Objection: The Aorist Tense of “Believe” in Mark 16:17 Refers to Those Who Did Believe in the Past, Not to Those Who Will Believe in the Future

According to the objector, Mark 16:17 should be understood to mean, “These signs will follow those who believed” because the Greek verb translated “believe” is in the Aorist tense (which does not exist in English) and supposedly must denote past completed action.  Thus, it would not apply to those who believe today.  Interestingly, some translations say, “have believed,” including the Amplified, Darby, NASB and the 1909 Reina Valera, thought they fixed it in the 1960 Reina Valera.

The objector is correct that the word for believe is in the Aorist tense.  Many seminaries have taught that the Aorist tense is used for momentary action completed in the past.  However, that is not universally accepted, nor should it be, because this book disproves it.  Am I saying that I know more about this issue than those seminary professors?  YES, I prove in this book from the Bible that the Aorist tense is time-indefinite; it does NOT always refer to the past, nor does it always refer to momentary (“punctiliar”) action!  The objector’s problem is his wrong assumption about the Aorist tense.  By disproving his statement about the Aorist tense, we can disprove his objection.

This matter is settled in the answer to another objection, especially the part toward the end that proves that those who think that the Aorist always refers to past momentary completed action are Errorists.

And it gets worse than that for the objector.  The particular Aorist conjugation for that verb in Mark 16:17 is a participle.  Although almost nobody translates it this way, the technically correct translation is that the signs follow “those believing,” indicating ongoing action.  The one translation I’ve seen that gets this right is Young’s Literal Translation.

Therefore, this statement is not bound to the past and it applies to believers in general, including believers today.