General Providence, Special Providence and Miracles

"God's providence is his continuous activity of preserving and governing the whole of creation by his wisdom and goodness and power, for the fulfillment of his eternal purpose and for the glory of his name." So writes Dr. Jack Cottrell in his book, God the Ruler (page 14). Then Dr. Cottrell continues for four hundred pages discussing the providence of God.

Providence is a wonderful subject to study for those who believe in a personal God who is doing more than just looking at the spectacle of human history unfolding. Providence touches every question one has concerning the way God maintains and rules over His creation and His creatures.

Questions concerning natural law, the purpose of creation, the purpose of Israel, the purpose believers, miracles, prayer, human free will, predestination, the will of God, and the problem of evil are all a part of a discussion of providence.

This message is limited to a discussion to three ways God is active in nature and history. Salvation, predestination, prayer, and other subjects will be discussed on another day. The subjects covered in this message are General Providence, Special Providence, and Miracles.

General Providence

Another way to express the term "general providence" is to say natural law (E. L. Mascall defined natural law as "the invariable sequence of things"). We depend on these regular predictable natural processes for our existence. God made the laws of nature and He maintains them. And for the most part, God does not intervene unless He wants to influence the thoughts and activities of His creatures.

A few months ago the news media were filled with stories of the devastation caused by hurricane "Katrina" in New Orleans, La. Some think God intervened and caused Katrina to inflict its punishment on the unbelief and disobedience of the United States. But when you look at this objectively the flooding of New Orleans was inevitable.

New Orleans was built on a plain next to the Gulf of Mexico that, over time, sank below sea level. Levees and dikes were built to hold back the waters of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Added to this is the history of hurricanes regularly passing through the Gulf and striking the shoreline from the Florida Keys on the east all the way around the shores of Central America on the west. Hurricanes contain high winds (which drive water onto the shore), lots of rain, and a low-pressure center (the "eye") in which the level of the water rises. The flooding of New Orleans was inevitable.

The apostle Paul wrote down one of the most obvious spiritual and natural laws of God's creation: "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." (Galatians 6:7) Simply put, if one sows corn, he will reap corn. He will not reap tomatoes, or potatoes or avocadoes. The one who plants corn seed will reap corn. And the harvest will not be just one kernel of corn for one corn seed planted. The harvest will be hundreds of kernels for each corn seed planted.

Reaping what you sow applies in every area of life; physically, psychologically, socially, mentally, morally, ethically, and spiritually. A friend of mine and I were talking one day about God's forgiveness. Early in his life he had sinned not only against God, but had sinned against just about everyone he knew, and in particular, he had sinned against his own body. He had been an alcoholic, he had visited prostitutes, and he was a heavy smoker. Twenty-five years before he died, he became a Christian and gradually gave up all of those sins against his body. If the Bible is true, God forgave him.

But this man still faced a harvest. He began to reap in the health of his physical body what he had sown in his youth. The operations began. Over a period of ten years practically every large artery in his body, from his heart, to his neck, to his legs and feet, was replaced with plastic tubing. Then his lungs filled with cancer. Within two years, he was dead.

Before he died when we talked about God's forgiveness and the new birth, he asked me if I thought part of God's forgiveness was that God would restore his health, too. And I told him, "I believe God forgives us our sins, but our bodies never do. The natural law still operates. You will reap what you sow."

Paul wrote, "The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." (Galatians 8-9)

So this law of sowing and reaping also works for the good, too. Given good genes, anyone who takes care of his body with good food, proper exercise, good maintenance, being safe, and avoiding foolish behaviors, will have a good chance of living a long healthy productive life if he does not become a victim of the sins of others, or a victim of a natural disaster.

One of my friends, who is a physician, at age eighty-one directs a medical mission, works as a part of the staff of a local congregation of almost two-thousand, learned to speak Spanish at age seventy, works at his clinic at least forty hours each week and has written four books in the last ten years. Again proving the natural law, you reap what you sow.

Doing the right things without wavering will result in a wonderful harvest. One fellow, who lived into his seventies and then had serious medical problems, said, "If I had known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself."

The earth continues to rotate on its axis and to revolve about the sun. Gravity still brings us back to earth, the rain still falls on the just and the unjust, the sun still shines on the just and the unjust, and electricity still flows into our homes lighting the lights. These are natural laws that operate under the general providence of God. We can use these natural laws to our advantage or ignore them at our peril.

Isaac Watts (1674-1768) wrote:

I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at His command, and all the stars obey.

I sing the good ness of the Lord that filled the earth with food;
He formed the creatures with His word and the pronounced them good.
Lord, how Thy wonders are displayed where'er I turn my eye:
If is survey the ground I tread or gaze upon the sky!

There's not a plant or flower below but makes Thy glories known;
And clouds arise and tempests blow by order from Thy throne;
While all that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care,
And everywhere that man can be, Thou, God, art present there.

Special Providence

Now we turn to Special Providence. Again I want to quote Dr. Cottrell's book, God the Ruler, page 117. "At times God's direct action bypasses his natural laws altogether and produces results that are usually called miracles. Much more often, however, God intervenes by acting upon natural laws and influencing human decisions so as to cause results that would not have occurred without the intervention but which are still within the possibilities of natural law itself and which don't violate the integrity of free will. This action is called special providence."

While general providence is the same for all people all the time, God occasionally intervenes in order to accomplish specific purposes. For example, God wanted a people who would believe in one God and through whom He could send His Son to deliver all people from the penalty of their sins. God chose Israel for this purpose. From Genesis 12 through the Gospels there is a record of God's providence directing the work Israel had been chosen to accomplish.

While there are a few miracles along the way, most of the history of Israel (about 1900 years) is marked by God's intervention in ways that are not miraculous, but which appear to be the results of general providence or natural law. The three ways God intervenes by way of His special providence are: 1) direct cause, 2) permission, and 3) prevention.

1) Direct Cause. God can and does intervene to cause things to happen. For example, in God's eternal purposes He can delay or even stop someone from doing something by simply changing weather patterns. If God decides to protect someone from getting on an airliner, that by His foreknowledge He knows is going to crash, God may cause a rain storm that causes a person to get caught in a traffic jam and miss the flight. Can we be sure that God caused the storm? No, because rainstorms are part of natural law and happen at various times in various places and people miss boarding airliners all the time.

The Bible is full of events that appear to be the result of natural law yet, the Bible says, were the results of the actions of God. God caused some rulers to rise to great heights of power, like King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. (Daniel 5:18-21) God caused plagues to be visited on His enemies. He caused a three year drought in Israel at the time of Elijah. In their old age, God enabled Elizabeth and Zechariah to have a son named John the Baptist.

God responds to our prayers sometimes by causing things to happen. In 1993 I was desperately ill with streptococcus-B blood poisoning. For seven days I laid in an intensive care unit receiving medicines and fluids while a ventilator breathed for me. At one point the doctors told my family I was only going to live a few more hours.
But then, my condition improved. Not miraculously, but ever so slowly. Over the next three days I was weaned from the ventilator and the medicines. Nine days later I returned home, weak and still suffering the effects of the illness, but alive and on the way back to health.

When I got back to church the first question I was asked was this: "Do you believe God intervened to save your life?" My answer was and is this: "I don't know. Others have been just as ill and recovered with no prayers said on their behalf. And others have had many prayers said on their behalf and died. I do appreciate all the prayers and perhaps God did intervene. But I just don't know for sure and I will not venture a guess."

When I asked my doctor what he thought was the reason I recovered, he said my recovery was due to my good health before I got sick and also, because I got to the hospital before it was too late.

I believe God intervenes directly and is the cause of many things that look like events that happen in the course of nature. Because I believe God intervenes is the reason I pray. But I am careful not to attribute to God anything that I am not convinced He is doing.

God surely cannot be credited for doing everything people claim He is doing. If He is, God is certainly on both sides of the fence. I have heard testimonies, ranging from Bible believing fundamentalist charismatics to radical progressives who do not believe the Bible is the revelation of God, credit God for things that I am sure God should not be held responsible.
I believe God causes things to happen. But I do not believe that anyone has the insight to distinguish between what is the result of natural law and what is the result of God's intervention. Whenever I hear someone say, "God is doing this or that", I sort of cringe a little bit.

2) Permission. Every person has relatively free will. By "relatively" I mean that, for the most part, every person is free choose to do anything he wants. Those choices include what he will believe, what he will do, where he will go, what he will say, what he will eat, how he will dress, etc.

Obviously there are some things a person cannot choose to do. For example, a person cannot choose to flap his arms and fly, or choose to stay under water indefinitely without some sort of breathing apparatus, or choose to see into the spirit realm, etc.

Again, along with God's permission to make choices, God also permits us to reap the results of our choices. Paul wrote, "A man reaps what he sows." (Galatians 6:7) Paul went on to say that if we make choices that please our sinful desires, then we will reap a harvest of destruction. A person who chooses to be filled with envy, greed, anger, depression, lust, gluttony, and selfish pride (the "Seven Deadly Sins") then that person will reap a life filled with all sorts of bad things.

But a person, who is living by the Spirit of God and chooses to live a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23), will generally reap a quiet peaceable life that is accomplishing the will of God. I say "generally" because we are all subject to suffer or benefit from the results of the decisions of others and to suffer or benefit from the forces of nature.

For the most part God permits us to choose the way we will live our lives. God allows us to exercise our free will up to a point. And when our choices interfere with the results God has ordained to happen, I believe God will withdraw his permission and in some way will prevent us from going through with what we have chosen to do. That brings us to prevention.

3) Prevention. The last way God intervenes, as a means of working His special providence, is prevention. God sometimes restrains us or puts obstacles in the way to prevent us from making certain choices. Like a loving parent, God pretty much allows us to make our own way through life reaping the blessings and consequences of our choices, the choices of others and of the forces of nature. But there are times God intervenes to save us from the consequences of our own decisions and the decisions of others, or from the consequences of the forces of nature.

For example, one day I was jogging along a street when I saw a nail in the middle of the road. I picked up the nail, thinking that I would save someone the grief of a flat tire. The person, who would have picked up the nail in his tire, never knew that I removed an obstacle to his happiness.

I believe that God, by His continuous activity of preserving and governing the whole of creation by His wisdom and goodness and power, is looking out for us and is constantly working to bring about our very best interests. This is the meaning of what Paul wrote in Romans 8:28: "In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Miracles

First, I think a definition of a "miracle" is in order so that you know what I am talking about. Today the word "miracle" is often misused to describe such common events as a baby being born, a near miss, recovery from illness, or a terrible sinner deciding to become a Christian. While these are wonderful events, they do not fit the Biblical meaning of the word, "miracle".

Dr. Cottrell (God the Ruler, page 260) has a concise definition of the word "miracle" as it is used in the Scriptures. "A miracle is an event which occurs outside the knowledge and control of natural law as available to the miracle worker, and which occurs purposefully within a context where it is intended to function as a sign."

In the Scripture the words "wonders" and "signs" regularly appear with the word "miracle". ("The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people." Acts 5:12) These three words (miracle, sign, wonder) taken together refer to an event that is outside the bounds of both general and special providence. When Jesus walked on the water (an event outside natural law and special providence as defined above) this event caused a sense of wonder in the witnesses (the disciples on the boat) and served as a sign that Jesus is the Son of God. As a result of the miracle the disciples said to Jesus, "Truly you are the Son of God." (Matthew 14:22-33)

Nicodemus had it right when he said to Jesus, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him." (John 3:1-3)

Here is the point of miracles. First, the primary purpose of miracles was not to help people. The primary purpose of miracles was to testify to the authenticity of the messenger and to verify the truth of the message delivered. When God, through the apostle Peter, raised Dorcas from the dead, this miracle, this demonstration of God's power (in the New Testament the Greek word for miracle is "dynamis" and is the source of the English word "dynamite"), "became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord." (Acts 9:42)

Now the big question is: Do miracles still happen today? My response is that I have never witnessed what I would call a Biblical type miracle. Yes, I have seen the sick recover (gradually) when people prayed for them, but I have never seen an event, say, when a person who is genuinely confined to a wheelchair, get up and leap into the air. Nor have I seen a dead person in a casket wake up and climb out.

I have heard stories of those whom medical doctors declared dead, "coming back to life". But I do not believe doctors are infallible in their diagnoses (Have you been to the doctor lately?). And the last time I saw a man try to walk across a tank filled with water, on his first step, he went straight to the bottom.

Does God intervene, then? Certainly. That's the reason I pray that God will intervene in the affairs of this life. But I do not believe God is intervening miraculously today as He did in New Testament times.

I believe when God answers prayer He does it through His special providence (discussed above) and that He causes things to happen to have an effect on one's decisions, or acts to prevent something from happening.

Who knows what the results are of the slightest change in the weather, or the effects just one changed cell in our bodies, or the results of driving just one mile per hour more or less, or the results of the timing of seemingly unrelated events, or where an idea comes from that suddenly pops into one's thinking? Does God cause these things to happen?

In some cases I believe He does. I am just not prepared to say specifically what God is and is not doing because special providence looks just like general providence and, for me, it is difficult to distinguish between general and special providence.

This wonderful poem written William Cowper sings of God's care for His creation and His creatures (Divine Providence).

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.
He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense but trust Him for His grace.
Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain.

Conclusion

God loves us. God cares about us. God is actively involved in the lives of His creatures and His creation. God sustains the world by His general providence. He directs the course of history by His special providence. And God, by performing miracles through Jesus and others, verified that both the messengers and their messages were from Him.

 

 

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