Signs, Signs,
Who Got The Signs?
For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you,
which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you,
saith the LORD.
OK, onward Christian soldiers! We have seen the enemy and he is in our camp. The unholy spirit is having field day after field day decoying the Holy Spirit. He has sly, wily, cunning wolves that convincingly teach private interpretations of wrongly divided truth. Their sheep open their spiritual gates and the devils step right in.
Mark 5:9
And he asked him, What is thy name?
And he answered, saying,
My name is Legion: for we are many.
These devils delight in influencing their hosts to have involuntary physical actions they think are holy spirit-filled takeovers. So, instead of Bible study and Bible preaching and spiritual singing which exalts Jesus Christ, they utter and sway and freak out to show others they are spiritual.
They’re spiritual all right. They have opened up their spiritual gates and let the enemy inside. They have not tested the spirits by the word of God. They have obeyed the commands of a slobbering wolf. They have been distracted from spiritual truth by their flesh.
OK, watch closely because it only takes a minute if you understand the word of the kingdom and its original offer to Israel. First,
the Jews require a sign
For the Jews require a sign,
and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
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When
signs are mentioned in the Bible, Jews are involved. |
"the Jews" require a sign, so Jesus performed signs, wonders, and miracles to demonstrate who He was to the Jew. Without the signs, He would not be believed by the Jew. Unfortunately for Israel, only a few Jews believed and accepted Him as the Messiah.
The rest offered him up to be crucified, but he still offered the kingdom back to them after he resurrected. He then instructed the apostles to preach the gospel of the kingdom to Israel and told them that signs would follow them that believe.
Mark 16:16-18
16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
SO, signs were given to believing Jews. These signs were casting out devils, speaking with new tongues, taking up serpents, drinking any deadly thing, and healing the sick by laying hands on them. This happened until Acts 28:28 and then it was gone. And it has stayed gone.
Do you know of anyone today who can cast out devils, speak with new tongues, take up serpents, and drink any deadly thing?
Do you know of anyone today who can lay hands on sick people and heal them in any one instance, let alone with 100% success?
Of course you don’t!
The next man to do these things will be Antichrist and he will fool billions because he will be copycatting the Lord and the people will be willingly deceived.
II Thessalonians 2:9-12
9 even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders
10 and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
You better worry about being deceived if you desire deceptive, untrue things. God will send you the deception himself, so that you may believe a lie.
I believe in miracles, I just know you or anyone else can’t perform them. God performs them at his own discretion. He does respond to the prayers of the righteous, but He does not grant every miracle request. Why? I don’t know; I wish He would, but He doesn’t. Farther along, we’ll know all about it.
OK, about those signs Jesus gave to his Jewish apostles and today's application (not):
You Can't Do It
You
can’t cast out a devil by yourself, but God can.
You can’t speak with new tongues like the apostles in Acts 2. On the only day of Pentecost and for a few years thereafter, Jews spoke in their own language and the Jews (which require a sign) from other nations heard them in their own native tongue without interpretation. The apostles did not speak in unknown tongues, others just heard in their own tongues unknown to the apostles. Nothing was totally unknown; everything spoken and heard was an existing language.
That was a Jewish miracle and it was nothing like the hijacked practice called “speaking in tongues” which is occurring in charismatic churches today. The word “tongues” is always a reference to foreign languages in the Bible. It doesn’t suddenly become unknown utterances which require supernatural interpretation in charismatic churches in the last 100 years. Get away from it, it is unholy!
Here’s a suggestion: Read I Corinthians 14 and substitute the words “foreign languages” everywhere the word “tongues” appears and see if it makes sense. This is a good Bible study method as the scripture defines “tongues” itself first in Genesis 10:5 as a language. And if you are in a tongue-speaking service and get to interpret, tell the utterer that he just promised to pay off the church mortgage!
Go ahead, take up serpents with actual fangs and actual poison and see what happens! Black mambas, cobras, bushmasters, taipans, coral snakes, copperheads, water moccasins, diamondback rattlers, whatever.
Go ahead, drink any deadly thing. Gasoline, cyanide, bleach, hydrochloric acid, antifreeze, 10W-30, whatever the ignorant sheep dare you to drink while you “preach” to them. You will die.
And the #1 crime of wolf preachers - lay hands on someone and proclaim them healed. It doesn’t happen. If it did, there would be at least one “healer” with a decent enough heart to spend one hour visiting a children’s cancer hospital for free without trying to sell something. There isn’t one and there hasn’t been one since Acts 28:28.
Attention Benny, even Paul lost the gift before the end of his ministry; and you are not another Paul.
II Timothy 4:20
Erastus abode at Corinth:
but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.
If you like magic, go to Las Vegas or Disney World. At least you get something for your money. Why is it that every “healer” is selling something or asking for $eed$ of faith to spread the gospel? Hey, if the Jew requires a sign, why not go over to the synagogue? More about TV preachers later; just know that they and Barnum & Bailey have a lot in common.
All Or Nothing
OK,
so the signs of the apostles and those that believed until Acts 28:28 are
casting out devils, speaking in new tongues, taking up serpents, drinking any
deadly thing, and laying on hands to heal someone.
Not only are these the signs of the Jewish apostles and believers, they had all the signs! So these deranged wolves today that say they have one of the signs should be saying they have all the signs. They should be able to demonstrate all five signs in any one meeting on the spot without notice (in season and out of season, don’t you know).
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BUT,
I know they can’t;
you know they can’t;
they know they can’t.
All they can do is howl and create an arena of open spiritual gates that devils thrive on.
God cut the signs off long ago, but people don’t study their Bible. They just listen to the howls.
II Corinthians 5:11
Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord,
we persuade men; ……
I know these people are going to face the terror of the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ if saved or the great white throne judgment if unsaved. It is going to be pretty awful. I hope I persuaded at least one of you to study your Bible for yourself and see what God really has to “say” about the matter.
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