I indicated in a previous post that I would look at why Christ's miracles showed Him to be the Son of God. The reason for posting on this is because Christopher Hitchens has stated, in his usual dogmatic way, that even if the miracles and the resurrection did happen it would prove nothing about Jesus being the Son of God because others in the Bible performed miracles and were raised from the dead.
Hitchens misses the point again by not realising that the miracles were a confirmation of the authority of the message the miracle worker was proclaiming, and therefore if someone was claiming to be the Son of God and He was lying then God would not approve that person with a miracle (see Acts 2 v 22-24; 10 v 38-43; John 14 v 11; 20 v 30-31). The apostles never claimed to be divine, but they claimed Jesus of Nazareth was, and God vindicated those claims before the Jews by miracles, indicating this was the long-promised Messiah, the prophesied Saviour.
The resurrection was the ultimate miracle, and again was God vindicating His Son. Other people who were raised from the dead had not claimed equality with God, or presented themselves as the only way of salvation. Jesus of Nazareth did, and so the resurrection is God's "Amen" to those claims.
So what is the message that the miracles authenticated? That Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, and He is the Saviour that you urgently need (Acts 4 v 10-12) - that's the big deal about miracles.
