WHAT IF MARK 16 OF MIRACLES AND WONDERS
ACTUALLY WERE MEANT TO HAPPEN
IN THE ENTIRE WORLD?
WHAT IF MARK 16
OF MIRACLES AND WONDERS -
ACTUALLY WERE MEANT TO
HAPPEN IN THE ENTIRE
WORLD?
JAN LILLEBY
This has been, and still is the false beliefs inside most of Christianity today, as well as in the past centuries.
Especially the Pentecostal-Charismatic camps have that kind of beliefs. It’s enough to look at what the false movement of Word of Faith brought on the scene – you know, the Prosperity Gospel’ instigated by Kenneth Hagin Sr. in Tulsa with his Rhema Bible Church; later followed by several infamous falsehoods like Kenneth Copeland with his ‘Eagle Mountain Church in Fort Worth. I could go on listing it all up, but this is enough for now. Well, let me throw in a couple forerunners to these, namely T.L. Osborn and perhaps the most intense false ‘Healing Evangelist’ back in the fifties and sixties, Oral Roberts. His son, Richard, is now doing like his ole’ man. These guys were/are the originals who was copied by preachers many places around the world. Several ‘Copy Cats’ have come and passed, here in my own homeland Norway. They all got it wrong.
It is actually IMPOSSIBLE that God ever should have meant that such ministries as seen with Peter and the eleven, as well as Paul, should go on and capture the ‘Religious market’ all over this world.
We don’t have to make any further investigations than of simply learning the LOGISTICS of such a vast narrative.
The master of deception, and the ‘Father of Lies’, Satan, would like to have all Christians walking around preaching such bewildered nonsense…go, speak in tongues, and heal all the sick, cast out demons, wake the dead, - as you are preaching the Gospel….those who believe and are baptized shall be saved, but who does not believe shall be condemned…
Mark 16 coupled with Mat. 28 and the ‘Great commission’ you get that false wild idea of a ‘World-Wide Mission’ ….
19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always *, even to the end of the age."
This teaching by Jesus to His apostles was no nonsense in His time. It was real, but it was a commission meant to be ministered to Israel and proselytes only! Not the whole world out there. Paul went out to those sorts of people (Jews and proselytes) in the Empire and its provinces. But the twelve ministered ONLY inside Israel. It is clearly proven when reading Acts. Check my different articles on that topic.
Before I get to it, the logistical part of my article, let me just tip you off to a known Hollywood movie called ‘Bruce Almighty’ – starring Jim Carrey – the Canadian stand-up comedian who got famous for his hilarious impersonating of celebrities. If you go on the YouTube, check him out as he impersonates Clint Eastwood, Leonid Brezhnev, Elvis Presley and others. My favorite is the ‘Leonid Brezhnev’ version. I can’t help laughing! What a face!! Sorry, I just got carreyed away…
The film portrays Carrey’s role-character (Bruce Nolan) as a dumb-ass TV-reporter. He is envious with his more successful colleagues in the company.
The sad fella complains to God (played by Morgan Freeman) that he is not doing his job correctly and is offered the chance to try being God himself for one week. (It co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Philip Baker Hall, and Tony Bennett).
My point here: Bruce Nolan is given by God to do His job for a week, to let him show off to Him if he could do a better job of it! I can heartily just drop the bomb: He failed miserably!
The film makers let ‘Bruce’ perform great miracles of insane character (including walking on water (Lake Erie, near downtown Buffalo); he impresses his girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston) by commanding the full-moon to get bigger; he punishes some street punks, hard; he make his super-successful TV colleague lose his job, so he can take it…thus becoming the new hot-shot in town….and so on, and so forth.
He is overwhelmed with all the incoming prayers from Christian believers…it is all too much! To make the story short: The logistics are crashing his entire daily life, and knocks him all out. He cannot play God anymore.
Likewise, if we are to think that God meant Mark 16 and miracles going world-wide, it is easily proven that this is impossible.
God has to take care of His believers, - and not putting them into weird unreal situations….like for instance shown by that film comedy, “Bruce Almighty”.
THE APOSTLES DID NOT GO EMTYING HOSPITALS!
You find extraordinary miracles and wonders performed by God through Peter and the eleven in Acts 5, stirring up Jerusalem and nearby smaller towns, as well as with Paul in Acts 19 at Ephesus, causing riot.
First Peter and the eleven, Acts 5:12-16, NASB,
“12 At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people; and they were all with one accord in Solomon's portico.
13 But none of the rest dared to associate with them; however, the people held them in high esteem.
14 And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number,
15 to such an extent that they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and pallets, so that when Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on any one of them.
16 Also the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all being healed”.
Paul at Ephesus, Acts 19:11-19, NASB,
“11 God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul,
12 so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out.
13 But also some of the Jewish exorcists, who went from place to place, attempted to name over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, "I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches."
14 Seven sons of one Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this.
15 And the evil spirit answered and said to them, "I recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?"
16 And the man, in whom was the evil spirit, leaped on them and subdued all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
17 This became known to all, both Jews and Greeks, who lived in Ephesus; and fear fell upon them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was being magnified.
18 Many also of those who had believed kept coming, confessing and disclosing their practices.
19 And many of those who practiced magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone; and they counted up the price of them and found it fifty * thousand pieces of silver”.
Now – here comes the intriguing real-world scenario…if we borrow some of weird ‘Bruce Almighty’ film’s kinky way of pointing to ‘God’ (in the film you hear nothing of Jesus, or the Apostles, or the story coming up with these biblical healing miracles) – let’s check out Peter and the eleven. Putting them into our time, now, in a big city.
Just to use the ‘All over the world’ understanding found much within Pentecostal-Charismatic camps:
Imagine this huge healing-wave of Acts 5 entering the city of New York.
Imagine Peter and the twelve appearing right where Central Park begins at Midtown Manhattan. It’s plenty of space to have an open air meeting, preaching Jesus as Savior…and healer. See image.
Cancer struck men and women getting instantly healed, and shouting with joy! Lame and other infirmities instantly healed, jumping up from their wheel chairs, throwing their crutches away…crying for sheer joy and shocked with getting ALL HEALED!
After half an hour…allowing the arrival of a couple TV-crews with cameras broadcasting live, of a crowd of nearly 3000 desperate sick and afflicted men and women, thus making a total chaos at Manhattan.
On TV-screens in New York and Brooklyn: Healings and miracles directly on TV, as Peter is grabbing sick people out of their wheel chairs, and grabbing their crutches as they are instantly healed…praising the Lord Jesus aloud! Wild scenes taking place for open cameras.
After two hours – Peter needs a pause, letting James and John take the ‘podium’ continuing the healing wave of God and the Holy Spirit.
The crowd are now blocking five streets near Central Park…and the NYPD show up with a ‘Motorcade’ of uniforms to try to loosen up the havoc with these blocked streets. Miles long traffic jams way down 56th Street, 58th Street, 59th Street, 5th Avenue, 6th Avenue, and not to forget Madison Avenue. A Police officer’s hell-on-Earth, especially if you are in the Traffic Patrol Unit!
Donald Trump can theoretically sit in his huge apartment in the 600 Ft. (183 Meter) Trump-Tower at 725 Fifth Avenue, sited at the corner of 56th Street - and watch this horror-scenario going on. All caused by THE REAL GODSENT APOSTLES OF CHRIST, let loose on newyorkers and the lot. Acts 5:16 in real life: “And they were all being healed.”
Police crews arriving in vain; people storming in from all Manhattan…it is closing in on a disastrous crisis, with peoples’ lives at stake! As if the Police did not have enough on their hands already: Here arrives 15 Ambulances from the big hospitals in town, with dying patients…begging for opportunity to come before the apostles of Christ!
I shall be merciful and stop it right there.
Oh, excuse me, I just forgot to tell: This horror-scenario would be going on in ALL the major cities in the entire world, if Mark 16 was meant to be taken literally, and not understanding that it was restricted to Israel only, - and to the towns Paul visited in Asia Minor in his time. There was no ‘World-Wide’ mission or any ‘Healing Ministry’ to the entire world. This is an illusion created by Satan, to have us Christians look like idiots to the world. We would have been cast into that ‘Bruce Almighty’ – syndrome. It will all come crashing down.
I will not go the same round with Paul, simply because this narrative of logistics with using Peter and the twelve is more than enough.
There is no way on God’s green earth that He would ever have anyone coming to town like the apostles’ told in Acts 5 and Acts 19. It’s a ‘No Go’.
The apostles did not go on trying to empty the eventual hospitals in Jerusalem or Bethlehem or Bethsaida or Jericho in their time. They obeyed Christ and the Holy Spirit as they ministered within the land of Israel. Mark 16 and Mat. 28 speak only of Israel as the place for the 12 Apostles. John’s Gospel, 21st chapter says that Jesus sent them to the SHEEP OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL. Paul was sent to Asia Minor mainly to the synagogues there. His miracles in Ephesus – a city of 200 000 at that time – was a ‘One Off’.
In his epistle to the Ephesians he did not mention his earlier preaching and ministry there. He actually made no mention of miracles at all.
So, Pentecostals and Charismatics, and Word of Faith, as well as New Apostolic Reformation deception, you better get to your senses. Don’t go around looking like the old film-clowns, the ‘Three Stooges’, - with a fake and even satanic lie of God healing sick ones in our time. There isn’t an apostle anywhere in this world. They all died in the first century.
Don’t be a ridiculous ‘Bruce Almighty’ goon, thinking you can act as if you were God Himself. As if God ever should have talked directly with you. Don’t deceive yourself.
Gracepano.com
