Now, what's interesting about this image of the serpent on a pole, did you know that this
is the symbol for the medical industry?
In fact, I got a list here of medical organizations that use that symbol as their emblem.
The American Academy of Physician Assistants, the American Osteopathic Association, the
American Medical Association, also known as the AMA, that's a big one.
American Medical Response, American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of
Occupational and Environmental Medicine, American College of Osteopathic Internist, American
Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, American Hippocratic Registry, American Medical Student
Association, American Veterinary Medical Association, Army Medical Department of the US Army, Blue
Cross Blue Shield, Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Internal Medicine Corps, Medic Alert,
Michigan State Medical Society, National Athletic Trainers Association, you know, throw in sports
medicine, amen?
Stanford University School of Medicine, Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences,
Pennsylvania Department of Health, Student Osteopathic Medical Association, United States
Navy Hospital Corps, United States Air Force Medical Corps, University of Minnesota Medical
School and Yale University School of Medicine.
And that's just in the United States.
This symbol is used all over the world.
It's used in Africa, Asia, Europe, all over the world.
This symbol is used as a symbol of medicine and healing.
Isn't it interesting how many things in our world come from the word of God?
They come from the word of God.
Now, every time you see an ambulance, 100% of the time, it has like a blue symbol that's
like a six lines or three lines that make a little star and they have a serpent on a
pole in the middle.
Every ambulance has a picture of a serpent on a pole.
Isn't it amazing how there are just things that bear witness to Christ everywhere you
look?
You know, Christ left his stamp on this world.
I mean, it's everywhere.
Little pictures of the gospel everywhere and so many things in our world, so many expressions
that we use and symbols that are out there, they come from the word of God.
But let me ask you this, out of all those medical organizations that I read, I wonder
if they give God the glory.
I wonder if they give Jesus Christ the glory.
And I wonder if they acknowledge, hey, that symbol comes from the word of God.
That's a picture of Jesus.
You know, he's the great physician.
Do you think that they give them the glory down at Yale and Stanford and all these other
things?
They actually don't.
So if you actually look up, where does that symbol come from?
You know what they'll tell you?
Oh, well, that's the rod of Asclepius.
And Asclepius is a Greek god.
And they say that's, you know, that's actually the rod of Asclepius and it's a Greek god.
And from about 300 B.C. onwards, the cult of Asclepius grew very popular and pilgrims
flocked to his healing temples to be cured of their ills.
So the world will tell you, hey, this is a Greek god, you know, the serpent on a pole.
And if you listen to different lectures on this, they'll tell you, hey, it goes back
to the 6th century B.C. and it got really popular around 300 B.C. and onward.
But wait a minute, folks.
When was the book of Numbers written?
The book of Numbers was written around 1500 B.C.
The book of Numbers that we're reading right now was written around 1500 B.C.
That's around the time that Moses...
You'll hear sometimes people tell you, oh, the Bible was written over the course of 1600
years.
It's because they're going from, you know, 1500 B.C. to around 100 A.D. as far as the
New Testament being finished by 100 A.D.
So that's where that 1600 figure comes from.
So it's easy to remember that the books of Moses were written around 1500 B.C.
And look, even Christ-rejecting scholars who believe that the Bible is not telling the
truth and that it's just a book of fairy tales or myths, even they will tell you that the
law of Moses was written by 1000 B.C. at the latest, 1000 B.C. is what they'll state.
But we know from the chronology of the Word of God, it was actually written about 1500
B.C.
It was written about 1500 years before Christ.
But even if you took their Christ-rejecting date, that's long before Asclepius, right?
Which is from like the 6th century B.C.
So look, this came 900 years earlier, folks.
Now stop and think about this.
If the Word of God tells us about this serpent on a pole that was lifted up by Moses and
people would look and live and Jesus Christ came along and said, you know what, just like
that serpent was lifted up, even so, must the Son of Man be lifted up that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.
What happened after that?
What did they do?
What did the children of Israel do?
They burned incense to it.
So they did what?
They worshipped it, right?
So doesn't it make sense that if the children of Israel spent hundreds of years worshipping
a brazen serpent on a pole, they did that for hundreds of years, starting at 1500 B.C.,
and 1400 B.C., they're still doing it, 1300, 1200, 1100, 1000 B.C., still doing it, right?
Still worshipping the serpent on a pole around the time of King David, right?
Around 1000 B.C., 900 B.C., 800 B.C., 700 B.C.
Well look, doesn't it make sense that some of their neighbors in the Mediterranean would
have picked up on this cult of worshipping the brazen serpent?
So obviously the Greeks picked up on this because they saw some Israeli dude worshipping
the serpent on a pole or talking about it, and then next thing you know, the Greeks have
their own false religion.
Why?
Because the devil's false religions are spin-offs of the true religion.