Holding Snakes at Churches.

From Tintin:

I don't think it's a matter of monetary greed but also having a greater 'power' than other believers, supposedly being more special than them. The Longer Ending to Mark is clearly a latter addition. Why would Jesus' disciples be tempting fate by handling snakes? It doesn't make sense. We're not to do miracles to bring glory to ourselves, but to bring glory to Christ.


Great point............"to God be the Glory!" Thanks for that thought, I will carry it with me today.........

From Ugly:

Snakes, in and of themselves, are not evil. This concept of Adam and Eve and the serpent equating to snakes being evil is a false logic. The 'serpent' wasn't evil. It was the spirit within the serpent, satan, that was evil. The serpent was merely a vessel.


This made me think of my Mamaw........................when I was very young, she taught us (me and my cousin) about snakes (different kinds that is), and while she did her best, I could never get the hang of identifying which was which........One day we were playing in and around the corn crib (suppose to be shelling corn for the chickens), and a snake popped out of the corn! Well, I grabbed a hoe leaning against the crib and started whuppin on that old snake.........

Mamaw came out to see what the fuss was about, and she went off ON ME! Seems that snake I had sent to meet its maker was a Rat Snake..............meaning it was go good snake, and kept the rats and mice from eating all of Mamaw's corn.......

Lesson learned............I still remember the whopping she gave me.

I think the true application of this scripture is seen in Acts 28 "[SUP]3 [/SUP]But when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat, and fastened on his hand. [SUP]4 [/SUP]So when the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he has escaped the sea, yet justice does not allow to live.” [SUP]5[/SUP]But he shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. [SUP]6[/SUP]However, they were expecting that he would swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But after they had looked for a long time and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god." As you can see Paul did not intend to have the viper bite him, but in spite of it as a sign and wonder this showed the unbelievers at Malta the power of God when a man is called and under the anointing to accomplish a task for that "no weapon formed against him shall prosper." Paul was shipwrecked (Acts 27:39-44), put in chains in jails (Acts 16:16-39), and stoned (Acts 14:19-20), yet nothing could hold him back until he accomplished God's calling for him since he was walking in the direct path of God for his life. Yes, we need to have wisdom and avoid certain situations if we are guided by God as Paul did when forbidden to go to Asia before being called to Macedonia (Acts 16:6-10). God's grace is only given when one is truly Spirit driven.

You missed my point, it is exactly this 'supposed' spiritual/power superiority that they use to collect their followers so as to exploit them financially so as to line their own pockets!

No, they aren't taking it literally. Literally speaking, there is nothing in the Bible that commands you to pick up snake or bring them to church. So no, it's not taking the Bible literally, it's simply distorting and twisting the scripture into something it's not. It's exactly the same thing Satan did when he told Jesus to throw himself off a cliff (Luke 4).

ROFL. You put that better than I could. Well done.

Where do you draw the like with this though. How do you test your faith more? Do you next have to run down the church isle jumping over rotating saws and pits of spikes?

I don't think we are suppose to test our faith.........nor are we to tempt/test God......just saying......

Reading your comment, the mental picture is a congregation full of Indiana Jones clones.......and I don't wanna hafta keep up with the Joneses............