Supernatural Sense & Sensibilities

J. P. Moreland’s Guide to Experiencing Miracles

In February 2005, J.  P. Moreland walked out of a church service with a terrible case of laryngitis. His throat and chest were irritated, and breathing, let alone talking, was incredibly painful. He left the church frustrated, not knowing what to do; he had no more days to take off at the university, and he had a full day of teaching scheduled for the following day. He planned to alert his secretary and cancel class, since he couldn’t speak without unbearable pain.

But as he was leaving, two church elders asked if they might pray over him. Given his emotional state, Moreland was only vaguely in tune with what they said, but as they laid hands on him, something happened. After a couple of minutes of prayer, the laryngitis left his body. He started talking to the two elders completely pain-free, and the laryngitis never returned.

The following May, he spoke at a church retreat in Seattle. After his talk, a woman told him she had seen three angels standing behind him on the stage. Initially, Moreland kindly thanked her but thought no more about it. Later that year, however, two graduate students told him that they had seen the very same angels standing behind him in class: a tall one in the middle and two shorter ones on either side. Neither student knew of Moreland’s visit to Seattle, but the message was clear. Guardian angels exist.

In 2019, Moreland spoke at a church in the Los Angeles area. While on stage, he sensed a “demonic presence” in one section of the sanctuary. Somehow, he became aware that someone in that area was planning to commit suicide. Moreland notes that he was “75 percent sure it was the Lord” who gave him that awareness. Following what he believed to be a prompting from the Holy Spirit, he relayed his convictions to the congregants and directed them to turn and lift their hands toward that section. A few months later, he learned that there indeed had been a young woman at the service who was under demonic influence. She was not a regular attendee at the church, and she had planned to commit suicide later that day. Now, she’s loving the church and seeking to grow spiritually, all because Moreland risked looking foolish and acted on what he believed to be a literally life-and-death situation.

Modern Blindness

Are these stories too outlandish for our secular sensibilities? Many people in the U.S., including Christians, would probably say yes. Moreland posits that we in the West, under the influence of the Enlightenment, have grown numb to the miraculous and have turned a blind eye to miracles and healings in our midst. Meanwhile, Christians who move to the U.S. from such places as Africa and Latin America are shocked to find that many Americans don’t believe in the supernatural or that divine intervention can occur in daily life.

In his new book, A Simple Guide to Experience Miracles: Instruction and Inspiration for Living Supernaturally in Christ (Zondervan, 2021), Dr. Moreland writes that, far from being abnormal, miraculous events are occurring all the time in every corner of the world. To use the creative phrase of C.  S. Lewis, “Aslan is on the move.”

A distinguished professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, J.  P. Moreland has for decades been conducting rigorous intellectual work that combines the keen mind of a philosopher with the gentle heart of a man who cares first and foremost about loving God and encouraging others. In A Simple Guide to Experience Miracles, he defends the viability of miracles and recounts personal encounters with the supernatural.

His hope is that the book will increase the reader’s “attachment love” for God. “We were created to function best in loving relational dependence on God, and attaching to him in love is one of the central aims of Christianity.” His goal isn’t merely to wow us with amazing stories but rather to show how such narratives reveal the heart and character of God, who wants to heal and restore the broken and the lost. God is good, and he works in miraculous ways to demonstrate his deep love for his children and for the whole world.

Moreland frames his discussion by first addressing some common questions about prayer and why prayers sometimes go unanswered. He also discusses some of the reasons Westerners are skeptical of supernatural claims. “We do absorb a naturalist view of things if we’re not careful,” he writes. “Since the 1930s  . . . the default worldview has increasingly shifted toward a more naturalistic one. We believe science tells us what is real—and indeed, all that is real, and thus the only way to know reality is through the hard sciences.”

The God Who Speaks

Admittedly, when I was growing up, I associated “miracles” with sham televangelists and faked healings in tent meetings. It was only when my sister-in-law Cierra experienced a miraculous healing that I started to reexamine my understanding of the miraculous. There was simply no other way to explain her sudden recovery.

I started to read the New Testament in a new light, and I realized just how central miracles, healings, and exorcisms were to the ministry of Jesus and to the advancement of God’s kingdom on earth. I read about the visions many Muslims have been experiencing in the Middle East, leading them to turn to the biblical God and give their lives to Christ despite the political and social risks of persecution. My own faith, which was struggling at the time, was deeply encouraged. He still speaks to those who have ears to hear.

Moreland’s book made me realize just how often I live apart from an awareness of God’s interactive presence in the world. I say I believe in God but usually live as a “functional atheist,” denying that God is working powerfully in the world around me. I forget about the miracles and wonders he’s performed in my own life and in the lives of people I know.

Rational, Vetted & Confirmed

People should read this book to be encouraged. Moreland is a highly respected philosopher, and his accounts of the miraculous have been vetted and confirmed. “I queried and got eyewitnesses and there’s just no way to explain them away,” he said. In addition to recounting stories of miracles and healings, he also discusses near-death experiences, showing how countless people have experienced post-mortem awareness and then “returned” to their bodies. These accounts, too, have been vetted and verified.

Moreland reminds us that it’s rational to believe in God, and he shows us the manifold ways God’s kingdom is advancing in the world today. Skeptics will have to decide what to do with the many credible accounts he relates, while believers can be encouraged in the knowledge that God is working miraculously across the globe.

We can also be reassured that we are called to participate in this work, in the power of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus depended on the Spirit to work miracles during his earthly ministry. Moreland believes that, far from Christ’s supernatural ministry being out of our reach, Scripture tells us his miraculous work was due to his radical dependence on the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t perform miracles to let us know that we can’t, but rather to reveal what human beings can do when fully submitted to God. This book will change the way you perceive “ordinary” reality and may well encourage you to take more risks in your own walk with Christ. As Francis Schaeffer wrote, “He is there, and he is not silent.”