The church does not have a miracle problem. It has a priority problem.
Pastor Jack Hibbs made that clear while teaching from Mark 16, where Jesus commissions His disciples to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. The command is unmistakable. Proclaim the message first. The signs follow later.
“The issue is not the miracles,” Hibbs said. “The issue is the message.”
That distinction matters because Scripture never elevates supernatural experiences above biblical truth. Miracles are not the mission. They are meant to confirm it. “The word of God trumps all signs and wonders,” Hibbs said.
Hibbs rejected the idea that God has stopped performing miracles. “Does God do miracles? Yes. Is He doing them still? Yes.” But he drew a hard line between God’s sovereign work and human demands for spectacle. “If that’s your motive to pull the puppet string on God and have Him perform for you, it ain’t gonna happen.”
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The Bible, Hibbs noted, also warns that supernatural power does not automatically mean divine approval. “Oh yes, there’s false miracles,” he said, pointing to Pharaoh’s magicians who replicated Moses’ signs. The difference was not power, but authority. “Does the miracle that was performed glorify the Lord Jesus Christ and his mission, the gospel?” Hibbs asked. “If it does not exalt Jesus as Lord and Savior, Christ the King, then it’s not biblically honoring and it’s a false miracle.”
That warning carries weight in an age obsessed with experience. Hibbs cautioned that believers who chase signs while loosening their grip on doctrine are setting themselves up for deception. “If you are pursuing signs and wonders, I promise you this: you will be deceived by the deception that’s coming.”
The safeguard is not emotional discernment or spiritual intuition. It is Scripture. “Read your Bible,” Hibbs said. “Read your Bible more than anything else you do.”
Hibbs also challenged the assumption that miracles should be constant or visible on demand. Jesus Himself performed few miracles in places marked by unbelief. Power was not lacking. Receptivity was.
The most pointed moment of Hibbs’ teaching came when he reframed what believers should value most. Physical healing, he said, is never the ultimate goal. Eternal salvation is. “It’s more important for somebody to wind up in heaven than for somebody to have their eyesight healed and they wind up going to hell.”
Miracles still happen. God still heals. But the gospel remains supreme. As Hibbs put it plainly, “Miracles come and go, but the message is what matters.”
James Lasher, a seasoned writer and editor at Charisma Media, combines faith and storytelling with a background in journalism from Otterbein University and ministry experience in Guatemala and the LA Dream Center. A Marine Corps and Air Force veteran, he is the author of The Revelation of Jesus: A Common Man’s Commentary and a contributor to Charisma magazine.
