A “sign” is a mark or token or event serving to convey an intimation or to communicate some idea; or a mark by which persons or things are distinguished and made known. In scripture, a “sign” points to something; it is generally an act of a divine or miraculous nature serving to demonstrate divine power or to reveal something hitherto unknown.
For example, when God replaced the clothing of leaves with which Adam and Eve had covered themselves, He made them coverings of animal skins (Genesis 3:21). This signified, as the epistle to the Hebrews later pointed out, that “without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins” (Hebrews 9:22).
Similarly, God used the “sign” of a rainbow to signify that no flood would ever again come to destroy all flesh (Genesis 9:2-18), saying “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth”.
With Abraham too, God made a covenant, the “sign” of which was “circumcision in flesh of your foreskins” (Genesis 17:11).
The burning bush was a “sign” given to Moses (Exodus 3:12) as was the rod that became a serpent (Exodus 4:3-4) and the leprous hand (Exodus 4:6-7).
Gideon too, sought a “sign” from God that it was indeedGod who was speaking to him. “And he said to Him, “If now I have found favour in Your eyes, then show me a sign that it is You who speak with me”. (Judges 6:17-18). God responded with the “sign” of the fire springing up from the rock (Judges 6: 20-22) and the fleece of wool (Judges 6:36-40).
“Signs” were used in the ministry of Jesus to signify His divine authority and power and to encourage faith.
John 20:30-31 “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.”
“Signs” in the New Testament always point to something and, in the case of the “signs” that Jesus did, which were specifically identified as “signs”, they pointed to illustrate or demonstrate something that was hitherto unknown, or to foretell some future event.
Two Examples
1) The Wedding in Cana – John 2:1-11 – where Jesus turned water into wine.
“This first of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him” (John 2:11).
This “sign” announced the end of the Old Covenant and the inauguration of the New Covenant and conveys the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:31, which foreshadowed a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
The water barrels at the wedding feast were kept for the ceremonial cleansing required under the Law. In turning the water into wine, Jesus was intimating that a new cleansing was now being introduced, a true cleansing, not a ritualistic ceremony that cleansed the outward man of dust and grime only, but an inward force that cleansed the inner man of sin, carnality and worldliness.
The significance of the wine replacing the water is that wine was used by Jesus at the Last Supper as a symbol of His blood, by which the New Covenant was inaugurated. In turning the water into wine, Jesus is making a vivid statement about the inadequacy of the Law, which included“the blood of bulls and of goats” to deal with the guilt of mankind’s sinfulness, and the necessity therefore for “the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered Himself without spot to God” as the only propitiating sacrifice (Hebrews 9:13-14).
The fundamental lesson in this “sign” is that only the Blood, and not the Law, is effective for righteousness. As Paul wrote to the Romans;
“For Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to all those having faith” (Romans 10:4).
Wine too, speaks of the fruit of God’s work, as in the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5:1-3. In that parable, the wine produced by the grapes was not of the quality that reflected God’s intention, the grapes being “wild”, and the vineyard was abandoned.
In John 15, Jesus makes the point that He is the vine and the Father is the vinedresser, while His people are the branches that are meant to produce the fruit to be crushed and turned into wine. (As an aside, it is worth observing that, without the crushing, there can be no wine. This is a well-concealed secret in orthodox Christianity.)
An additional aspect of this “sign” was referred to by Jesus in Mathew 9:17 where He said that new wine had to be put into new wineskins, because if it were put into old wineskins they would break and the new wine would be lost. This signifies that the gentile believers, the “new wine”, would not be put into the old wineskin of Judaism. Hence, the ministry of Paul specifically to the gentiles.
Yet another application of this “sign” is suggested in the water representing baptism and the wine the blood, showing Jesus at the beginning and the end of His work of redemption.
2) The Coming of the Son of Man – Matthew 24 where Jesus answered the question of the disciples as to the “sign” of His Coming.
“And as He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3).
In His answer, Jesus described events that would take place in the world after His crucifixion and warned the disciples against being deceived, for many would come claiming to be His but they would deceive many (Matthew 24:4-5). In verse 30 Jesus refers to the “sign” of “the Son of Man in heaven………..and the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory”. Then Jesus describes the scene at His coming;
“For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and took them all away. So shall the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there shall be two men in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left. Therefore be watchful, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:37-42).
The days of Noah, of course, were days of great wickedness in the world, where demonic spirits had co-mingled with human women to produce the nephilim, a species of giant humans of demonic origin.
“And the Lord God saw that the evil of mankind upon the earth was multiplied and that everyone in his heart was continually intent upon thoughts of evil” (Genesis 6:5). Consequently, God decided to destroy all mankind ”but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8).
These, then, were the days of Noah, and when they are replicated it will be a “sign” of the coming of the Son of Man. Other features of this coming event is that people were carrying on with their normal everyday occupations, such as working in the field or grinding in the mill and they “did not know” that disaster was upon them until they were taken away in the flood, while Noah and His family remained safe in the Ark, a Biblical “type” of Jesus, our Ark of Salvation.
Applying this to the Coming of the Lord, it is apparent that the present times are not dissimilar to those in the days of Noah. Evil abounds throughout Christendom, as governments turn away from Light in favour of darkness. These are times of unparalleled wickedness and corruption when the gospel is described as “hate speech” and those who follow Christ are denigrated and reviled, fulfilling Christ’s word that if they hated Him they will also hate those who are His (John 15:18).
In these days too, the Church is experiencing a flood of lawlessness as the Word of Truth is compromised to appease an evil world. True faith has been abandoned in favour of a watered down gospel, the light in the Church being turned into “great darkness” (Matthew 6:23), and spiritual power being exchanged for social status.
In these times too, there is emerging an era of “transhumanism”, in which “artificial intelligence” is embedded into human beings, replicating the nephilim in the days of Noah. All of these signs are preparing for another coming – that of the man of lawlessness, the son of perdition (2 Thessalonians 2), the anti-Christ whom many will accept as the true Christ, because they do not have the love of the truth so as to be saved (2 Thessalonians 2:10).
The times then, point to the coming of the Son of Man and those who “do not know”, that is, those who are ignorant of the truth, will be carried away in the flood of lawlessness. So too, will those who ignore Jesus warning (Matthew 24:4-5) and are deceived.
One of the deceptions made of this passage scripture is in connection with the people carrying out their normal occupations when they are taken in the flood. This has been misconstrued to mean that the ones taken are “raptured” by the Holy Spirit and those left are lost forever, whereas, of course, the opposite is true.
The ones left are the ones “in Christ”, that is, in the Ark of Salvation. Those not “in Christ” are “taken”, paralambanetai in Greek, not “raptured”, harpazo.
There are many other “signs” that are recorded in the Bible and deserve prayerful study, particularly in the gospel of John.
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