One reason so many people get envolved into things like wicca, is because of the witnesses today are not doing the following.
Mark 16:17- 16:20;
{16:17} And these signs shall follow them that believe; In
my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with
new tongues; {16:18} 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.
{16:19} So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he
was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of
God. {16:20} And they went forth, and preached every
where, the Lord working with [them,] and confirming the
word with signs following. Amen.
Thanks Brasspen, for mentioning this piece of scripture:
"And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 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 then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with
them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen. "
It might truly be sad if you are looking around for these sorts of things and cannot find them occurring. There might be a couple of reasons a person might feel this way about the verse. First, there might not be enough conversion to Christ in a given area to allow such deliverance to been seen. This is a sad thing as true believers usually hope for people to be healed and delivered. Also, the lack of true believers a person has contact with might limit their own experience in this regard. However, in many cases, I think, a lack of understanding what the scripture is really saying might affect how a person perceives what is happening as they view things. In my mind, these verses are highlighting people being converted to Christ more than anything else. I see this as something that is happening.
Understanding the true meaning of a verse is important. For example, there is a group of people in the eastern USA that supposedly handles rattlesnakes based on the verse above that says, 'They shall take up serpents'. This highlights the problem with how people think about the scripture you mention, as with how they think about any scripture. The problem is simply that many persons do not interpret the scripture correctly. A reason this occurs is often because they do not receive the words which the Bible speaks in Psalm 78, when God tells us that scripture is written in parable form: "Give ear, O my people,
to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable "
If the scripture is understood to be in parable form, then surface words like serpents, drink, new tongues, sick, and so forth, may be talking about a deeper interpreted meaning than just the surface words. People may think they should be seeing someone picking up rattlesnakes when really the scripture might mean something else. Personally, I think that there are still persons hearing the word being preached and believing. The Lord is still working with his gospel, such that people are still coming to believe in the Lord. As the verse you are highlighting says: "they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with
them, and confirming the word". As soon as a person believes, they begin to speak from that belief. This, in my opinion, is the 'new tongues' that is spoken of here. Before they believed, they did not have new things to speak, they just spoke about things from their old perspective. Once they believe, they begin to speak of trusting God, and they thank God, and so forth. They share about Jesus and care about others in what they say. These are what the term 'new tongues' is getting at. This sort of thing is still happening. At the very least, if you believe, it can happen for you.
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