "Some said that it thundered; others said, An angel spoke to him." Times have not changed a lot. On the university campus I'm constantly in contact with brilliant young men and women who can't tell the difference between God speaking and thunder.
Of course the real problem is that a lot of humanistic thinkers do not believe in the supernatural and they have to scramble around to come up with a naturalistic occurrence to explain what took place instead of a miracle. And some of the explanations drummed up are farther out than miracles. You really have to have a lot of faith to go for them!
Even William Barclay, whose background material for the word of God is fantastic, weakens a little bit when confronted with some of the signs that Jesus did, and injects for optional consideration some of the screwball ideas which have been bandied around by theologians whose faith is as weak as their explanations.
A good illustration is the case of the feeding of the five thousand with one hamburger bun for each thousand and a couple of sardines. It is asked if it is logical to believe that people like this would set out without taking food, and it is suggested they all had a pretty ample lunch stashed away in their haversacks. But they were selfish and did not want to get it out lest they might have to share with the others. However, when Jesus began to pass around the meager supply of food which he had cadged from a little kid on the fringe of the crowd, everyone got ashamed and hauled out his provisions, and it turned out they all had more than enough to eat after all.
As Barclay points out, if this explanation is accepted it "was not the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fishes; it was the miracle of the changing of selfish people into generous people at the touch of Christ. It was the miracle of the birth of love in grudging hearts." This sounds very beautiful and I am all for changing selfish people, but I do not think for a minute it is what happened here. If it was I doubt that all four of the gospel writers would have recorded it.
Barclay writes that if there was an actual multiplication of loaves and fishes it would be hard to understand. He is correct, but I think that the outstanding expositor overlooks one thing. The miracles of Jesus were happenings. They were matters of fact, and can only be interpreted in the light of evidence or testimony of eyewitnesses. Facts need not be understood in order to accept the testimony. We are not called upon to explain them but to weigh the evidence. It is correctly said that "Facts are stubborn things." A fact does not depend for its validity upon whether or not anyone can explain it, or whether or not anyone believes it. Belief of a fact may change a man, but disbelief of a man does not change a fact.
I have been saying for years that no one living today can deny the miracles of Jesus. In order to do that one would have had to be present at the time to see whether it happened or did not. All he can do now is to question the veracity of the account of the witnesses, and to do that he must either show they were not present, or, if they were present, they did not have adequate opportunity to know what transpired. Failing this, he must prove they were incompetent because governed by some ulterior motive or were wholly untrustworthy in character. Simply saying you do not believe something happened a couple of thousand years before the earth was blessed by your coming, doesn't mean a lot if there is ample testimony from those alive at the time that it did happen.
I do not know that Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes, because I was not present for the
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Don't forget that Matthew and John were present for the occasion. They helped pass out the food. Their record was written long after the event occurred. Mark records that the disciples came to Jesus and asked him to dismiss the meeting and let the audience go because "they have nothing to eat." If it turned out that all of them had brought an oversize snack along, surely the writers would not have allowed that statement to stand for it would have been a blatant untruth.
Matthew writes that Jesus took the bread and fish, and looking up to heaven, blessed the food, "and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude, and they did all eat and were filled." Mark says, "He gave the loaves to the disciples to set before them, and the two fishes divided he among them all." Luke declares he gave the food to the disciples to set before the multitude. John writes, "He distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would."
John, who was on the scene, records an interesting sidelight. After everyone had eaten to repletion and the disciples had gathered up twelve hampers of table scraps, the people got to thinking about it all. John puts it this way, "Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world." They began to conspire to take Jesus by force and make him a king, and thus inaugurate a welfare state with free food doled out every day. It is hardly sensible they would have talked and acted in this manner if all Jesus did was to inspire them to get their sack lunches out of their knapsacks.
The next day the whole bunch showed up on the other side of the lake to remind Jesus that Moses had fed their fathers every day for forty years while he had just supplied food for one day. They cleverly inserted a couple of questions. "What sign do you contemplate doing so we can see it and believe in you? What do you intend to work?" The intimation was that if Jesus wanted to be thought of as being as great as Moses he would have to put them on a free food stamp program for at least forty years. Jesus was not fooled. He said, "You didn't look me up because you witnessed the miracles but because you filled your stomachs with the bread I supplied."
The problem with the one who must explain every act of Jesus in natural terms is not with miracles but with the nature of God. His primary unbelief is not related to miracles but to Deity. I hold that God is omnipotent and all things are possible unto him. I do not need to sit around contriving natural explanations. If the power of God is not supernatural it is not the power of God. So when God speaks I do not flim-flam myself into thinking it merely thundered.
All testimony must be confirmed to be rendered credible. Human testimony is confirmed by natural means, while supernatural testimony is confirmed by supernatural means. Miracles did not make Jesus the Son of God. They merely acted as substantiating proofs that he was what he claimed to me. I am absolutely convinced by the life he lived and the words he spoke that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe the miracles for Jesus' sake as well as believing in Jesus for the miracles' sake.
I am pledged to Jesus fully, completely and unreservedly. He is my everything. He is my all. Anyone who tries to weaken my faith in Jesus is wasting his time and mine. I am joined to the Lord
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