signs

87:5.9The in­ten­tion and will of the spir­its were stud­ied by means of omens, or­a­cles, and signs. And these spirit mes­sages were in­ter­preted by div­ina­tion, sooth­say­ing, magic, or­deals, and as­trol­ogy. The whole cult was a scheme de­signed to pla­cate, sat­isfy, and buy off the spir­its through this dis­guised bribery.

87:5.14It was not merely out of cu­rios­ity that the an­cients sought to know the fu­ture; they wanted to dodge ill luck. Div­ina­tion was sim­ply an at­tempt to avoid trou­ble. Dur­ing these times, dreams were re­garded as pro­phetic, while ev­ery­thing out of the or­di­nary was con­sid­ered an omen. And even to­day the civ­i­lized races are cursed with the be­lief in signs, to­kens, and other su­per­sti­tious rem­nants of the ad­vanc­ing ghost cult of old. Slow, very slow, is man to aban­don those meth­ods whereby he so grad­u­ally and painfully as­cended the evo­lu­tion­ary scale of life.

150:3.1210. He ex­posed and de­nounced their be­lief in spells, or­deals, be­witch­ing, curs­ing, signs, man­drakes, knot­ted cords, and all other forms of ig­no­rant and en­slav­ing su­per­sti­tion.

173:5.4Af­ter speak­ing this para­ble, Je­sus was about to dis­miss the mul­ti­tude when a sym­pa­thetic be­liever, mak­ing his way through the crowds to­ward him, asked: “But, Mas­ter, how shall we know about these things? how shall we be ready for the king’s in­vi­ta­tion? what sign will you give us whereby we shall know that you are the Son of God?” And when the Mas­ter heard this, he said, “Only one sign shall be given you.” And then, point­ing to his own body, he con­tin­ued, “De­stroy this tem­ple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But they did not un­der­stand him, and as they dis­persed, they talked among them­selves, say­ing, “Al­most fifty years has this tem­ple been in build­ing, and yet he says he will de­stroy it and raise it up in three days.” Even his own apos­tles did not com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of this ut­ter­ance, but sub­se­quently, af­ter his res­ur­rec­tion, they re­called what he had said.

90:2.5The med­i­cine men put great trust in signs and omens, such as, “When you hear the sound of a rustling in the tops of the mul­berry trees, then shall you be­stir your­self.” Very early in the his­tory of the race the shamans turned their at­ten­tion to the stars. Prim­i­tive as­trol­ogy was a world-wide be­lief and prac­tice; dream in­ter­pret­ing also be­came wide­spread. All this was soon fol­lowed by the ap­pear­ance of those tem­per­a­men­tal shamanesses who pro­fessed to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with the spir­its of the dead.

153:4.5Then stood up an­other Phar­isee, who said: “Teacher, we would have you give us a pre­de­ter­mined sign which we will agree upon as es­tab­lish­ing your au­thor­ity and right to teach. Will you agree to such an ar­range­ment?” And when Je­sus heard this, he said: “This faith­less and sign-seek­ing gen­er­a­tion seeks a to­ken, but no sign shall be given you other than that which you al­ready have, and that which you shall see when the Son of Man de­parts from among you.”

157:2.1On Mon­day, Au­gust 8, while Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles were en­camped in Ma­g­a­dan Park, near Beth­saida-Ju­lias, more than one hun­dred be­liev­ers, the evan­ge­lists, the women’s corps, and oth­ers in­ter­ested in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, came over from Ca­per­naum for a con­fer­ence. And many of the Phar­isees, learn­ing that Je­sus was here, came also. By this time some of the Sad­ducees were united with the Phar­isees in their ef­fort to en­trap Je­sus. Be­fore go­ing into the closed con­fer­ence with the be­liev­ers, Je­sus held a pub­lic meet­ing at which the Phar­isees were pres­ent, and they heck­led the Mas­ter and oth­er­wise sought to dis­turb the as­sem­bly. Said the leader of the dis­turbers: “Teacher, we would like you to give us a sign of your au­thor­ity to teach, and then, when the same shall come to pass, all men will know that you have been sent by God.” And Je­sus an­swered them: “When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the heaven is red; in the morn­ing it will be foul weather, for the heaven is red and low­er­ing. When you see a cloud ris­ing in the west, you say show­ers will come; when the wind blows from the south, you say scorch­ing heat will come. How is it that you so well know how to dis­cern the face of the heav­ens but are so ut­terly un­able to dis­cern the signs of the times? To those who would know the truth, al­ready has a sign been given; but to an evil-minded and hyp­o­crit­i­cal gen­er­a­tion no sign shall be given.”