Acts 28: 3-6 ” Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat fastened itself on his hand. When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, ‘This man must be a murderer; though he escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.’ But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects, the people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happening to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.”
The people were right in calling Paul a murderer… for in his former life, Saul had persecuted and imprisoned many Believers – “Breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s Disciples.”(Acts 9:1) Paul, though, was a changed man, converted on the road to Damascus, and now greatly used by God. But this didn’t mean that the devil couldn’t dredge up his past. Every once in awhile our past will come back to haunt us…just like that snake, it’ll try to attach itself, attempting to kill us. But it says that Paul just shook the viper off into the fire. He had taken authority over the person he had once been.
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