Monday, May 14, 2018
Signs following

Mark 16:17
And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.

Mark’s version of the Great Commission includes these two very controversial verses. These two verses have been the basis of many arguments among biblical scholars, rank and file Christians, and everyone in between. Some look for and expect the signs and some believe that the time for those signs has passed.

But this controversy is within a controversy. Again, scholars argue about the entire section of Mark’s account after verse 16:8. There are some older manuscripts that do not include the twelve verses from 16:9 and on to the end. That argument won’t be settled here, let’s leave that with the biblical scholars.

There is a school of thought that argues that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, that are intimated in these two verses from the disputed passage in Mark, existed only for a period of time and then they ceased. This idea was cemented by an American theologian, B.B. Warfield who forcefully made this point in a book titled “Counterfeit Miracles.”

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Warfield argued that “the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were given as signs of apostleship and limited to that foundational time period and then ceased.” On the face of it, this seems like a reasonable argument. We, for example, have evidence of the early apostles doing some of the very things these verses said that they would do.

In Acts 16:18 we have an example of the Apostle Paul casting a demon out of a young lady who was following Paul around until he could take it no longer and became very annoyed. Then we know of the speaking with new tongues that first occurred on the day of Pentecost and recorded in Acts chapter 2. All over the book of Acts, there are stories of the healing of the sick beginning with Peter and John healing the crippled man who begged outside of the temple. In Acts 28:1-6 we have the story of Paul being bitten by a venomous viper and all expected him to die. When he didn’t they thought him to be a god. The only one of these things that did not occur, on the record, was the eating of deadly substances and surviving.

So far, so good. The bible attributes some statements to Mark which, for the most part, have been fulfilled in the ministry of the early apostles and confirmed in the subsequent biblical narrative. BB Warfield’s book title, Counterfeit Miracles, is telling because there are so many charlatans who are out to deceive people that we need to be careful.

But this is not a new phenomenon, when Moses went before Pharaoh and confidently threw down his staff and it became a snake, the Pharaoh didn’t flee and leave the throne. He called for his magicians and they threw down their staffs and we had more snakes in the court. The fact that their snakes were swallowed up by Moses’ snake is also a matter of record.

But in the same period of the early apostolic ministry recorded in the book of Acts we have the story of Simon the sorcerer who offered money for the ability to do the miraculous, “when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, that anyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” Acts 8:18-19. Then there is that hilarious story of the seven sons of Sceva who wanted to use the names of Jesus and Paul against demons and were beaten, stripped naked, and sent crying into the street. Acts 19:11-20.

The question of counterfeit artists as an argument against the genuine article is a bad argument against the expectation of the genuine. Counterfeit artists are at work every day creating currency designed to swindle and defraud, but that hasn’t stopped us from using money. There is a counterfeit for everything. People buy counterfeit colognes and perfumes with designer names only to end up smelling foul because the product was fake. We could find examples of fake products and services all day if we had the time.

The counterfeit shouldn’t stop us from the pursuit of the genuine. Commercial operations which accept cash continue to do so but use different techniques and technologies to ensure that they are receiving genuine currency and not counterfeit. We must be able to determine and separate the genuine from the fake, not shut down altogether.

There still remains, though, the question of the gifts of the Spirit ceasing altogether because the apostolic age is over, and the church is already established. To settle this, I usually go to an examination of facts as we know them.

Demons, those dark spirits of the invisible world, affecting life in the visible world did not leave the realm when Jesus did. They remained active and the early church encountered them. Neither did demons leave when the early apostles died, there is no record of that or basis to believe so. So they must still be here and active. If we chose sickness as another example, people keep getting sick every day.

The need, therefore, for there to be power in the church to cast out demons and to pray for the sick and see them recover, and so on, remains. For as long as these needs exist we need to have signs following the servants of Jesus.

It would be a pity if we were a powerless church.

Think on these things:

1. Have you ever seen any evidence of demonic spirits at work?
2. Have you ever seen any evidence of some healed by the spirit when medicine failed?
3. Do you believe that the gifts of the Spirit continue today?

Prayer focus:

Let us pray today for the gifts of the Spirit to be manifest in our churches that signs may follow those who truly believe.

In His Grace
Pastor Alex