Questions & Answers
Questions 418 (COD Page 1174)
Dear prophet of God, Saint Mark 16:18, I...part of laying hands on the sick...I’m around snake handlers. What about it?
139 Well, that’s a good question. If you’re around snake handlers, and they say Mark 16...Certainly! I believe that the Bible means just what It says. I believe if we try to tempt the Lord into something, we’re in for it. But I don’t think that God means for you to bring me a bottle of arsenic and see if I could drink it and prove to you that I have faith; no more than I believe it would be right for you to bring me a snake, and let me pick it up, and show you I have faith that I can overcome its poison. I don’t believe that that’s so.
140 I do believe that if I was in the water baptizing people, or doing on the work of the Lord, or out in the jungle, and the snake bit me, I’d walk right on in the Name of the Lord. See? I believe that that’s what it meant.
141 Now, if you have to take...See, what you do with that, dear person ever who you’re–who you are...Remember this. See? Watch what the Bible did about it. No more than I believe if you try to say, “Glory, glory, glory”...Don’t tempt God to speak in tongues, just let the Spirit speak through you. See?
142 Now, I don’t believe in tempting God or pushing anything. Just like I said awhile ago, when the Spirit...We wait upon the Spirit; It does it.
143 Now watch, Paul was picking up sticks on the isle of Crete, I believe it was. And he was in chains, and a snake, perhaps a mamba...That’s a death bite; he should’ve fallen down right quick, dead. I don’t know of no other snake that would kill you that quick, unless it’d be a mamba.
144 And so he picked up this mamba, we’ll say. It’s a deadly bite; you just got about, just a few breaths left. When the mamba hits you...Or cobra, you got a fifty-fifty chance, with the serum, to live, with the black cobra. With the yellow cobra you got about eighty percent to die and about twenty percent to live; a mamba, you have no percent. You’re just dead, that’s all, ’cause you don’t breathe but just a few breaths. It paralyzes the nerve system, the blood system, and everything else, and you’re gone. See?
145 But when–when this mamba that bit Paul in the hand, they said, “Well, that man is a...He’s a wicked man, perhaps a murderer. Even though he escaped the sea, yet the...he could not escape death. The gods is going to revenge him like his– being a murderer.”
146 Paul looked, and this snake hanging on his hand, he just shook it off, not all excited, “Oh, Lord, help me to do it.” No! He looked at it, shook it off in the fire, went on picking up sticks as if nothing had happened.
They said, “He’ll die just in a minute, because when that snake bites you, you’re gone.” After while the time passed, Paul didn’t swell up, die, or no effect. They said...They changed, said, “He’s a god that’s come down in the form of a man.” See?
147 He never said, “Bring me that snake,” but the snake bit him. He never tempted God, but had faith in God to overcome the snakebite. You see what I mean?
148 So ever who you are among snake handlers, I...Now, if they want to handle snakes, that–that’s up to them. See? I just don’t see it in that manner.
149 Now, you say, “Well, them people’s got faith.” I don’t say they haven’t got faith, burn themselves with a acetylene torch and things like that, but (you see?) still that don’t prove God.
150 I’ve seen Indians take a–a line of fire, three foot across and about forty yards long, when it’s fanned with leaves until it’s white hot (not special man, farmers), strip off their shoes, take little (the priests bless them with goat blood), and take little hooks of fishhooks, and stick in their skin over their mouth, till they’re one big mess of–of water, filled up in little like Christmas tree balls like that, ornaments, filled up, and big fish hooks that long sticking in their flesh (you’d imagine what that is to take in and out), and stand like that, and walk right out across that hot fire (and it just–just white hot, beyond red, white hot)–walk right down through that fire and turn right around and walk back, not even a scorch on their feet. And they don’t even believe in our God. They worship, demon worship. See? So that don’t mean anything. Just keep away...You just be a real, sweet, humble Christian, live the life, and then God will take care of the rest of it.