A miracle is nothing without it being set within an ancient and miraculous historical narrative that predicted it long beforehand. It is the miracle of prophecy in fulfillment that makes any miracle miraculous, penetrative and applicable to faith and is the top kind of miraculous kind. Jesus raising Lazarus is a miracle of prophecy before it stands on its own in credentialing Messiah. It is the messianic prophecy that can only stretch the miracle up further to where it can become profound and specially prepared for one Person. The prophetic in fulfillment directs consciousness to the author and his Revelation, the subject of all real miracles, and this especially applies to the number one miracle, the resurrection of Christ.
The scriptural evidence that someone will rise from the dead is profound, but if he only rose from the dead and it did not attest by a prior Revelation does this mean that everything he said is still true? No, not necessarily. What if this person is an agent of Satan or some rouge god? Only if this rising from the dead incorrigibly connects to a prior scriptural revelation of a God who predicted it as proof that his love and care for humanity and a proof of his existence and good nature. A revelation was given long, long ago to a future plan of redemption which is assured to be realized. In Trinitarian thought, we might say “only if that miracle as a claim of a Divine person is set within another miracle that comes from a Unified Divine Person.”
In the New Testament, the subject is Jesus and the prophets. This is its foretext and subtext. So highly did the apostles place the subject of Messianic Prophecy that they saw Jesus, it’s subject, as its Personal equivalent, the Word of God (John 1 and implied everywhere). Speaking about Jesus was inseparable from His prophetic credentials as Messiah, without which He would be a false Savior and Christianity would be but a “cleverly devised fable” (2Pe 1:16).
But we don’t like to think of it that way. Just about every scholar that has dealt with the Unpardonable Sin here says that the sin is about the Pharisees ascribing Jesus miracles to Satan, and this is an example of a sin against the Holy Spirit. But they never attempt to plumb the depths of this any deeper than resolving to something like “the unpardonable sin is the sin of saying God is who he says he is, or, denying what the Holy Spirit says is true.” Never do they attempt to resolve exactly what the Holy Spirit was in the world to do acting upon the spirit of man. What knowledge He was carrying, with what was his function in illuminating Man’s willing spirit.
They have set up the whole question in a way that forces us to look only to one or another in a conglomeration of dependent kinds of sins within its supercategory, but they don’t have a supercategory that is controlling them.
If Jim steals a car we say his crime was stealing a car. It seems right on, Jim stole a car. But no one would stop there as a complete statement on the moral depths of what Jim did if one thought morality was important. If you stopped there its some indication that you intend to give yourself and Him license to restrain his sin strictly within the particular action instead of, say, covetousness. Its as if you said, “Jim stole a car, it is what it is, a lot of theft going on in this town.” You might see his mother on the evening news saying “Jim is a good boy and just made a mistake,” or “he stole the car but he didn’t mean to do it, his father abused him as a child.” The richer moral language would be “Jim stole a car because he has a lust for material things.” Then, perhaps “Jim stole the car because he is very carnal.” Isn’t it interesting that the more history moves, the more that crime is defined as the violation of some particular law and not a moral failing? Well, when you say that the sin is the Pharisees ascribing the power of Christ to Satan, you do the same thing: you are speaking about that sin in a way that puts it open to interpretation when it should not be.
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