06-10-2012, 05:42 AM
Oh no! I have had that question before LOL. Most of the snake handling churches are in Eastern KY, but I'm in the Western part of the state. I believe Jesus was using an idiom for spiritual opposition (we all know that the enemy is spoken of as taking the shape of/possessing a serpent in order to tempt Eve in Genesis and that the Apostle John spoke of the enemy as a serpent in Revelation 20:2). According to Lamsa, the snakes in Mark 16 are "enemies", so he would probably agree with my view that the serpents and scorpions represent enemies (even though I don't think Lamsa would agree completely because of my belief in the existence of Satan and demons).