Not Every Miracle Is From God

Many people share stories of being healed after praying to a saint, visiting a grave, or worshiping at a shrine or temple. But does every miracle automatically come from God? The Bible warns us that not all signs and wonders are divine — some are deceptive. And where God does show mercy outside the church, Scripture shows a consistent shape to it, worth tracing carefully rather than assuming.

Not All Signs and Wonders Are From God

Jesus warned us about this plainly:

Matthew 24:24 (NIV) — “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

A miracle is not proof on its own. Paul said the same thing:

2 Corinthians 11:14-15 (NIV) — “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness.”

Read the second half of that carefully. Paul is not only saying a sign can be counterfeit. He is saying the person performing it can look godly. A few verses earlier he calls them “false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:13).

So the test cannot be whether the miracle worked. And it cannot be whether the person seems righteous either. Both can be imitated.

Two stories in Scripture show how this works.

Pharaoh’s Magicians

When Moses and Aaron performed signs before Pharaoh, his magicians matched them. Staffs into snakes. Water into blood. Frogs out of the river. The Bible says they “did the same things by their secret arts” (Exodus 7:11).

Notice that Scripture does not call this a trick. It does not say they fooled anyone. It says they did it.

But their power ran out. When they tried to copy the plague of gnats, they could not, and they said so themselves:

Exodus 8:18-19 (NIV) — “But when they tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not… the magicians said to Pharaoh, ‘This is the finger of God.'”

Their power was real. It was also limited, and it was not from the same place.

The Slave Girl at Philippi

In Acts 16, a slave girl followed Paul through the streets, shouting:

Acts 16:17 (NIV) — “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.”

Every word of that is true. She was advertising the gospel for free.

Paul cast the spirit out of her anyway.

Two details are worth seeing. First, her spirit made real predictions — accurate enough that her owners ran a business on it. Luke says she “earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling” (Acts 16:16). And when Paul freed her, they were furious, because their income was gone (Acts 16:19). Nobody claimed they had been cheated.

Second, what she said was correct. Paul still did not accept the help.

Put the two stories together. The magicians show that a real miracle does not prove where it came from. The slave girl shows that even true words do not prove it either. What matters is the source.

How God Reaches People Who Don’t Yet Know Him

Scripture does not teach that God only ever heals people who already believe. Several accounts show Him reaching people who had no faith yet at all. And when you line them up, a shape appears.

When There Was No One Else to Help

The man at Bethesda (John 5:1-9). He had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years. He tells Jesus, “I have no one to help me into the pool.” He does not know who Jesus is. He does not ask to be healed. Jesus heals him anyway, without being asked.

The widow at Nain (Luke 7:11-15). Her only son had died, and she had already lost her husband. In that world, that meant she had nobody left to provide for her or protect her. She does not ask Jesus for anything. Luke simply says, “when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her” — and He raised the boy.

Hagar and Ishmael (Genesis 21:14-19). Sent into the desert, the water gone, the boy crying. No ritual. No prayer recorded. Just: “God heard the boy crying.”

Malchus (Luke 22:50-51). This one is the hardest to explain away. When the mob came to arrest Jesus, Peter drew a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Jesus healed him. He healed the man who had come to arrest Him, in the middle of being arrested. No faith. No request. No sympathy for Jesus at all.

The ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19). All ten were healed. Only one came back to say thank you, and Jesus asked where the other nine were. Nine men received a real healing and gave the credit to nobody.

Look at what these have in common. Long suffering, or no one left to turn to. And God moving because He saw it — not because of anything they believed or did.

When Someone Pointed Them to the Real God

Naaman (2 Kings 5). He was a wealthy army commander, not helpless by any measure — except that leprosy did not care about rank.

His healing did not come from his own gods or his own money. It came because a captured Israelite servant girl in his household spoke up: “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him” (2 Kings 5:3).

Elisha told him to wash in the Jordan seven times. Naaman was insulted and almost went home (2 Kings 5:11-12). His servants talked him into it. He obeyed, and he was healed.

Notice what actually happened there. Naaman was not healed by trying everything until something worked. He was healed after someone pointed him to the right God, and after he swallowed his pride and did what that God’s prophet said.

The Roman centurion (Matthew 8:5-13). He was an officer of the occupying army, with his own gods and his own resources. When his servant fell ill, he went to Jesus. He did not go to a temple or a shrine. And Jesus said of him, “I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”

Both men were outsiders. Both had other options. Both went to the God of Israel instead.

How Can You Tell?

So how do you tell the difference between God healing someone and a healing claimed somewhere else?

Scripture gives two tests. Neither one asks whether the healing was real.

The first test is where it sends you afterwards.

Deuteronomy 13:1-3 (NIV) — “If a prophet… appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, ‘Let us follow other gods’… you must not listen to the words of that prophet.”

Notice that God does not say the sign will fail. He allows that it may come true — and says that settles nothing. The question is not whether it worked. The question is where it points you afterwards.

The second test is what it says about Jesus.

1 John 4:1-3 (NIV) — “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God… Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”

Why Some Are Healed and Not Others

Even within these patterns, not everyone was healed. Many sick people lay at Bethesda, and Jesus healed one (John 5:3). There were many lepers in Israel in Elisha’s day, and only Naaman was cleansed. There were many widows in the famine, and Elijah was sent to one (Luke 4:25-27).

Scripture gives no formula for who receives and who does not. It says plainly that this is God’s to decide:

Romans 9:15-16 (NIV) — “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion… it does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”

Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV) — “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.'”

Romans 9 says God’s mercy isn’t owed an explanation; this verse says His reasoning operates on a level we shouldn’t expect to fully trace in the first place.

The patterns above show the shape His mercy has taken in these stories. They are not a mechanism. Why one person and not another in the same condition is not explained, and Scripture does not apologise for that.

For Those Already in Christ: A Different, Revealed Basis

For those in relationship with Christ, Scripture describes healing on different, more explicit terms — not sovereign mystery alone, but a stated basis tied to what Christ accomplished:

Isaiah 53:5 (NIV) / 1 Peter 2:24 — “by his wounds you have been healed”

— applied by Peter to believers, tied to being set free from sin.

Matthew 10:1, 8 — Jesus gives the twelve authority: “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” Notice how narrow that commission is. It is given to the twelve. And Jesus tells them exactly where to go — not to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but “to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-6). This is authority given to men He was sending out to preach.

James 5:14-15 (NIV) — “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them… the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.”

Notice that James doesn’t stop at the body. The promise sits inside a paragraph about sin and restoration — the very next verse tells believers to confess their sins to one another and pray for each other (James 5:16).

None of this is presented as something earned through ritual, sacrifice, or personal merit:

Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV) — “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith… not by works, so that no one can boast.”

So if someone believes a ritual, an offering, or a pilgrimage puts God under obligation to heal them, that is exactly the thinking Scripture rejects. Israel fell into it too, treating sacrifice as a transaction rather than a response (Isaiah 1:11-15, Micah 6:6-8).

Jesus Alone Is the Mediator

1 Timothy 2:5 (NIV) — “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.”

Hebrews 7:25 (NIV) — “Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them.”

John 14:6 (NIV) — “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus didn’t say “through saints” or “through angels.” He said through Him alone.

In the Old Testament, people were separated from God by sin and needed priests to intercede through sacrifice. When Jesus died, that changed:

Matthew 27:50-51 (NIV) — “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”

The barrier requiring an intermediary was torn down at the moment of Christ’s death.

Two passages are often raised at this point, and both deserve a straight answer.

The first is Revelation 5:8. John sees a scene in heaven:

Revelation 5:8 (NIV) — “And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.”

It is sometimes read as heavenly figures interceding for us. So it is worth walking through what the scene actually shows.

Incense standing for prayer is an old picture. David wrote, “May my prayer be set before you like incense” (Psalm 141:2). In the temple, incense was burned at the altar while the people prayed outside (Luke 1:10). The smoke rising was the picture of prayer going up to God.

Who the twenty-four elders are is debated. Some read them as the twelve tribes of Israel plus the twelve apostles — all of God’s people, old covenant and new, in one company. Others take them as angelic beings around the throne. A third view connects them to the twenty-four priestly divisions David appointed to serve in the temple (1 Chronicles 24:7-18).

That last reading fits what they are doing here. They are holding censers, and that was a priest’s job.

So the bowls hold prayers that have already been offered. They are on their way up. The elders are carrying them, the way a priest carried a censer — bringing something to God that came from somewhere else.

Nobody in the scene prays to an elder. The prayers do not begin there. They pass through.

And three chapters later, the very same thing happens:

Revelation 8:3-4 (NIV) — “Another angel… was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.”

An angel does exactly what the elders were doing. Yet no one suggests we should pray to that angel. It is the same priestly act — carrying prayers, not answering them.

The second is the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, where the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers. It is taken as evidence that the departed are aware of us and can be asked.

Read what Abraham actually says:

Luke 16:29, 31 (NIV) — “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them… If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

The request is refused. The only appeal made from the afterlife anywhere in Scripture is turned down — and the reason given is that they already have God’s word. The rich man is also in torment rather than at rest, and Abraham says a great chasm is fixed that no one crosses.

And there is no example anywhere in Scripture of a living person praying to someone who has died. Not one, in a Bible full of prayers.

When people attempted to direct reverence toward something other than God — even an angel — it was refused:

Revelation 19:10 (NIV) — “At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you… Worship God!'”

Deuteronomy 18:10-11 (NIV) — “Let no one be found among you… who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.”

The question here is simply where Scripture tells us to take our needs. And it tells us to take them straight to God, through Christ, because the way is already open.

Respecting an Image Is Still Treated as Idolatry

Exodus 20:4-5 (NIV) — “You shall not make for yourself an image… You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.”

God forbids not only worship, but bowing down. Reverence toward a representation crosses the same line, whether or not the person doing it intends “worship” in the fullest sense.

Isaiah 42:8 (NIV) — “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.”

It’s worth asking a simple question: where in the Old Testament did God’s people ever make an image of Moses, David, or Daniel to honor them? They never did — because they knew God forbade it, and because those faithful men would have been the first to refuse such honor. Nothing about God changed between the Testaments. Calling it respect rather than worship is exactly the kind of fine distinction that blurs the line God drew so clearly. And we don’t need departed saints to carry our prayers — to lean on them is to set aside the very access Christ’s sacrifice already bought.

Images of Jesus are a harder question, and Scripture does not settle it directly.

Part of the reason God forbade images was that no form had been seen:

Deuteronomy 4:15-16 (NIV) — “You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol.”

But in Christ, a form was seen. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory” (John 1:14). Paul even calls Him “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) — and the Greek word there is eikon, the ordinary word for a picture or likeness.

So Christians have disagreed about this for a long time, and this book will not pretend to settle it.

But one thing is worth noticing, whichever side you land on. The Gospels never tell us what Jesus looked like. Four accounts of His life, and not one describes His face, His height, or His hair. Whatever picture any of us carries in our head, it did not come from Scripture.

So What Do We Do With This?

Three things, and they hold together.

A miracle is not proof of God. Jesus said so, Paul said so, and God warned Israel about it before either of them.

But God is not limited either. He healed a man who did not know His name and a soldier who had spent his life worshipping someone else. He is free to show mercy to anyone He likes.

And Christ’s death removed every barrier between God and anyone who comes to Him. There is nothing in Scripture that tells us to go through a saint, an angel, or an image to reach Him.

Why God heals one person and not another in the same condition, we are not told. Scripture does not give a formula for it, and it does not owe us one.

Romans 9:15-16 (NIV) — “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy… It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”

That leaves us with something simple. Do not assume every wonder is from God. Do not assume He cannot reach someone you had written off. And take what you need directly to Him.

Last updated 25 August 2026