Christ Jesus said, “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:19). Those words came to me very early one morning earlier this year.
I had been piloting a plane all night around Southeast Asia, and when I got to my hotel, I went straight to bed. At some point I was awakened by the sensation of something crawling on my right foot, and then a bite.
I yelled, leaped out of bed, and tore back the sheets to try to find what I suspected was a spider. But whatever it was, it had already escaped, and I was too tired to look for it. The area of the bite was already burning and red. I had been bitten by spiders and insects before, but I’d never felt anything as painful.
Even so, Jesus’ words gave me great confidence that all would be well. This was not the result of a blind faith on my part, but rather a cultivated spiritual understanding that I had gained throughout a lifetime of witnessing God’s power to heal.
I made sure nothing was in the sheets, climbed back into bed, and put my mental foot down, insisting on the great spiritual truth that matter, the flesh, is inert, mindless, and therefore cannot be inflamed or painful. I realized that except for the power we give it, the material body cannot ache, throb, or swell any more than the concrete sidewalk outside my hotel. With that conviction, the pain left, and I went back to sleep.
When I awoke a couple of hours later, there was still a red mark at the site of the bite. After I took a shower, the area ballooned, and I noticed two puncture holes, which indicated to me I’d most likely been bitten by a spider.
Stories about the effects of poisonous spider bites came to mind and attempted to overshadow my thoughts with fear. But I quickly shut out those fears, looked away from the material evidence—the dream of life in matter—and turned to God to tell me what was really going on. Many beautiful images of thought then came to me. One was of St. Paul shaking off into the fire the viper that had bitten his hand, leaving him unharmed (see Acts 28:3).
Another one was of the bronze serpent God commanded Moses to put on a pole when the Israelites were being bitten by poisonous snakes. “And Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole, and if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked to the serpent of bronze [attentively, expectantly, with a steady and absorbing gaze], he lived” (Numbers 21:9, Amplified Bible).
To me this was not a contradiction of the commandment that God had just given to the Israelites not to make and worship graven images (see Exodus 20:4). But rather, it was infinite Love penetrating the darkness of thought and reaching the Israelites right where they were, and in a way they could understand.
I think that the bronze serpent could have served as a strong reminder to the Israelites of the power of Almighty God, which Moses demonstrated in Pharaoh’s court. “So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did as the Lord had commanded; Aaron threw down his rod before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh called for the wise men [skilled in magic and divination] and the sorcerers (wizards and jugglers). And they also, these magicians of Egypt, did similar things with their enchantments and secret arts. For they cast down every man his rod and they became serpents; but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods” (Exodus 7:10–12, Amplified Bible).
To me, this illustrated the supremacy of divine Spirit over the so-called laws of matter, and the ability of divine Love to utterly destroy the poisonous beliefs of the carnal mind—hatred, envy, revenge, and so on.
As I continued to pray, the angel message that removed the fear entirely came to me in Jesus’ words, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). I knew that if Jesus said it, it had to be true. And I gratefully accepted it. Mary Baker Eddy’s explanation of Jesus’ statement is: “When speaking of God’s children, not the children of men, Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is within you;’ that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God’s image is unfallen and eternal” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 476).
I substituted “unfallen” with the words “unbitten” and “unpoisoned.” The 91st Psalm assures us: “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling” (verses 9, 10).
That night I experienced the proof of that promise. I was able to go to work and fly that night without any further pain, swelling, or aftereffects.
Hong Kong, SAR, China
