Benny Hinn has seen fit to visit Australia again. The Benny Hinn show does, however, raise for us afresh the issue of miracles. How should Christians respond to claims of miracles? Obviously, there are essentially two responses – scepticism (there is no such thing as miracles) and gullibility (Benny Hinn's miracles are all or mostly authentic and we need to believe in them).

Clearly, the Christian must reject the sceptical response. Many people will reject Benny Hinn because they reject any form of supernaturalism. Back in the eighteenth century David Hume wrote:

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.

Hence Ernest Renan's succinct comment that 'Miracles are things which never happen'.

This is to deny that God is God. The Lord chided Sarah who laughed at God's promise of a child in her old age: 'Is anything too hard for the Lord?' (Genesis 18:14). Jeremiah acknowledges this same truth when he is told that God will restore Judah after the devastation wrought by the marauding Babylonian armies (Jeremiah 32:17). Similarly, the angel Gabriel tells Mary that, although a virgin, she will give birth to the Son of God. She is a little bewil­dered but Gabriel reassures her: 'For with God nothing will be impossible' (Luke 1:37). The Christian position is not that Benny Hinn is a fraud be­cause miracles are impossible. On the contrary, 'with God all things are possible' (Matthew 19:26). Without the miraculous, there would be no Christi­anity – no creation, no crossing of the Red Sea, no shutting of the lions' mouths, no Virgin Birth, no resurrection from the dead, no Christ for he himself is the greatest miracle of all.

Does this then lock us into believing every miracle story? Not at all. Let us look at the miracle accounts in the Bible, and make some vital points:

1. Faith that feeds on miracles is treated as either weak or spurious. When people trusted in Christ because of his miracles, he did not trust them (John 2:23-25). It is a wicked and adulterous generation which seeks after signs (Matthew 12:39; 16:4). Christ never advertised public healing services. Quite the contrary, he was wary about being acclaimed as a wonder-worker (e.g. Mark 1:40-45; 5:35-43; 7:36).

2. Miracles should not be used to prove too much. Unbelievers experience miracles in both Testaments (see 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 22:50-51; John 5:1-13; 9:1-7, 24-25). Satan is able to perform signs and wonders (Exodus 7:10-12, 21-22; 8:7; Mark 13:22; 2 Thessalonians 2:9). In fact, there will be many (not just a few) professing Christian preachers who will perform signs and wonders, but who will be damned forever at the Last Day when Christ will declare to them: 'I never knew you' (Matthew 7:21-23).

3. God's people who do have true faith may enjoy miracles (Hebrews 11:33-35) or they may suffer dreadfully with no miraculous intervention by God (Hebrews 11:36-38). Paul is denied a miracle-cure for his thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7-10), and Job's faith shines all the brighter for his intense suffering.

The great B.B. Warfield believed that miracles were given solely to authen­ticate the claims of a prophet or an apostle. In the New Testament, they are the signs of an apostle (2 Corinthians 12:12), to demonstrate his unique authority. Hence, on Warfield's view, the last miracle died with the last apostle. This is an important point but it does seem unduly restrictive. I would think that there have been genuine miracles since the first century. But how anyone with an open Bible can believe that the exhibitionism of Benny Hinn has anything to do with New Testament Christianity is inexplicable. His claims fall into one of three categories:

• the false (e.g. his claim to have raised people from the dead);

• the unverifiable (e.g. sore backs or headaches);

• the psychosomatic (some people do actually experience some relief for a time).

One can only conclude that Hinn is giving genuine charlatans a bad name!