Sign

A sign in Scripture is a perceptible thing, act, or event that points beyond itself and carries a message — a marker by which something else is known, confirmed, or made credible. Linguistically, the Hebrew word ’ot and the Greek word sēmeion both cover this range, from a plain identifying marker to a wonder that authenticates a messenger, and biblical writers use the term for ordinary indicators as well as for divine acts.

The text says signs frequently function as authentication. In Judges 6:17 Gideon asks, “show me a sign that it is you who talk with me,” treating the sign as evidence about the identity of the one speaking. The Gospels sharpen the issue: Matthew 16:3-4 records the rebuke that a generation able to read the appearance of the sky could not “discern the signs of the times,” together with the declaration that no sign would be given it “except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” The Fourth Gospel makes signs a leading category — at Cana Jesus’ first sign “revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11), and Nicodemus reasons from signs to the conclusion that God is with Jesus (John 3:2) — yet the same Gospel preserves the counter-note, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will in no way believe” (John 4:48). Signs there both evoke faith and are judged an inadequate foundation for it.

Signs also attach to the future. The disciples ask for “the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age” (Matthew 24:3), and the answer includes “the sign of the Son of Man” appearing in the sky (Matthew 24:30). One way to read Genesis 15:13-16 is as a word of surety about a distant future, since Abram is told to “know for sure” what will befall his offspring; on that reading a predicted course of events, once fulfilled, itself becomes a confirming marker. That is an interpretive suggestion rather than a claim the text makes in so many words.

How Christians weigh the term’s ongoing significance differs. Pentecostal and charismatic traditions expect signs and wonders to accompany the church’s mission and read the New Testament language of signs as normative for the present, while Reformed cessationist teaching holds that the authenticating sign-gifts belonged to the church’s apostolic founding. Sacramental traditions — Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican — speak of the sacraments as signs, and disagree among themselves and with Baptist and free-church teaching over whether a sign merely signifies or also conveys what it signifies. Readings of Matthew 24 divide similarly, with dispensational interpreters placing the sign of the Son of Man in a future tribulation and preterist or idealist readings applying it to the fall of Jerusalem or to the church’s continuing life.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.