Dan King is now preaching for the Locust St. Church of Christ in Mt. Pleasant, TN. Contact him at danielhking@hotmail.com.

In the biblical era it was not easy for people to make the distinction between someone who only claimed to speak for God in His name and that person who genuinely did so. This is one of those things that explains the need for miraculous signs in the Bible. After all, a claim is simply a collection of words if it cannot be backed up with appropriate action. In the case of someone who said that God was speaking through him, and that his words were those of deity, he had better “have the goods,” so to speak, or else his boast would have been dismissed summarily.

Anyone could make such a claim. Only that one who could demonstrate divine favor and privilege was worthy of a careful hearing. The Lord gave stern warning in regard to such things in the Torah, recognizing that there would be times when men would speak presumptuously in the name of the Lord when in fact the message was from their own heart and not from the mind of God (Deut. 18:20-22). The genuine prophet spoke the truth and predicted what would actually come to pass; the false prophet had no such ability. Moreover, the one whose lips revealed the Word of God was given wonderful abilities, at times quite beyond those of normal people, in order to certify that their words were not simply their own.

One documented case of this fact of spiritual reality, and there are very many recorded in the Bible, is revealed in the life of the prophet Elijah. The Lord told Elijah to find refuge in the home of a widow in the town of Zarephath near Sidon, since Ahab and his wife, Queen Jezebel, sought to kill him, and he stayed there for a considerable time. It is interesting to note that his stay began with a miracle, a cruse of oil and a bin of flour that were never exhausted while the awful drought raged on all around them and people starved for lack of something to eat. The widow’s household persisted through its worst days on account of that miraculous food source. It seems that his stay there, while pleasant, overall was pretty uneventful.

But after a time the widow’s young son fell ill and stopped breathing. She was panic stricken. She ran to the prophet and said, “What have I to do with you, O man of God? Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to kill my son?” (1 Kings 17:18). Apparently she thought that God was visiting her past sins upon her now that she lived in the presence of this man of deep faith and obvious righteousness. So Elijah took the boy to his room and prayed that the boy’s spirit might return to him. Whereupon, the Scripture says, “Then the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived” (v. 22). His deep faith in God and his dedication to believing prayer made all of the difference. The widow’s son was restored to life.

When Elijah presented the healthy young man to his grieving mother, she was aghast with the recognition of the sort of man this was who was living in her house. Clearly when she had brought her son’s lifeless body to the prophet it was not with any thought that he might be able to bring him back to life once more. Therefore she responded, “Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is the truth” (v. 24). The miracle itself, of course, was wonderful. But she looked beyond the sign and perceived the implications of what she had witnessed. It testified to the genuineness of the divine message he proclaimed. He was no mere miracle worker. He was a prophet of the Lord. And his words were more than simply authentic. They were the truth. God was speaking by his mouth and his proclamations were altogether true. The miracle proved to be an apt testimonial to their verity.

Now there is a powerful message for people of every age in this simple observation made by this kindly widow from Zarephath. And quite often it is missed even by people who are otherwise very astute in their analysis of Sacred Scripture. The miracle itself was a wonderful thing. It changed this humble woman’s present as well as her future. Her broken heart was filled with joy at the sight of her living son. But the truth which Elijah spoke, and, for that matter, all of the genuine prophets of the Lord in the Bible, was of much greater moment than the passing significance of a single miracle.

Thus, it ought to be observed that biblical miracles had the force of demonstrating the true nature of the speeches of the apostles and prophets in the Word of God. They did not derive from the fertile imaginations of mere mortal men, but they were crafted in the heart of God. The lips and pens of these human spokesmen were the auditory and literary means God used to communicate His thoughts and ideas to those for whom He wished to deliver some parcel of truth. Miracles fortified their speeches and writings. But these signs and wonders must never be permitted to detract from or divert attention away from them. The Word of God was the main course. It ought then always to be the whole center of attention. This simple widow from Zarephath understood this important truth when she was presented with her breathing boy.

And so the resultant message expressed by these men of God from the biblical era was not appropriately to be classed in the category of myth, legend, or even simple story-telling as a good many ‘moderns’ have proposed. As Peter declared, “We have not followed cunningly devised fables…” (2 Pet. 1:16). The Apostle spoke these words in the affirmation that he had not been led astray from the truth, as some no doubt asserted, but had heard with his own ears the voice of God from heaven and had seen with his own eyes the Lord’s miraculous transfiguration on the mountain many years before.

Moreover, while the stories themselves happened in real history, and are thus historical in nature, that does not even mean that they are merely historical in their essence. They represent something that is quite beyond mere history. The historical record frames the divine revelation in space and time. There is something here that is far more important than the re-telling of history. It was, in fact, God speaking His own thoughts and words to that generation, and through them, to every generation that should follow theirs. The miracle supplemented the message. It established it as real and thus authoritative.

But the soul of the matter was not the miraculous attestation of the message. It was the message itself. The message was the heart of the matter. And it still is. It was truth then and it is still truth now. It was not man’s, but God’s truth then, and it still is today. Do not miss this simple, but profound, distinction. Concentration upon any miracle of the Bible must not be permitted to divert our attention away from the proclamation it was intended to support and attest. It is God who is speaking in the prophets and His message is forever true and valid. His words should mold our lives and, if permitted to do so, are thus capable of altering our whole way of life and change the direction we are going as we make our daily decisions.

Moreover, it has the ultimate potential to change eternity itself for us. Good things, amazing things, unimaginably wonderful things lie ahead for us if we will but hear God’s words and obey them. As that widow’s perspective changed from mourning to exhilaration, our way of seeing things can also be converted from depression and sadness in the here and now to jubilation and triumph in the future. But such a revision of things is only possible where and when “the word of the Lord” is seen as she saw it that day, as “the truth,” and then is acted upon as such.