GEN Z •MIRACLES & MARTYRDOM
I’ve fallen for so many different versions of the Prosperity Gospel, I consider myself an expert on the subject. While I knew to reject a Gospel promising luxury homes or private jets, I’ve fallen for many craftier versions.
At numerous points in history, the Church has betrayed our penchant to abandon the Gospel of Christ Crucified for a Gospel of Temporal Prosperity. And, honestly, who (but God) can blame us? Jesus was the worst salesman of all time. He preached against our biological drive for self-preservation: “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me.”[1]
Satan, on the other hand, is a master of flattery. It’s his oldest and most effective tactic.[2] Even once we discover that our lust for power and prosperity is poison, we still crave any message that accommodates that lust. We’re attracted to false hope and false prophets who cry out “peace, peace” when there is no peace.[3]
The latest Prosperity Gospel I fell for is currently very popular among my generation. I call it: The Health and Spiritual Wealth Gospel. For at least a full year, I believed with all of my heart that, if I just had enough faith, I could experience perfect physical, emotional, and spiritual health in this age—and so could everyone we minister to as believers. We could be spiritual superhumans, healing and delivering everyone that came across our paths.
Gen Z is a target audience for the Health and Spiritual Wealth Gospel, because we are legitimately experiencing a mini charismatic revival. Consistent testimonies of healings and deliverances, bold evangelism and mass repentance fill my social media feeds. Recently, I’ve heard older Western believers express an envy or longing for what God is doing in my generation. They’ve heard about miracles in Africa. Now, they’re hearing about miracles among Gen Z. Why is God not doing more miracles in their generation?
I would like to humbly submit to our readers that the uptick of supernatural encounters among Gen Z is not evidence of something going right for my generation but rather evidence of something which has gone desperately wrong. Gen Z is largely anxious, addicted, isolated, suicidal, gender-confused, demonized, and depressed to the point of despair. Young women I’ve discipled have confessed practicing actual witchcraft with their buddies at their private Christian schools. I have friends who are unironically nihilists. My generation isn’t dreading death; they’re welcoming it as a sweet release from the mental and emotional torment they experience every day.
The charismatic movement is increasingly attractive to Gen Z, because a Fear & Power Gospel preaches better to my generation than a Guilt & Innocence one. Cross-cultural missionaries often employ different emphases in their presentation of the Gospel to accommodate cultural differences within people groups.[4] Westerners tend to preach the Gospel to unbelievers as a solution to their existential dread of death or a general feeling of unworthiness or personal guilt—think Christian laying down his proverbial burden at the beginning of Pilgrim’s Progress. The focus of the Guilt & Innocence Gospel presentation is that our moral debts to God are cancelled, and we no longer need to fear punishment after death since Jesus died in our place. The Fear & Power Gospel preaches those same truths with different language.
A Fear & Power Gospel is often considered most effective for large parts of Africa and some Latin American countries. Preached rightly, the Fear & Power Gospel announces the good news of a temporal deliverance from the powers of darkness unto an ultimate eternal deliverance from everything they cause: disasters, disease, demonization, and death—all through the blood, Name, and power of Jesus. This is the Gospel presentation most often accompanied by signs, wonders, and miracles.
And this is the Gospel my generation is most likely to receive.[5] The majority of my friend and I’s testimonies begin with an actual supernatural deliverance from evil. Gen Z isn’t experiencing more miracles because we have more faith. We’re experiencing more miracles as God responds to an increase in torment—Jesus has introduced Himself to us as the One who won’t tolerate His little ones being backed into a corner by an Enemy He already defeated.
Herein lies a very important technicality: the purpose of these miracles was to introduce us to Jesus—not give us perfect emotional, mental, and physical health for the rest of our lives. That Day and that Kingdom is coming, but it has not yet arrived.
Miracles are being presented to my generation as an end-in-of-themselves and this teaching could have disastrous consequences. We’re being told we can expect and demand miracles from God if we just have enough faith. We’re being told God’s will is always to heal and deliver… every person… right now. When that’s not what happens, my generation has no answers or explanations for what went wrong. The Gospel of Emotional and Physical Wellness is pretty convincing to a young believer who just experienced a life-changing miracle—but it leads to a torrential spinout at the first unanswered prayer.
My generation needs to know miracles are impermanent and irregular in this age. The five thousand experienced hunger again. Peter’s mother-in-law got another fever. The families of Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter, and the widow’s son eventually held a second funeral for their loved one. Jesus did not heal every sick person He walked past[6] and He did not appreciate it when His people demanded a sign.[7]
Miracles are a witness of the glorious End—not an end themselves. The Bible teaches the primary purpose of miracles in this age is to “confirm…the message of His grace”[8], magnify the Name of Jesus, and promote the “the good news about the kingdom of God.”[9] It’s understandable that people would hear a ten-minute testimony and wish they too had experienced a supernatural encounter with Jesus. However, if you heard the details of the eating disorders, pornography addictions, suicidal ideation, or any of our other pre-Jesus situations, you’d probably think twice before requesting a miracle.
Jesus is the prize. If you felt personal guilt over your sins, repented, and decided to follow Jesus, you have everything because you have Him. If you experienced Jesus delivering you from darkness, repented, and decided to follow Jesus, you have everything because you have Him.
Miracles certainly reveal the character of Jesus and the trustworthiness of “He who promised”[10] a Day when “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.”[11]
However, miracles are not the goal. The primary goal of our lives in this age is to bear witness to the King and the Kingdom that’s coming. Sometimes God will use miracles to accomplish this witness; often He uses our faithfulness through suffering instead.
The spread of the Gospel throughout Rome in the 2nd and 3rd century is largely thanks to the faithfulness of believers in the face of intense suffering and persecution.[12] Early church believers ministered to their impoverished neighbors by purchasing plots to provide proper burials for their loved ones free of charge. When publicly tortured and executed, male and female martyrs displayed such serenity and courage, even the hardened hearts of the Roman public were softened:
Nero fastened the guilt [of the fire] and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace... Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths... Yet even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion... — Tacitus, Annals, Historiae, 15.44
During the Antonine Plague (165-190 AD) and Plague of Cyprian (249-262 AD), while most of the populace fled, believers rushed back in to the cities to care for the sick:
Most of our brethren were unsparing in their exceeding love and brotherly kindness. They held fast to each other and visited the sick fearlessly and ministered to them continually, serving them in Christ, and they died with them most joyfully...Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead. — Dionysius of Alexandria (quoted by Eusebius in Church History, Book 7, Ch. XXII)
These courageous, bold, Spirit-filled believers didn’t raise the dead to preach the Gospel; they buried them. They didn’t heal the sick; they died with them. And they didn’t escape persecution; they obeyed unto death.[13]
The Roman satirist Lucian of Samosata mocked the martyrs as “misguided creatures (who) start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time…which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them.”[14] Even the skeptical pagan recognized a life laid down as a witness to the Resurrection. Thus, in sickness, death, and martyrdom, the message of Christ was preached.
This, then, is how the LORD announces His Kingdom: miracles and martyrdom. And who are we to tell the Potter how to use us as the clay?[15].
The LORD is undoubtedly using miracles to make Himself known to my generation. He is triumphing in our lives and making public spectacle of our oppressors.[16] Though I’ve watched wonky theology attach itself to these legitimate encounters, my consolation is this: those forgiven much, love much.[17] We know exactly Who it was that healed and delivered us. Even if we’re temporarily shocked when He asks us to pick up our cross, to whom else shall we go? Only He has the words of life.[18] My prayer for my generation is that those who met Him in miracles will recognize Him in His suffering— “that (we) may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible (we) may attain the resurrection from the dead.”[19]
Maranatha.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.
1] Matt. 16:24, New International Version
[2] See Gen.3:5
[3] Jer. 6:14
[4] Global Frontier Missions, 3D Gospel: Guilt-Innocence, Honor-Shame, and Fear-Power Worldviews
[5] John Mark Dyer, Gen Z Fear-Power Reel
[6] See Jn. 5:3-5; Matt. 13:58
[7] See Mk. 8:12, Matt. 16:4, Lk. 11:16, 1 Cor. 1:22-24
[8] Acts 14:3, New International Version.
[9] Acts 8:12, New International Version; See also Acts 8:6, Acts 19:17.
[10] Heb. 10:23, New International Version.
[11] Rev. 21:4, New International Version.
[12] Shelley, Bruce. Church History in Plain Language, 3rd ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008.
[13] See Phil. 2:8.
[14] Lucian of Samosata. The Passing of Peregrinus. Translated by H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler. In The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Vol. 4. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 1905, p.83.
[15] See Is. 45:9
[16] See Col. 2:15
[17] See Lk. 7:47
[18] See Jn. 6:68
[19] Phil. 3:10-11, English Standard Version.
Grayson Borders is a Tennessee-based high school teacher and a member of the Editorial & Advisory Panel for THE EMMAUS TABLE. She serves on a ministry team dedicated to supporting laborers serving in the Middle East and Muslim world.