Can demons perform miracles?

Question 08128.

Asking whether demons perform miracles usually follows something a person has witnessed or heard about, and the question behind it is a practical one. If something extraordinary happens in a meeting, does that settle whose power is at work?

My answer is that demons perform miracles in a limited and derivative sense, and that Scripture takes their capacity seriously enough to warn us about it repeatedly. Which means the supernatural, on its own, proves nothing.

What We Mean by the Question

We need to be careful with words. If a miracle means an act of creation from nothing, or a genuine raising of the dead, then no created being can do it and the question answers itself. If a miracle means an event beyond ordinary natural explanation, then the picture is different, and asking whether demons perform miracles becomes a live question.

Scripture generally uses three words for the miraculous. There is semeion, a sign, something that points beyond itself. There is teras, a wonder, something that astonishes. And there is dunamis, a work of power. When the New Testament warns about counterfeit activity, it uses the same vocabulary it uses of God’s works, which tells us the appearance can be genuinely impressive.

So the honest position is that demons perform miracles in the sense of producing effects that observers cannot explain and would naturally attribute to God.

Pharaoh’s Magicians

The clearest Old Testament case is in Exodus. Aaron’s staff becomes a serpent, and the magicians of Egypt do the same by their secret arts. They replicate the water turned to blood and the frogs. Then, at the gnats, they fail and tell Pharaoh this is the finger of God (Exodus 8:18-19).

I take that account at face value. Something real happened, and it was not God doing it. But look at the shape of it. The imitation runs for a while and then hits a wall. Whatever the mechanism, the capacity was borrowed, partial, and quickly exhausted.

That pattern is instructive every time the question of whether demons perform miracles comes up. The counterfeit can go a certain distance. It cannot go the whole way, and it never produces what God produces.

The Man of Lawlessness and the False Prophet

The New Testament is blunt about the future. Paul writes that the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10). Revelation 13 describes the second beast making fire come down from heaven in the sight of people.

Notice that Paul calls them false signs and wonders. The falseness is not necessarily in the event but in what it certifies. A sign that points to a lie is a false sign even if the crowd genuinely saw something. That is the sense in which demons perform miracles during the Tribulation, and it is why Jesus warned that false christs and false prophets would arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect (Matthew 24:24).

My answers on the man of lawlessness and the false prophet fill in the eschatological background.

What Demons Cannot Do

The limits matter as much as the capacity. Demons are creatures. They are not omnipotent, and they cannot create. They work with a creation that already exists and with laws they did not write. When we say demons perform miracles we should mean manipulation rather than origination.

The Greek daimonion describes beings who are powerful in relation to us and negligible in relation to God. In the Gospels they are never in doubt about the balance of power. They beg, they protest, and they leave when told.

There is no biblical instance of demonic activity producing a genuine resurrection, a genuine new creation, or a genuine forgiveness of sins. The one thing the counterfeit cannot manufacture is a changed heart.

Why God Permits the Counterfeit

Deuteronomy 13 handles this with striking directness. If a prophet arises and gives a sign or a wonder, and the sign comes to pass, but he says let us go after other gods, you shall not listen. The LORD your God is testing you.

So the possibility that demons perform miracles is not a gap in God’s defences. It is a sieve. It separates those who follow God because He is God from those who follow whatever is most impressive in the room. That is uncomfortable, and it is meant to be.

It also explains why Scripture never tells us to evaluate a ministry by its power output. The test is always doctrinal and moral before it is phenomenal.

How to Test What You See

Start with content. What is being said about Jesus? John’s test is direct, which is that every spirit that confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh is from God (1 John 4:2). A ministry that produces wonders while quietly relocating Jesus from Saviour to life coach has already failed.

Then look at the fruit over time, and I mean years rather than weeks. Character, honesty about money, treatment of the weak, willingness to be corrected. Where demons perform miracles, the surrounding life eventually tells. My answers on Satan appearing as an angel of light and whether Satan performs miracles work through the same territory.

And do not be embarrassed to be slow. Scripture never rebukes anyone for testing carefully. The Bereans were commended for it.

Keeping This in Proportion

I want to guard against two overreactions. One is the assumption that any unexplained healing must be demonic, which turns believers into permanent sceptics and quietly denies that God still works. I am a continuationist, and I have no interest in explaining away what God does.

The other is the fascination that treats the question of whether demons perform miracles as an invitation to go hunting. There are not demons under every table. A great deal of what gets attributed to the enemy is showmanship, suggestion, or ordinary human enthusiasm, and no spiritual power of any kind is involved.

Sober discernment sits between the two, and it is less exciting than either.

Why Demons Perform Miracles At All

It is worth asking what the point is from the enemy’s side. Power for its own sake would be pointless. The purpose is always credibility.

Simon in Acts 8 had amazed the people of Samaria with magic, and they said of him, This man is the power of God that is called Great. Notice what the wonders had purchased, which was a religious reputation. When demons perform miracles the aim is not the event but the endorsement it seems to carry.

That is why Scripture keeps pairing signs with deception rather than with power. The lawless one comes with false signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing. The wonder is bait and the deception is the hook.

Healing, Coincidence and Honest Uncertainty

A good deal of what people bring me does not require a supernatural explanation at all. Conditions remit. Diagnoses turn out to be wrong. Bodies recover in ways medicine does not fully understand, and the recovery gets attributed to whatever happened in the room that week.

So before asking whether demons perform miracles in a given case, I would ask whether anything unexplained actually happened. That is not cynicism. It is the ordinary care Scripture expects of us, and the Bereans practised it with an apostle standing in front of them.

Where something genuinely inexplicable has occurred, I am content to say I do not know. God still heals, and I have prayed for people who got better in ways I cannot account for. Refusing to categorise every event is a mark of maturity rather than of weak faith.

The One Sign That Cannot Be Copied

Here is the thing I keep coming back to. The counterfeit can produce spectacle. It has never produced a repentant sinner.

Nothing in the record of the enemy’s activity includes a person being reconciled to God, forgiven, and quietly changed over decades. Demons perform miracles that startle the eye. They do not soften a hard heart, because that would be to work against themselves.

So if you want the sign that settles the question, look for the person who was proud and is now humble, who was bitter and now forgives, who took and now gives. There is no counterfeit of that available anywhere, which is why Paul called changed people his letter of recommendation.

So, now what?

If you have seen something you cannot explain, you are allowed to say so without deciding on the spot what it was. Ask what is being taught, where the money goes, who gets the glory, and what the person’s life looks like when the lights go down.

The fact that demons perform miracles in the sense Scripture describes is not a reason to live in suspicion. It is a reason to anchor yourself in the Word rather than in the extraordinary. God has never asked you to follow the most impressive thing in the room. He has asked you to follow His Son. Which of those two are you actually navigating by?

For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

Matthew 24:24 (ESV)