Miracles served a special purpose in connection with Jesus and his disciples. God foretold that the promised Messiah would be ‘a prophet like Moses.’ (Deut. 18:15-19) Since Moses performed miracles to prove that God was backing him up, the Jews expected that the Messiah would do likewise. (Ex. 4:1-9) As a result, when persons “saw the signs [Jesus] performed, they began to say: ‘This is for a certainty the prophet that was to come into the world.’” (John 6:14) Too, the miraculous powers that the disciples of Jesus displayed made it evident that God had shifted his favor from the nation of natural Israel to the Christian congregation. (Matt. 21:43) Once this fact was well established, there was no longer a need for Christians to display miraculous powers, and such powers ceased according to divine purpose.—1 Cor. 13:8-10.
Regarding enemies of Christianity, T. H. Horne remarks in An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures: “In fact, both Jews and heathens were constrained to admit them [the miracles]; though they ascribed them to various causes . . . While the facts were too recent to be disputed, Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, Julian, and other adversaries, admitted their reality, but ascribed them to magic, and denied the divine commission of him who performed them. But to whatever cause they ascribed them, their admission of the reality of these miracles is an involuntary confession that there was something [supernatural] in them.”
