In terms of sheer impact, the resurrection of Jesus Christ would find itself alone at the top. Through this miracle the power of death was broken and the works of the evil one were destroyed. Today, anyone living on this planet can step forward and receive eternal life (and millions have) because of Christ’s death and resurrection. The word ‘great’ hardly describe this miracle.

In terms of sheer cinematic effect, the parting of the Red Sea would also take a spot.  Can you imagine watching 100 of millions of litres of water suddenly displaced and open dry land appearing before your eyes stretching for miles. Charle Hestons’ movie extravaganza, The Ten Commandments, barely did this miracle justice. 

From sheer volume, Joshua’s long day would also have to be included. By sheer volume, I’m referring to the number of people who witnessed this miracle recorded in Joshua 10:12 -14. In this historical account, Joshua prayed for God to extend daylight so he could fully defeat the Amorite Kings fighting against him. Giving Joshua a few extra hours of daylight would have been tough to hide from anyone else living on the earth at that time.  And in fact, archaeologists have discovered references to this miracle among numerous people groups around the world. In North America, for example, the Aztecs and the Caulhuacan tribe of Mexico talk about an extended night. This is not a contradiction, the miracle took place in the Middle East and since North and South America are on the other side of the world, it would have been night. 

But there is another miracle that must be included on this list. Perhaps Jesus’ words in Mathew 20:16 best describe this miracle when He says that in God’s kingdom the first shall be last and the last shall be first. This miracle for all intents and purposes is considered by many as the least of the Lord’s miracles, but perhaps it was His greatest. When the Holy Spirit prodded Mark to include this miracle in his gospel record, I’m sure he asked why he had to record this miracle, when none of the other Gospel writers included it in their historical accounts of Jesus life and ministry.

And for good reason….

Many preachers have referred to this as Christ’s failed miracle. Now they don’t couch it in exactly these terms, but essentially this is what they are saying. They use the verse as proof that God heals in stages and by implication they are stating that on His first attempt Christ failed to completely heal the man. Mark, other than recording the facts of this miracle, offers no comment on what took place. I’m sure the disciples had more questions on what happened that day in Bethsaida than they had answers and secretly may have looked upon this as a less than successful miracle.  But in fact, this may have been one of Christ’s greatest miracles. Not greatest in terms of size but great because the miracle validated itself as having taken place. 

The miracle I’m referring to involves the healing of the blind man recorded in Mark 8: 22-25.  A blind man was brought to Jesus. We are not told who brought the man as the group is simply described as they. Neither do we know how long the man had been blind, though the evidence will suggest he was probably blind from birth. But that would not become evident for another 2000 or so years after the miracle took place. 

The first thing that Jesus did was to take the man by the hand and lead him out of Bethsaida away from the hustle and bustle of the crowd and the merchants crying out to sell their wares. Since there were trees around, it was possible that Jesus led the blind man into a garden located on the outskirts of the city.

Alone and surrounded only by His disciples and the people who brought the man to Him, Jesus set on the task to heal the man.

First we are told Christ spit on his eyes. Jesus then asked the man what he saw and the man replied, “I see men walking as trees.”

Jesus then put his hands on the man’s eyes and told him to look up and Mark records that the man’s eyes were restored and he could see clearly.

For centuries, preachers, scholars and theologians have wrestled with this passage to determine what exactly happened here. Most have concluded that for some reason, Jesus had only partially healed the man and needed a second attempt to complete the miracle. 

But recent evidence from the 21st century says differently!

In his book, An Anthropologist on Mars, author Oliver Slack tells the story of a 50 year old man named Virgil who -- via the miracle of modern medical science -- had his sight restored to him through an operation. Virgil had been blind since birth.

However, an interesting thing happened when the wrappings were taken off. For weeks after, Virgil struggled to see properly, and he “often felt more disabled than he had felt when he was blind…Steps posed a special hazard because all he could see was a confusion, a flat surface of parallel and criss-crossing lines; he could not see them (although he knew them) as solid objects going up or coming down in three dimensional place.”[i]

Virgil’s cat proved particularly puzzling, though he recognized its ears, tail and paws, Virgil saw them only as a collection of parts and was incapable of grouping them together to form the cat.

After weeks of learning how to see, Virgil’s wife stated, “Virgil finally put a tree together – he now knows that the trunk and leaves runs together to form a complete unit.”

This man’s ordeal with his sight displayed many of the same characteristics of the blind man of Bethsaida who could not separate the trees in the background from the people walking in front of them.

We take our sight so much for granted, but as baby we spent months learning how to see. Have you ever picked up an infant and looked him strait in the eye. For a brief moment the child seems to make eye contact, then you get this strange feeling that the baby’s eye are suddenly focussed on the lampshade behind us. Well, they probably were. The child is in the process of learning depth perception and the reason he is giggling is due the strange face he sees peering out of the lampshade.

And this is what makes the Bethsaida miracle so great. When the man said he saw men walking as trees he was simply acknowledging that he did not understand depth perception and everything was running together in one big mishmash of images and colours. Just exactly as it should have happened to a man who had just seen for the first time.

The people in Christ’s day had no cornea transplants taking place at this time, so they would not have been aware of the struggles people encounter when they receive sight in their later years -- as we were not aware until the 20th century. So when the man cried out that he saw men walking as trees, those fateful words prove that an incredible miracle had taken place. This is the only time this issue was recorded in the gospels. So why did this problem not show up in other healings of blindness. 

This is not to suggest it didn’t happen at other times, as Mathew, John and Luke both ignored this incident at Bethsaida. It is also possible that Jesus began to deal with the perception problems as the same time He healed people of their blindness. As well, the problems associated with depth perception are not as pronounced in people who had lost their sight when they were older. Many of the people Jesus healed of blindness had no doubt been blinded by the flying sand, searing sun and disease commonly associated with a desert climate.

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