CHRIST'S EARTHLY LIFE AND MIRACLES
   
In this lesson we are going to talk about the actual earthly life of 
Jesus Christ and the miracles of Jesus Christ as recorded in the word 
of God.  This series of theological studies is, of course, Bible based 
and true to the Bible and rather unique in that we take the position 
that when the Bible says one thing and scholarship says another, to 
quote Billy Sunday, "Scholarship can go plumb to the devil." That is, 
what we're dealing with primarily is what the Bible says about itself, 
not what it is presumed to teach; we are giving you what the Bible 
says about these matters.  We are not interested in giving a partial 
view or a denominational view or a halfway point of view or a biased, 
partisan point of view in these matters, but rather we are called upon 
to relate all scripture to scripture where the scriptures speak of the 
scripture.  It is quite the style these days to give half-truths and 
two-thirds truths and three-fourths truths.  We often hear people 
talking about, "What is the gospel," and then running to the Gospel of 
the Kingdom of Heaven and trying to acquaint it with the Gospel that 
Paul preached, which is nonsense.  We hear people talk about getting 
saved by Acts 2:38 when there isn't a genuine Christian or genuine 
Gentile in the chapter.  They're all Jews or Jewish proselytes.  So, 
today we have an ultimate in confusion--a maximum amount of confusion 
these days even when scripture is quoted.  This is largely due to the 
fact that the people who hear the scriptures quoted do not take the 
trouble or time to look them up and see what they have to say about 
themselves; and this, of course, should be done.  We hope in these 
lessons that you are taking time out to look up the references, and if 
you do not have time to look them up at least you will make note of 
them, then study them at your own convenience.
   
We are now dealing with Christology:  the life, person and work of the 
Lord Jesus Christ.  When we study Christology proper, we are studying 
the very center and heart of the Bible, the person and work of God's 
King Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, unto whom all power (there's your 
authority) in heaven and in earth is given.  His authority is of such 
a nature that the Bible says, "That at the name of Jesus every knee 
should bow,...every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 
to the glory of God the Father" (Phil.  2:10-11).  And we saved 
preachers have a great weight of authority on our side (and a great 
blessing on our behalf) in that, when we consider it, some day we are 
going to convert every person we preach to.  That is, we have an 
advantage when it comes to FINAL authority that unsaved preachers 
don't have and that Mohammad, Buddha and Confucius couldn't imagine.  
Mohammad, Confucius and Buddha never thought they would see the day 
when everybody in the world would be a convert to their religion, but 
we saved preachers who believe the word of God know that eventually 
(that is either here or at the Judgment Seat of Christ or at the White 
Throne Judgment) every knee shall bend, every head shall bow and every 
tongue shall confess that Buddha is not the Lord and that Mohammad is 
not the Lord and that the Rockefellers and the Kennedys are not the 
Lord and that the government is not the Lord.  "Jesus Christ is Lord, 
to the glory of God the Father." So, when we speak of matters of 
Christology--studying the life and person and work of the Lord Jesus 
Christ--we are dealing with the very heart of revelation itself, for 
God said in Matthew 17:5, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased; hear ye him." It was Jesus Christ Himself who made this 
momentous confession (or monstrous, I guess, if you are an atheist or 
agnostic) in Matthew 28:18, "All power is given unto me in heaven and 
in earth." Not even the devil can operate outside of the permissive 
will of God and power of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Not even the 
governments of this world run by people like Adolph Hitler or Nero or 
the half-diseased, half-mad emperor Tiberius could hold their 
authority without the permissive will and power of the Lord Jesus 
Christ.  "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." Or, as 
Paul so succinctly puts it in Romans 13:1, "...the powers that be are 
ordained of God."
   
Now, we shall deal with the life of Jesus Christ, the only man who 
ever lived who had four parts to His life.  First of all, He had His 
pre-incarnate state as God, existing in the Trinity.  He was before 
all things.  Colossians 1:17 tells us that "he is before all things," 
he is the head of all things, "by him all things consist" and all 
things were created by Him, visible or invisible, whether they be 
thrones, principalities or powers.  They were created by Him and for 
Him and He is before all things and He is head over all things.  In 
His pre-incarnate state the Lord Jesus Christ was back in the confines 
of eternity with God the Father.
   
In the second part of His life He was born of a virgin, begotten as a 
"Son of man" with two natures.  He lived on this earth a sinless life 
and died a sinless death.
   
In the third part of His life, after rising from the dead, He 
inhabited the bodies of millions of believers in the person of the 
Holy Spirit (who is said to be the "Lord," 2 Cor.  3:17), who came to 
testify and magnify Jesus Christ Himself (John 15 and 16) and who 
guides and leads them into all truth.
   
In the fourth part of His life He will return to this earth as King of 
kings and Lord of lords, as the King Messiah, and He will sit down in 
the Davidic, Messianic, Jewish throne of a political kingdom in 
Palestine.
   
This makes the Lord Jesus Christ "Superman" (not "superstar," in the 
ultimate sense, in the sense that no bionic man or woman could ever 
possibly be).  Before creation's morning, back in the confines of 
eternity, He was the greatest Creator who ever lived, the greatest 
Artist who ever lived, and the greatest Musician who ever lived.  His 
creation manifested His works.  Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the 
glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Before His 
incarnate existence He was the greatest Writer who ever lived, having 
written thirty-nine Old Testament books by twenty-four different 
authors through a period of 1500 years on three different continents.  
When He came to earth and walked upon this earth He was the greatest 
Doctor who ever lived, healing without splints, compresses, oxygen 
tents or hospitals.  He was the greatest Preacher who ever lived.  He 
said in Luke 11:32, "A greater than Jonas is here." He was also the 
greatest Lover who ever lived, loving us and giving Himself to die for 
our sins.  When we were enemies of God, we were reconciled by the 
death of His Son.  He was also the greatest Soldier who ever lived.  
Keitel and Guderian and Montgomery and Model and Rommel and Eisenhower 
and General Patton and MacArthur and J.E.B.  Stuart and Jackson and 
Charlemagne and Napoleon couldn't hold a candle to Him.  He went 
through thirty-three years of His life knowing He was going to face a 
miserable death at the hands of torturers.  Knowing that He was going 
to die a brutal, cruel death on the cross, He set His face "like a 
flint to go to Jerusalem" and never swerved to the right hand or to 
the left hand until the day they nailed Him up.  You talk about 
"enduring hardness as a good soldier," brother, that's it!
   
Then He arose from the dead.  In this present age He is the greatest 
Teacher who ever lived, being able to teach and to guide "into all 
truth." He is the greatest Detective who ever lived, the Holy Spirit 
being able to track down any sinner and tree him and bring him under 
the bond of the covenant and find out his sin and convict him of sin, 
righteousness and judgment.  In this present dispensation He is also 
the greatest Politician who ever lived.  He opens doors that 
politicians can't open, and He closes doors so that nobody can open 
them.
   
Then, some day Jesus Christ will come back to this earth as King of 
kings and Lord of lords.  And, when He comes back He will be the 
greatest King who ever lived--the greatest Monarch and the greatest 
Dictator the world has ever seen, ruling this earth with a rod of 
iron.  The Bible says of this time, "For the earth shall be filled 
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the 
sea" (Hab.  2:14).  The small piece of territory that Genghis Khan and 
Tamerlane and Baibars and Kublai Khan and Charlemagne and Napoleon and 
Adolph Hitler had carved out for themselves really will not amount to 
a great deal.  When the Lord Jesus Christ comes back, Asia, Africa, 
Europe, North, Central and South America, the Arctic, the Antarctic 
and the "islands of the sea" will be subject to His name.
   
Now, the birth of Jesus Christ on this earth (in the second part of 
His life) was by the virgin Mary and it is recorded in Matthew and 
Luke and is prophesied in Genesis 3:15.  He was circumcised at the age 
of eight days, as recorded in Luke 2:21, according to the 
prescriptions of the Jewish law which is called "the law of the Lord." 
Mary, recognizing the fact that she was a sinner and needed to have a 
purification for her sins, went down to the temple in Luke 2:21,22 and 
offered a purification for her sins, as a sinner.  This was the law of 
God (Lev.  12), which is said to be the "law of the Lord" in Luke 2, 
showing that Mary plainly confessed that she was a sinner exactly like 
anybody else and offered a purification for her sins at the 
circumcision of her child in Luke 2:21,22.  Jesus was then taken to 
the temple at Jerusalem when he was twelve years of age, Luke 2:41-48.  
The early years of His life were spent as a carpenter in Nazareth, 
Mark 6:3.
   
Of course, the twelve silent years of His life have been mimicked and 
made fun of and parodied by a number of writers in what we call the 
"pseudepigrapha," the so-called writings of the "lost books of the 
Bible," which are not books of the Bible at all.  They are false 
writings in which people profess to know something about the twelve 
years of Jesus growing up as a child.  We must remember that the 
silences of God are as inspired as what He has to say and the 
omissions in the Bible are just as inspired as its additions; where 
the Holy Spirit is silent He intended to be silent for a reason.  For 
this reason twelve years of Jesus Christ's life were passed over in 
silence and from then on (from the time He was twelve until eighteen 
years later, when He appears publicly at the ministry of John the 
Baptist) nothing is said more than is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and 
John.  We may theorize about these matters and let the imagination 
wander and dream up various types of fancies, but the Holy Spirit has 
chosen to keep silent regarding these years of Christ's life, and 
where God is silent let all the earth be silent before Him.
   
Jesus began His earthly ministry around Judea, Samaria and Galilee, a 
period that lasted about six months.  He was baptized by John the 
Baptist, and immediately following His baptism He was driven into the 
wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
   
His first miracle was performed at Cana of Galilee, John 2:1-11; His 
second miracle, the healing of the nobleman's son, was performed in 
Capernaum, John 4:46-54.  Now, these are the first recorded miracles 
performed in this Galilean ministry.
   
The second stage of Jesus' ministry covered a period of six to eight 
months in Capernaum and Galilee where He performed miracles, healed 
the sick and preached the gospel.
   
The third stage of His earthly life is what we call the "later 
Galilean ministry," lasting about a year, in and around Galilee; 
crowds followed Him and He preached the Sermon on the Mount there (the 
material recorded in Matthew 5, 6 and 7).
   
In the next stage of His ministry the Pharisees hounded Him up and 
down the country to seek His life while Jesus traveled around 
Capernaum, Phoenicia, Bethsaida, Caesarea Philippi, and finally 
reentered Galilee.
   
In the last six months we find Him preaching, teaching and traveling 
in a Judean ministry; the last week, on Palm Sunday, we have the last 
supper near Gethsemene, the trials of the Pharisees, Herod and Pilate, 
and His death by the cross.  Three days later, according to prophecy, 
Jesus arose from the dead with 500 eyewitnesses to testify to the 
facts thereof.  After forty days of eating, sleeping, talking and 
fellowshipping with the disciples, He ascended visibly and bodily into 
heaven.
   
Now, that is a very brief summary of the earthly ministry of Christ; 
and, of course, we will talk about this much more in detail when we 
get into the detailed accounts of the various passages that deal with 
the doctrines of Christ, speaking especially of the humanity of 
Christ, the sinlessness of Christ, the character of Christ, His 
teachings and commandments, and His miracles.
   
Suffice it to say that His earthly life lasted exactly thirty-three 
and one-half years with His birth coming at the Feast of Tabernacles 
in the fall, not at Christmas time.  December 25th is the birthday of 
Baal, the sun god.  Christ's birth is obviously in the fall at the 
Feast of Tabernacles when God comes to the "Tabernacle in the flesh." 
The Jews call this time of year Yom Kippur, the beginning of the new 
year.  Although their religious year begins on the first month, their 
secular year or secular calendar begins on the seventh month, between 
September and October.  This ministry then runs half a year from 
September-October to March-April and then runs through three passovers 
with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself being the fourth passover.  In 
John's Gospel you will find four feasts of the passover mentioned, you 
will find that the fourth passover, beginning around John 12, 13 and 
14, is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, clearly indicating that Christ's 
ministry began in the fall and ended in the spring, an exact period of 
forty-two months or 1260 days (three and one-half years), to match the 
three and one-half years of the great Tribulation and to match the 
forty-two months that the Antichrist will preach on this earth in 
Revelation 13.
   

   
Miracles Of Christ
   
Now, about the miracles of Jesus.  A miracle is the setting aside of a 
lower law by a higher law.  Lower laws are the natural physical laws 
of earth and nature which unsaved men have to abide by; only God can 
do things contrary to these laws, although modern scientists like to 
play God.  A typical "playgod" or "let's play God today" is the 
sending of rockets up into heaven and overcoming the law of gravity by 
setting in motion a higher law, the law of propulsion--you see?  In 
plainer words, what scientists profess to have found (and like to 
discuss) they like to call "miracles;" consequently, when they read in 
the Bible of a genuine miracle, they like to pretend that "it was 
merely a scientific phenomenon" that the poor, dumb, stupid people of 
the first century didn't understand and that if they had been as smart 
as we are (oh, yes, baby, there is a lot that goes on in the colleges 
these days) they would have understood it.  Now, to do this the 
unsaved scientists and Bible revisors have gone back in the Bible and 
made hash of it by enforcing their stupidity on the words of the Holy 
Spirit.
   
Some of these stupid scientists and educators have tried to tell us 
that Moses didn't see a bush burning--he merely saw the heat wave of 
the desert going up in front of a bush in the desert sun.  Fantastic 
egotism, wouldn't you say?  What business does a man have sitting in 
an air-conditioned room in America in the twentieth century (drinking 
Coke out of a Coke machine) talking about heat waves coming up from a 
desert bush on Sinai and instructing a man who has herded sheep on the 
backside of the desert for forty years?  It is amazing how smart some 
of these stuffed shirts think they are!
   
Then we have these educated idiots who say that Jonah couldn't have 
been swallowed by a whale because a whale's stomach isn't big enough 
or its throat isn't big enough, etc., etc., after failing to tell you 
that the eminent whale authority, Charles Bell Emerson, has already 
given case after case after case where bodies have been recovered from 
the stomachs of whales and even sharks, and some of them were still 
alive.  I mean, there is nothing like education to make a fool out of 
you along some lines!   
Then we have these educated idiots talking about Jesus walking on the 
water.  They say that He wasn't really walking on the water; He was 
just walking on ice floes and He was stepping from ice cake to ice 
cake.  You see?  Which brings up an interesting question--Why wouldn't 
a commercial fisherman who had worked in Galilee for more than twenty 
years know you could do that if you could do it?  And even a more 
interesting question--How do you start walking from ice cake to ice 
cake when the wind is boisterous and the waves and the wind are 
interfering with the walk?  That is some ice cake you have there, 
sonny!
   
So, we always have these educated idiots in any decade who think that 
twenty years of formal education equips them to speak intelligently.  
Many of these deluded fools think that Jesus Christ merely swooned 
when He went into the tomb and then revived later...which brings us to 
some interesting problems:  If he revived, how did He unwrap the 
bandages from around Himself when He was wrapped up like a mummy, 
dummy?  This also brings up another interesting problem:  How did He 
get out of the tomb if He was so weak He had already swooned from loss 
of blood?  Yes, there are all kinds of things going on--there's always 
just a little problem (an oldie but goodie!) for every man who thinks 
he's smart enough to correct God.
   
Now, miracles occur by setting aside a lower law with a higher law.  
For example, my watch runs clockwise, which should go without 
explanation.  It runs left to right.  However, I can pull out the stem 
in my watch and move it right to left.  I set aside a lower law by a 
higher law; that is, the creator of this watch, the designer and 
engineer, put in a built-in mechanism whereby the natural law could be 
reversed.  Now, why would anybody who knew that (and any eighth grader 
knows that) think that the Creator of the universe didn't build into 
the universe some laws that He could use to change laws that were 
already built in?  In plainer words, when the earth ceased to rotate 
or slowed in its rotation around the sun in the days of Joshua and the 
sun "stood still" and "hastened not to go down about a whole day," why 
would anybody think that if there was a designer and engineering mind 
behind it that it wouldn't create the mechanism with built-in laws 
that could reverse the mechanism, unless he was intellectually 
dishonest or irrational or just plain stupid?
   
So, we see that a miracle in the Bible is a normal thing for the 
Author of the Bible, who is the Author of the miracle.  If Jesus truly 
performed miracles, then He was "God manifest in the flesh"; that is 
why scientists are anxious to prove that He didn't really perform 
miracles--He just fooled folks.  The Lord Jesus performed miracles, 
not to show off or to entertain, but to prove His deity and to cause 
men to believe upon Him, His message and His person.
   
Read John 2:11 and John 20:31.  Jesus performed credible miracles over 
nature.  He stilled a tempest.  You don't have a meteorologist in the 
twentieth century who can do that.  He calmed the wind and water 
(Matt.  8:26).  Did anybody do it in the Johnstown flood?  Let me see 
you stop a tidal wave moving at 400 miles an hour!  He even walked on 
the water (Matt.  14:25), which is one of the most commonly 
disbelieved miracles in the Bible and a constant object and source of 
ridicule for people who like to say a fellow thinks he is God and 
always draw cartoons of him walking on the water.  You have no idea of 
the things involved in walking on the water because there is more 
water over your head out of this solar system than there is in both 
the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans; and some of you folks are going 
to have to walk on the water someday.  Did you know that?  There is 
always more in the Bible than meets the eye.
   
Jesus performed miracles over devils, Mark 5:12,13.  When the natural 
man tries to do it, he has to bring out a wooden cross or a silver 
cross and go through some mumbo jumbo.  The Lord just tells them to 
get out.  Jesus performed miracles over diseases.
   
In Mark 6 He healed people who had no faith.  The modern healer cannot 
perform a miracle so he keeps saying, "Only believe, release your 
faith, turn your faith loose." Jesus performed miracles on people who 
didn't believe, Mark 6:1-6; and while He healed them He marveled at 
their unbelief.  That isn't all!  He performed miracles over lepers 
and lame people.  He caused the dumb to hear, fevers to depart, and 
the eyes of the blind to be opened.  The cases that He healed were 
public demonstrations without an organ or a tent or lights or a 
"buildup" or a collection.
   
Jesus performed miracles over death.  He raised the dead, contrary to 
all human law which says that a dead person must stay dead.  He didn't 
go into the hospital and rub somebody's heart that had had a 
cataleptic fit.  He didn't go into the hospital and rub somebody's 
heart and get it going again after they were in a coma and then say 
the fellow "rose from the dead." He would go out in the graveyard, 
son, where they had been down in the dirt for days and pull them out 
of there.  He wasn't like these healers who go around saying, "Jesus 
Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever," and then they claim 
they raised somebody from the dead because they got a little baby boy 
breathing again who had quit breathing for two hours.  No, never mind 
the professional showman stuff.  Jesus Christ would go out in the 
graveyard Wednesday and pull a corpse out of the grave that had been 
buried Sunday morning.  Have you seen anybody try that one lately, 
honey?
   
Have you seen anybody put any ears back on?  Do you remember in the 
Garden of Gethsemene when Jesus was attacked and Peter pulled out a 
sword and cut off Malchus' ear and Christ touched the ear and it came 
back on the stump?  Do you remember that one?  I'll bet you haven't 
seen that from your favorite faith healers lately, now have you?  
Don't get mad!  Where is your sense of humor?  Our Lord's miracles 
were restrained and are completely believable.  His miracles were 
performed openly and in the presence of many witnesses and recorded by 
divine inspiration with no tricks attached to them.
   
The life of Jesus Christ on this earth can be summarized in the words 
of Acts 10:38, He "...went about doing good, and healing all that were 
oppressed of the devil; for God was with him." The Lord Jesus left the 
Christian an example that he should follow in His suffering and 
affliction, for Simon Peter says in I Peter 2:21, "For even hereunto 
were ye called:  because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an 
example, that ye should follow his steps." We are to walk as Christ 
walked, I John 2:6.  Jesus came to do God's will, so it is our 
business to find out what the will of God is and to do it, too.  The 
will of God for the Christian in this dispensation is found mainly in 
the Pauline Epistles, and if you want to know what the will of God is 
for your life give Romans 12:18 your prayerful attention.  The will of 
God for the Christian in this life is given to the greatest Christian 
who ever lived, the greatest follower of Christ, the apostle Paul; and 
Paul said these things were given to him that he might be "a pattern 
to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting" (I 
Tim.  1:16).