Snake handlers' belief is unshaken by snakebite death of pastor Jamie Coots

Dear friends:

Have you read the news of the snake handler pastor Jamie Coots died by snake bites?

Reality show snake-handling preacher dies -- of snakebite - CNN.com

These update links are even more frustrated for me to read.

Snake handlers' belief is unshaken by snakebite death of pastor Jamie Coots

Snake handling puts religious freedom, public safety in spotlight after Kentucky death | Fox News

Indeed, it is harmful to have a blind faith like they do. Believing in fake religions is very harmful because it robs one the eternal bliss to be with our Creator God in eternity.  They based their faith on last add-on section of Mark 16:17-18 literally. ( it is obviously an add-on because the original copies of the Book of Mark lost its ending of chap. 16.( that is one of the rare cases in NT Bible.) ) Furthermore, I believe snake in that particular quote should be taken as representing Satan. ( see the following Bible verse)

When Jesus said to His disciples, "I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. 19"Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you...( Luke 10:19) He is obviously implying serpents and scorpions as metaphors for Satan and demons.

Some extra clip from the following link

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/17/was-snake-handlers-death-preventable/

...Coots belonged to a small circle of Pentecostal Holiness pastors who take this passage from the Bible's Gospel of Mark literally:  “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.”

Since those words are said to be spoken by Jesus, pastors like Coots take them as divine commandments. But there are other spiritual reasons to handle serpents, practitioners say, often describing the dangerous rituals as a mental and emotional rush, as if they were touching the hand of God.

"They almost always use drug metaphors, like 'higher than any high you can experience," said  Paul Williamson, a professor of psychology at Henderson State University in Arkansas who studies serpent handlers.

At the same time, they are extremely careful with the serpents, Williamson said, only allowing those who live sin-free lives and have been "anointed" by the Holy Spirit to handle the snakes. "There's death in that box," pastors often warn the congregation before services start...

It happened the other night I just read this following Bible verse while I was doing my Bible study homework. You wouldn't think there is a Bible verse like this, right? Or maybe you do. 

1 Corinthians 10:9

9 Let us not test Christ as some of them did[a] and were destroyed by snakes.

Furthermore, when Satan quoted the Bible to tempt Jesus to jump down from the pinnacle of the temple, Jesus refused and told him not to tempt or not to test the Lord. I think those believers are testing the Lord! It is also very dangerous to quote Bible out of context because Satan can quote Bible too. 

These snake handlers thought they were showing their strong faith, I think they are doing a stunt show and to show off their great faith; that is not praiseworthy but stupid. According to the news report, they also got a high, handling the poisonous snakes. I am so sad about this kind of practices in the name of showing faith. Indeed God has rescued His faithful servants from many kind of dangers; Paul was not harmed by poisonous snake and Daniel was unhurt by lions but none of them seek the danger actively and purposely, especially, Daniel was innocent and was persecuted to be thrown into lions' den. Therefore these Bible verses never mean to encourage us to seek dangers like handling snakes for a faith show off.

Below is the reference to Satan's quoting Bible to tempt Jesus.

(Matt. 4:5 Then the Devil took Him to the holy city,[b] had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written:

He will give His angels orders concerning you,
and they will support you with their hands
so that you will not strike
your foot against a stone.”[c]

7 Jesus told him, “It is also written: Do not test the Lord your God.”)

The Origin of Life

Dear SS(sincere seeker):

Could you listen to what Dawkins said about "...no evidence about what the first step in making life was, but we do know the kind of step it must have been. It must have been whatever it took to get natural selection started."

Has Dawkins rigorously proved " natural selection"? "No evidence ...yet we do know?" Is that a blind faith or good reasoning? You tell me. Yet he uses "natural selection" to deny the existence of any complex being because they are not probable and not possible...etc. Do you start to see the circular reasoning here?

I am quoting Dawkins' own words. For details, see the brief article  clip below.

I hope you rethink seriously, why you embrace " Evolution" without carefully scrutinizing it? I agree the default value is not" God exists" if Evolution theory fails to stand on its own feet. Yet that other more reasonable alternative that "God creates this universe and all the creatures" should be considered again, right?

May God open your eyes!

BH

Dawkins: The Greatest Show on Earth

Dawkins: The Greatest Show on Earth – The Origin of Life
Richard Dawkins, in The Greatest Show on Earth, has very little to say concerning the most fundamental challenge to standard materialistic thinking, namely the problem of life’s origin. In chapter 13 of his book, Dawkins writes:

We have no evidence about what the first step in making life was, but we do know the kind of step it must have been. It must have been whatever it took to get natural selection started.Before that first step, the sorts of improvement that only natural selection can achieve were impossible. And that means the key step was the rising, by some process as yet unknown, of a self-replicating entity.

Dawkins is overlooking or ignoring a host of key points here. As Dawkins himself concedes, natural selection can only occur in organisms which are capable of reproducing or replicating themselves. But surely any self-replicating mechanism must exhibit a definable minimal level of complexity, let alone the necessitude of functional, and thus sequence specific DNA and protein molecules. As theoretical biologist Howard Pattee explains in his The Problem of Biological Hierarchy: “There is no evidence that hereditary evolution occurs except in cells which already have…the DNA, the replicating and translating enzymes, and all the control systems and structures necessary to reproduce themselves.” In order to invoke a materialistic pathway which can account for the origin of specified information in DNA, the naturalist must invoke a process that itself depends upon pre-existing sequence specific DNA molecules. Yet, the origin of these molecules is precisely what the thesis seeks to explain. And let us not forget that it is not merely the sequence of base-pairs comprising the information in DNA which is the chief concern at this point -- but the problem becomes even deeper when confronted with the paradox of the origin of the genetic code itself...

Doubting Thomas & Blind Faith

Dear Y:

Thank you for sharing Pastor C's sermon about "Doubting Thomas" with us last Sat.

I totally agree that Thomas' searching for evidences of the resurrected Jesus is very rational and reasonable since he was not there when Jesus appeared to His disciples for the first time. A week later, Jesus reappeared to His disciples and that time Thomas was present, Jesus didn't blame him that he was doubting but instead Jesus welcomed him to reach His side to check the evidences for himself.Thomas finally believed. Jesus then said”"Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."That doesn't mean Jesus has encouraged blind faith in Him. Not really, because Thomas did know those other disciples well who were reliable eye witnesses. They had no reason or any gains to cheat on Thomas about Jesus’ resurrection. So when they reported to him that they saw the resurrected Jesus, Thomas could have believed their eyewitness statements were true. However, resurrection of the dead is so unique and unusual, that of course it is hard to believe unless one sees the evidences by himself/herself.

Now we don't see the resurrected Jesus appears to us but we know those original eyewitnesses are reliable and trustworthy, besides, they had nothing to gain to cheat or to perjury, just the opposite, they might lose their lives by saying "Jesus has risen from the death". All other psychological and motivational reasons we check into, would not give us any reason that they would lie to Thomas or to the generations after them. So we can count on their reliable eye witness accounts. Besides, Jesus had been on earth for 40 days after His resurrection. And so many people had seen Him with their own eyes. One time 500 people all saw Him. That couldn’t be a hallucination. Furthermore,the Holy Spirit will lead us into truth and when we believe in the resurrected Jesus, the Holy Spirit will dwell in us ; though the Holy Spirit is invisible yet true believers of Jesus can all testify the Holy Spirit indwelling in them.

I'd like to comment that most intelligent people do need to go through the process of Thomas' doubting and searching for evidences. Nevertheless, there are other people since they have experienced the reality of God first, they can believe Jesus is God, without going through painful doubting and searching. They are blessed if they come into contact with God first without all the detours in the doubting deserts. I do hope you search for God earnestly.

Don't ever give up!

May God’s truth shine on us!

For further reading. click the link below

http://threeminutebiblestudy.blogspot.com/2011/05/doubting-thomas-believes.html

John 20: 21 – 29 (NIV): Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."