Drinking Poison and Handling Serpents?

Please explain the meaning of Mark 16:17-18, which speaks of drinking poison and handling serpents.

By Pastor Ken Burisek,
The Ole Country Church, Medford, Wisconsin
Email: kburisek @wildblue.net

Someone reading this Scripture could easily get the wrong idea as to its true meaning. Im sure that many of us have heard of churches that literally handle live venomous snakes in their worship services as a way to show their faith. People in these situations have been at times bitten by those serpents with varying results and even deadly casualties.

The danger here is in taking this Scripture out of the context of the rest of Gods word. By picking up deadly snakes or ingesting poison unnecessarily and without reason, we are, in effect, putting God to the test, as Jesus said when He was being tempted of Satan in Luke 4:12... Jesus responded, The Scriptures also say, Do not test the Lord your God. By deliberately putting ourselves in harms way, we are telling God, I am going to put myself at risk just to prove that You will protect me.

Granted, nothing is impossible to God. He could choose to protect us even if we put ourselves at risk needlessly. But the question here is, is God obligated to protect us just because we are believers? I myself see the meaning of this Scripture from a different perspective. I believe that God does offer a certain shield of protection for believers, but I also believe that this verse is especially speaking of ...