One of the big things you learn early on in dispensational Bible study is that God's not performing miracles today.

"There are only three periods of time in human history where miraculous activity occurred and each one had a time duration of 60-70 years," my church's associate pastor, Alex Kurz, said in an adult Sunday school class he taught this past year. "God is never in human history randomly, arbitrarily performing miracles. When you add up all the miraculous activity, you're talking about a little over 200 years total."

Kurz said that as a norm, for a period of 2,500 years after Creation's beginnings, there were no miracles occurring.

"Obviously with Abraham there were visions, for example, but those were unique events, and when God did do something like that, to show Abraham a sign, for example, or provide Jacob that vision of the ladder, it was without human agency and it wasn't the norm," says Kurz. "You talk to other Believers and they think that is all God's doing—

God is some sort of a genie and all He does is perform all these miracles."

As Kurz points out, when history reached the times of Moses and Joshua, there was a 60-70 year period in which a concentrated flurry of miraculous phenomena occurred, with God using human agents to accomplish it.

Associated with Moses' dealings with Egypt's Pharoah, for example, are 10 recorded miracles in the Bible.

At the end of this 60-70 year stretch, God went "silent" for 500 years, and then there was a second 60-70 year cluster, ushered in by another set of individuals—Elijah and Elisha—whom God used in performing miracles.

Elijah, if you remember, was the one God used to stop the rains from falling. He was fed by ravens. He crossed the Jordan miraculously. He was transported into heaven by a chariot of fire.

Elisha was the one who "divided" the Jordan. He healed the waters. He raised someone from the dead. He healed a leper.

When these two prophets passed off the scene, God went silent again, this time for about 813 years.

The third 60-70 year cluster appears in the New Testament and is associated with Jesus Christ's earthly ministry and the earliest days of the Christian faith.

Today, in the dispensation of grace defined by the Apostle Paul's ministry, God is once again silent. The next wave of miraculous activity is to be expected in the Tribulation, during the "70^th week of Daniel," when there will be two witnesses who rise up to perform miracles.

Naturally, the question that comes up in all this is, "What's the significance to these miracle clusters?"

For Moses and Joshua, the purpose was to validate their ministries as the official spokesmen of God to the nation Israel. For 70 years, God leaves Israel without any excuse, demonstrating through Moses and Joshua that they are His means for communicating to Israel the Supreme design behind their nation's creation and their birth as a people.

In the same manner, Elijah and Elisha communicated to the nation her impending destruction. During this period, Israel had proven herself to be unfaithful.

The third cluster was, in part, the means for authenticating and validating the ministry of Christ, proving that He is the Messiah. After His death and resurrection, it was to teach Israel something about her fall and diminishing away.

"Every time, when Christ was questioned whether or not He was the Messiah, He'd say, 'Look at what I'm doing and compare it to the Book of Psalms and you'll identify from the verses the fact that I'm the messiah,' " says Kurz.

Following Christ's earthly ministry, signs and wonders were employed among the apostles to validate not only their apostleship, but the message God had entrusted with them that "the Kingdom is at hand."

"Notice all of this has a relationship to Israel—her birth, her ultimate punishment and destruction, and the offer of a kingdom and its establishment by Messiah Himself," says Kurz.

As part of this third cluster, God conducted "special miracles" by the Apostle Paul during the early stages of Paul's ministry. Acts 19:11 states, "And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul."

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"When God calls them 'special miracles,' He's not saying Paul is getting a more unique form of miracle," explains Kurz. "Paul is healing the sick just like Jesus and Peter did. God doesn't put on a show. He's not out to 'wow' or impress anybody, so to speak. . . The 'special miracles' were designed to teach something very specific. . . It has to do with teaching the specific truth God is trying to impress upon the hearer's heart. It's not just Paul trying to show off."

As Acts 14:3 explains, Paul was "granted signs and wonders" as a "testimony unto the word of his grace." His miracles were the means for Paul to prove that his yet unheard of message, about a brand-new program putting Jews and Gentiles on equal footing, was indeed, "the preaching of Christ according to the revelation of the mystery."

"What do you do when a Pharisee, or a Scribe, or a lawyer, or a Jewish teacher, approaches you and says, 'What you're saying is absolute heresy and blasphemy; there's no such message in the Word of God,' " explains Kurz. "You've got a real problem, because Paul had no Scripture to refer to to defend the fact that he's preaching the Lord's Christ in a new dispensational program. So, again, for the purpose of validating and authenticating his ministry, God says that He 'gave testimony.' If you remember from Raymond Burr, the idea of testimony is to 'bear witness to the truth.' "

A special miracle from Acts 17 has Paul blinding a rebellious Jew. "Now isn't that a fitting beginning to the dispensation of the grace of God?" says Kurz. "Isn't Israel blinded? That's Romans 11. So what better way of communicating to Israel the fact she is spiritually blind than to have the apostle of grace blind an unbelieving Jew?"

In Acts 14:8, another special miracle involves a Gentile who was "impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's womb."

"Wasn't the Gentile condition one of impotence, being crippled?" Kurz explains. "Did the Gentile ever have the spiritual capacity to walk in the Lord? No. Paul goes to the Gentile and says, 'You need my intervention to give to you a capacity to do something the Gentiles could never do previously.' This guy couldn't do it since his mother's womb. Spiritually, in history, the Gentile had no ability to walk in the ways of God. In fact, they walked contrary to the ways of God. Romans 3 tell us the state of Gentiles."

As we learn from Paul in Acts 14 and 15, some of the miracles were directed specifically at getting pagan Gentiles to see the lie of their superstitious, idol-worshipping practices.

In Acts 17:23, Paul even says to some Gentiles, "I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."

Kurz explains, "Paul healed a crippled man in front of a bunch of idol-worshipping pagans and notice what they say—they called (Paul's companion) Barnabas 'Jupiter.' That's sheer paganism, but can you blame these citizens? They didn’t have a clue. Paul told him they were superstitious and that (in times) before, God 'winked' at their behavior. Paul never quotes the first commandment, he says God understands your ignorance."

In Acts 14:15, Paul says, "We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein."

"What Paul is saying is, 'You pagans are worshipping a dead god and God is the one true living God,' " says Kurz. "The Gentiles only knew polytheism. They worshipped multiple gods. They only knew the lie. They only knew the false, dead gods of paganism. So then how do you prove to the Gentiles that your message came from the one true living God? How do they know he's the real deal and that he's not fallen from Jupiter or Mars? Paul's performing miracles so that the Gentiles would believe."

Yet another aspect of Paul's early "miracle" ministry had to do with the imparting of "gifts" to some new Believers in Corinth, all to demonstrate before the Jews in their midst that "the testimony of Christ was confirmed" in them. ( I Cor. 1:5)

These gifts given the Corinthians included gifts of visions, helps, healings, prophesying and speaking in tongues.

Paul explains in I Cor. 1:22-23, "For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness."

"Paul reminds the Corinthians why God gave to them supernatural gifts and why the ability for speaking in tongues, etc., wasn't for their own sole personal enjoyment—Hes saying, 'The Jews require a sign,' " says Kurz.

The thing is, by simply examining the immoral behavior and lifestyles of some of the new believers in Corinth, the Jews would have rejected any notion God was working in them, so the possession of supernatural gifts by the Corinthians was crucial to converting the Jews.

The Jews believed God was working in the carnal Corinthians simply because they had the gifts God intended Israel to enjoy, explains Kurz. "The Jew says, 'Why is that Corinthian next door able to do something that God said is ours?' "

With the close of the Book of Acts, comes the close of the third 60-70 year cluster of miraculous activity. It coincides with Paul's completion of his letters.

"Interestingly enough, it's only until Paul finishes writing (that it ends)," says Kurz. "From that point on, there wasn't a need for miracles to give testimony to the word of grace. God says, 'My Book gives testimony to the word.' And Paul's going to tell us that he can't do miracles anymore. Why can't he? It's not because God doesn't love the Gentiles. It's because God's not teaching anything unique any longer. It's already made known. Always remember that."

Paul tells us the Body of Christ no longer needs sign gifts or supernatural wonders because the "truth in love" produces edification unto itself. The Body of Christ is intended to edify itself and nothing else but God's finished Book.