Was There Really a Talking Serpent?

Search the Scriptures Daily Program #3002a:

Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call with Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael; we’re glad you could tune in.  Coming up in today’s program in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will resume their exploration of the Gospel of John, and “Do you know the Shepherd’s voice?”   In Religion in the News, “Was Ezekiel a mental case?” we’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “What does the Bible say about denominations?”   We hope you can stay with us.  Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers many teaching materials including books, tracts, audio and video tapes and copies of our weekly broadcast on tape or compact disc.  You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge.  We will let you know how to order later in the program.  Now, this week’s cover article.  We continue with our series of discussions based on Dave Hunt’s book from Harvest House with the 57 ^th installment of In Defense of the Faith and along with Dave Hunt, here is T. A. McMahon.

 

            Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to him.   We’ve been discussing the topic of evil for the last few weeks and we’re using Dave’s book In Defense of the Faith as a source of questions which he collected over his many years of ministry.   If you would like to order a copy of In Defense of the Faith , Gary will give you details later in the program.   Dave, let’s get right to the first question because it’s a fascinating one and having read your book the answer is pretty amazing.   I think one of the great evidences against the authenticity of the Bible is its treatment of the serpent.   In the Bible, the serpent is the embodiment of evil, whereas ancient myths and religions give exactly the opposite view.   The Bible equates the serpent with the devil, but the most ancient religions, some of which are even practiced to the present time, almost universally identify the serpent as the Savior, or at least as benevolent and to be worshiped.   How can the Bible be true and at the same time be so much out of touch with what is clearly the common intuition of humanity?  

 

            Dave:

Well I am glad the person said it that way at the end.   The Bible is on one side and the whole world is on the other, including the world religions.   And that’s very interesting.   I mean that indicates something.   The Bible certainly is different and has a different perspective from all mankind.   Now the Bible says that the God of this world has blinded the minds of those that believe not.   I often tell people you can’t live long enough to study all the world’s religions.   I can save you a lot of time.   Go to the Bible first.   And if we can prove the Bible is right, is true, which we can—

 

            Tom:

And which it claims to be.

 

            Dave:

Exactly, and we can prove it.   You’ve saved a lot of time, because the Bible says all of the world’s religions are wrong.   So here we have another testimony to the fact that the Bible, sometimes people say well, the Bible simply reflects the culture and the thinking of the day in which it was written.   On the contrary it does not reflect that at all.   Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s household and you compare what Moses wrote even just about health.   Some medical doctors, I remember an entire book, what was it called?   None of these Diseases written by a medical doctor.   Just going through what God told Moses told the children of Israel what they should do about cleanliness and health matters and so forth, I mean even circumcision the 8 ^th day.   That is the day in which the Vitamin K or the clotting factor in a human being is at its peak.   It also happens to be the day that Jesus rose from the dead.   It’s the beginning of a new creation and so forth.   But it also prevents cancer and there is so much in the Bible that is not a reflection of what the people thought at the time or what was taught in the culture.   This is one of the most stunning examples.  

 

            Tom:

Well stunning Dave, but also amazing.   I’m going to get right to the punch line.

 

            Dave:

Okay.

 

            Tom:

What about this talking serpent?   Dave, I’ve had people say, you know I tried to read the Bible and I started off in Genesis, but when I got to this point of a serpent deceiving Eve, well that’s a little too much for me to take.

 

            Dave:

Well first of all, it does not mean that a snake, much less all snakes have the ability to talk.   It must have fascinated Eve, got her attention.   Here was a serpent that could talk.   Well she’s just been created, I guess it would startle her.   It would get her attention, but she wouldn’t necessarily think it wasn’t true.   Satan was speaking through a serpent.   He chose a serpent and that is, we have to get back to that, that is the most amazing part of it because of the natural revulsion most people have, certainly women to snakes and dragons and so forth.   And yet we find that this permeates the religions of the world.   But you know Tom, we’ve studied this together.   You have some of our top scientists trying to teach the alphabet to chimpanzees—

 

            Tom:

Gorillas.

 

            Dave:

Trying to talk to porpoises and they think they can.

 

            Tom:

You remember way back, even talking to plants was supposed—although they didn’t talk back, but there is a mentality out there that has an affinity for this unless it’s connected with the Bible, right?   Then it’s a turn off.    

 

            Dave:

Exactly.   It fits right in with the idea of evolution, but more than that—the occult.   That there is some communication capability between human beings on a psychic level and therefore even plants (as you said) and animals on a psychic level.

 

            Tom:

I remember when I first moved to Bend hugging trees was a big item in the high schools.

 

            Dave:

Yes, so this is not so far fetched.   In fact this is an idea that continues to permeate the human race and particularly paganism.   Now let’s take Phil Jackson, wow!

 

            Tom:

Coach of the LA Lakers.  

 

            Dave:

How successful!   What was it?   Three in a row now with the Lakers?   Six with the Chicago Bulls?   So he’s got nine of them.   The guy is very good.   He was raised in a Christian home and his mother put John:3:16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. on the wall in his bedroom.   He rejected everything.   He has gone into Zen Buddhism as everyone knows.   You remember Horace Grant said that sometimes when he would show up at the locker room there in Chicago cloud of incense—because Phil was burning incense to scare away the evil spirits.   He got his team into the occult and one of the things he was involved in, I don’t know if it was the Lakers, but certainly with the Bulls, he had the fetishes and relics of North American Indian witchcraft.  

 

            Tom:

Shamans.

 

            Dave:

Shamanism.   And they talk to plants; they talk to animals.

 

            Tom:

You do a vision quest—you get into a power animal.

 

            Dave:

Right.   They believe in this and Phil apparently believes in it.   So this is not something that you throw out because it has Satan speaking through a serpent.   In fact Tom, it is a warning that anyone who gets in touch with well a jaguar—you go on this quest as you said and you do it in your mind.   You are visualizing and you are going into the upper of the lower world and you’re going into the past or into the future and you are going to meet a spirit guide.   It could be animal or human.   It could be a jaguar or a coyote often for North American Indians.  

 

            Tom:

Remember the doctor that had a bunny?  

 

            Dave:

Oh incredible!   On TV!   That was his power animal—was a bunny!

 

            Tom:

For healing.

 

            Dave:

Right.   A little rabbit and they talked to them.   Well right here, chapter 3 in Genesis, the Bible is warning you, you get in touch with a talking animal, you are in the occult.   You are talking with Satan.   Now I think that’s a tremendous insight from the scripture.   It’s not fantasy; it’s not fiction.   It’s a warning to the human race.   Satan doesn’t have any new tricks.   He did it then, he does it today.

 

            Tom:

Dave, I have to throw in one slight exception here and that’s Balaam and Balaam’s ass.

 

            Dave:

Well that was something, God caused the animal to speak to him and God could do that, but that’s the only time in the Bible that I know of.   Balaam is a very—you could do a program on Balaam sometime—three or four programs.   He’s an amazing character.   He seemed to be in touch with God; God seemed to speak to him and yet he was out of touch with God.   He was on his own trip.   So this is an unusual specific situation.   But what fascinates me Tom, is that in spite of the natural revulsion of humans to snakes—I certainly have and you’ve been on a few backpacking trips in the high Sierras when we met an awful lot of rattlesnakes.   I don’t look kindly upon them.   And dragons—the thousands of temples in the East are adorned with dragons.   You have the serpent everywhere.   Let me quote one of the leading authorities on the occult, himself a practitioner of the occult.

 

            Tom:

Manly Hall.

 

            Dave:

Right.   He says, “Serpent worship in some form permeated nearly all parts of the earth.   The serpent mounds of the American Indian, the carved stone snakes of Central and South America, the hooded cobras of India, python, the great snake of the Greeks, the sacred serpents of the Druids, Midgard snake of Scandinavia, the Nagas of Burma, Siam and Cambodia, the mystic serpent of Orpheus, the snakes of the oracle of Delphi, every leg of the tripod at the oracle of Delphi was intertwined with serpents.   The sacred serpents preserved in the Egyptian temples, Uræs coiled upon the foreheads of the Pharaohs and priests.   All these bear witness to the universal veneration in which the snake was held.   The serpent is the symbol and prototype of the universal savior who redeems the world by giving creation the knowledge of itself.   It has long been viewed as the emblem of immortality; it is the symbol of reincarnation.”   And the Bible tells you right off the bat that this is Satan.   This is his chief means of deception.   And yet why does Satan want to be known as the serpent?   In fact, that’s astonishing.   There is a perversion involved Tom, a perversion, well in the temples worshiping the serpent they get into sexual perversion.   This is a perversion.   How could Satan get people worshiping the serpent as god?   Wow!   What a perversion behind this whole deceit that Satan effects on the whole human race.  

 

            Tom:

Dave, that’s what makes this very interesting.   This questioner is saying well this is mythology, this couldn’t happen.   Yet we have evidence here that it must be historic because how could all the ancient religions focus on something that the Bible says is antithetical; is false, wrong?   And then you have religions throughout the world not connected with each other that have the same focal point on what is against, what is the antithesis of what the Bible says.   Where would they come up with this except it had to have begun as a historic fact that a serpent appears to Eve, lays out a deception and that deception is continued throughout history, not just in Asia, but throughout the world as Manly Hall has documented here.

 

            Dave:

Well you remember The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner.   I would call him one of the world’s leading anthropologists.  

 

            Tom:

And a practicing shaman himself.

 

            Dave:

Exactly.   And in that book he says that you can visit cultures all over this world, isolated by hundreds of miles of ocean, by impassable mountains, I mean they’ve had no contact with one another, we know that.   And yet when you investigate their shamanism it is identical everywhere on the face of this earth.   Oh they have different fetishes; they may have some different ceremonies, but at the root of it, it is identical.   Well that demonstrates the fact that it comes from a common source and you just told us that there is a common source to serpent worship.   It is demonstrable.   You can’t deny it.   Why is the whole world into serpent worship?   I remember I was speaking on this, I forget where now and a young man comes up to me and says I was just in the northern most part of India, way up in the jungle where hardly any visitors ever get and we went into this ancient temple and there was a faded fresco on a wall: a woman, a serpent and a tree.   By the way, archeologists encounter this all over the world: the woman, the serpent, and the tree.   And they worship the serpent.   And he said I asked—

 

            Tom:

Again Dave, a perversion of what took place.   Historical fact to begin with but then a perversion of it.  

 

            Dave:

Yes, right.   And he asked them, why do you worship the serpent?   Oh, they said, he’s our savior.   He brings us immortality.   And let’s take a modern example.   How about the caduceus?   Modern medicine, the staff with the serpent around it.

 

            Tom:

Yes, Asclepius, the god of—

 

            Dave:

Right and it began in the ancient temples of Greece and Rome.   This is where modern healing began.   That’s why modern medicine has that.   And they worshiped Asclepius with serpents because of an ancient story that said the god Asclepius had received a healing herb at the mouth of a serpent.   So now you have the Genesis story turned in again inside out.   He doesn’t destroy us, he saves us.   How does the serpent save us?   With herbs, with drugs and for all the benefits of modern medicine we would have to confess that we are a drug society.   It has been responsible for the oversubscription and over proliferation of consciousness altering drugs which we don’t have time to talk about.   And they have changed it now.   I just learned this Tom.   I remember being at the graduation ceremony for the medical students at UCLA medical school and I heard them all recite the Hippocratic oath: “I swear by Apollo, by Asclepius, by Hygieia and Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses”— I mean you couldn’t get them to swear by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or by Jesus Christ, but they were swearing by the pagan deities.   Now I understand they don’t do that anymore, they’ve discontinued it and I can’t remember, it was a very few years ago and I don’t remember the reason for it.   But down through the centuries the doctors have sworn by it in the name of these ancient gods, Asclepius being one of them.   In Greek mythology you have Orphic Egg, the symbol of the cosmos.   It’s got a serpent wrapped around it.   Tom, it’s everywhere.   The Bible is true and Genesis is history; it’s not mythology.  

 

            Tom:

Dave, I also remember that medical corp, I think this is right after the first World War—their symbol up to about I think 1917, was a cross.   This was the medical corp.   After 1917 it became a caduceus that is a staff with the intertwined serpent.   Now who would do that and on what basis?   Again, you see the world moving into this philosophy, this idea, this teaching of the serpent.

 

            Dave:

And the Bible puts it in a nutshell in Revelation 12.   It describes Satan as that old serpent called the devil, the dragon who deceives the whole world.  

 

            Tom:

Revelation:12:9And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him..   

 

            Dave:

I think we’ve pretty well covered this one.   I mean the fact that the Bible stands on one side and all the other religions on the other side, says something.   They come from a different source of inspiration.   There is no doubt that all of these other writings and all of these pagan practices have a common source of information.   There is no question that the Bible has a different source and the Bible claims to be the Word of the one true God.  

 

            Tom:

Dave, this next question I think really brings to mind what we’ve been talking about and the question is sort of why?   Why would God knowing all the evil that would follow, create a being that would become Satan?   What could be the purpose of Satan’s existence?   The biblical devil in fact, is presented as so powerful that he seems to be God’s equal.   If not, why has it taken God so long to conquer him?  

 

            Dave:

That’s a very good question and a logical one.   First of all, Satan is not God’s equal, that’s for sure.   It’s not a question of raw power.   But what is involved is a battle for the hearts and minds of human beings and you don’t change someone’s mind.   You don’t change their heart with raw power.   That’s a problem.   I’m sure we’re going to have to come back and deal with this in more depth next week, but that is a basic problem with Islam for example.   Islam uses raw power, terrorism, we’ll kill you!   We’ll knock down the Twin Towers.   This is how Islam was always spread with the sword.   They sent their conquering armies everywhere and if someone wonders why did the Muslim armies—why were they so successful?   I mean this was the fastest spread of an empire, largest empire.   The fastest spread of any in history.   They went all the way to China.   They took over parts of India; they went up into France and so forth because they were not afraid to die.   Their warriors in fact were reckless.   They were willing to die because of the promise that if you die as a martyr in jihad you are instantly transported into paradise and all the benefits of it.   Now we saw that this doesn’t work.   The Taliban, you take the Taliban out of Afghanistan and they shave their beards.   They’ve got the rock music—we’ve talked about it before.   You don’t change someone’s heart and mind with power, so—

 

            Tom:

Dave, let me just throw some on the other side here.   We’ve seen the same thing within so-called Christianity, the Catholic Church, the Crusades, [and] the Inquisitions.   We’ve seen it among so-called evangelical Christianity with regard to persecution of one group with another.   Lutherans, Calvin and certainly in Geneva and so on.

 

            Dave:

Persecuting and killing man.

 

            Tom:

It’s like God wants to take control and wants to impose this.    This is what you are talking about.   It can’t be a power trip.

 

            Dave:

You cannot force someone to change their mind.   You cannot force some one to love you.   You cannot force someone to believe in you.   You cannot force someone to receive a gift.   We did an article in our newsletter maybe a year or so ago titled, “What a sovereign God cannot do.”   That got a lot of reaction from people.   But God can’t lie, he can’t be wrong; he can’t go back on his Word.   He can’t deny himself; he can’t sin; he can’t fail and so forth.   [There are] many things he can’t do and cannot force you to love him.   He cannot force you to receive the gift of salvation that he offers because he has given man the power of choice.   He’s given us the power of choice so we could love one another; we could love him.   Therefore it’s not a matter of raw power.   There is a real battle between God and Satan for the hearts and minds of mankind and I often tell young people and older ones as well, “Look, if Satan has a better deal than God, follow him.”   God’s not trying to deceive you, pull the wool over your eyes, trick you.   If Satan’s got a better deal, follow him.   But if God has a better deal, and if he indeed, is the Judge and if we are sinners and the only way to be forgiven, righteously by God who is just, is for the penalty to have been paid by his Son Jesus Christ, and if on that basis he offers pardon, eternal life a home in heaven forever, then why don’t you believe in him and follow him?  

 

            Tom:

And again, it’s a free gift.