BIBLE RECORDS | 124 MIRACLES (122)

1. What are "Miracles"?

a) Miracles are those acts that only God can perform; usually superseding natural laws. Baker’s Dictionary of the Bible defines a miracle as “an event in the external world brought about by the immediate agency or the simple volition of God.” It goes on to add that a miracle occurs to show that the power behind it is not limited to the laws of matter or mind as it interrupts fixed natural laws. So the term supernatural applies quite accurately.

b) Miracles are also known as Signs and Wonders.

c) Here we have one of the 124 miracles recorded in the Bible.

2. Miracle 122: TONGUES—miraculous ability to SPEAK AND/OR UNDERSTAND A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (tongue) previously unknown to the speaker.  

a) Gift of Tongues.

i) Granted on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4), in fulfillment of a promise Christ had made to his disciples (Mark 16:17).

What this gift actually was has been a subject of much discussion. Some have argued that it was merely an outward sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit among the disciples, typifying his manifold gifts, and showing that salvation was to be extended to all nations. But the words of Luke (Acts 2:9) clearly show that the various peoples in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost did really hear themselves addressed in their own special language with which they were naturally acquainted (compare Joel 2:28-29).

Among the gifts of the Spirit the apostle enumerates in 1 Corinthians 12:10-14:30, “divers kinds of tongues” and the “interpretation of tongues.” This “gift” was a different manifestation of the Spirit from that on Pentecost, although it resembled it in many particulars. Tongues were to be “a sign to them that believe not.”