 |
|
|
|
 Mack Wolford and his father were both serpent handlers who died of snake bites.
June 1st, 2012
09:19 PM ET
Death of snake handling preacher shines light on lethal Appalachian traditionBy Julia Duin, Special to CNN (CNN) - Mack Wolford, one of the most famous Pentecostal serpent handlers in Appalachia, was laid to rest Saturday at a low-key service at his West Virginia church a week after succumbing to a snake bite that made headlines across the nation. Several dozen family, friends and members of Wolford's House of the Lord Jesus church in tiny Matoaka filled the simple hall for the service, which lasted slightly more than an hour. At the request of pastor's widow, Fran Wolford, media were forbidden inside the building.
Wolford's own dad was a serpent handler who died from a snake bite in 1983.
Mack Wolford, who was 44, was bitten by his yellow timber rattlesnake at an evangelistic event in a state park about 80 miles west of Bluefield, in West Virginia’s isolated southern tip. He enjoyed handling snakes during worship services, but it’s a tradition that has killed about 100 practitioners since it started in the east Tennessee hills in 1909. CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories In recent years, Wolford feared the tradition was in danger of dying for lack of interest among people in their 20s and 30s. It’s why he drove to small, out-of-the-way churches around Appalachia to encourage those who handle snakes to keep the tradition alive. “I promised the Lord I’d do everything in my power to keep the faith going,” Wolford said last fall in an interview I conducted with him for the Washington Post Sunday magazine. “I spend a lot of time going a lot of places that handle serpents to keep them motivated. I’m trying to get anybody I can get.” He hadn’t much hope for churches in West Virginia, where serpent handling is legal. Some surrounding states, including Tennessee and North Carolina, have outlawed it. He had his eyes on a Baptist church near Marion, North Carolina, where, he said, “there’s been crowds coming” and its leaders wanted to introduce serpent handling, the law be damned. “I’m getting the faith started in other states, where I am seeing a positive turnout,” he said. “Remember, back in the Bible, it was the miracles that drew people to Christ.” Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter Wolford wanted to travel to the radical edges of Christianity, where life and death gazed at him every time he walked into a church and picked up a snake. That’s what drew the crowds and the media; that’s what gives a preacher from the middle of nowhere the platform to offer the gospel to people who would never otherwise listen. “Mack was one of the hopes for a revival of the tradition,” said Ralph Hood, a University of Tennessee professor who’s written two books on snake handlers and is probably the foremost academic expert on their culture. “However, I am sure others will emerge, as well.” Indeed, others are emerging, including a growing group of 20-somethings clustered around churches in La Follette, Tennessee, and Middlesboro, Kentucky. Their individual Facebook pages show photos of poisonous snakes and “serpent handling” appears on their “activities and interests” lists. Pentecostal serpent handlers - they use "serpent" over "snake" out of deference to the Bible - are known for collecting dozens of snakes expressly for church services. At church, they’re also known to ingest a mixture of strychnine - a highly toxic powder often used as a pesticide - and water, often from a Mason jar. These same believers will bring Coke bottles with oil-soaked wicks to the church so they can hold flames to their skin. Key to understanding this culture are a pair of verses from the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament: “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mainstream Christians - Pentecostals included - do not believe Mark 16:17-18 means that Christians should seek out poisonous snakes or ingest poisonous substances. But experts say that several thousand people – exact numbers are hard to come by – in six Appalachian states read the verse differently. Known as “signs following” Pentecostals, they see a world at war with evil powers and believe it’s a Christian’s duty to take on the devil by engaging in the “signs.” Thus, a typical service in one of their churches will also include prayers for healing and speaking in tongues. But it’s the seeming ability to handle poisonous snakes without dying from their bites that makes these Pentecostals believe that God gives supernatural abilities to those willing to lay their lives on the line. If they are bitten, they refuse to seek antivenin medication, believing it’s up to God to heal them. At the Church of the Lord Jesus in Jolo, West Virginia - one of the country’s most famous “signs following” churches - a group of worship leaders passed around a rattlesnake at a service last year on Labor Day weekend. The snake twisted as it was passed from man to man. The women clapped, and one tried handling the serpent but quickly gave it back to a man. The pastor, Harvey Payne - who has never been bitten by a serpent - posed for the cameras, the reptile twisting and curling. “My life is on the line,” he exulted. “All Holy Ghost power!” If a believer is bitten by a snake and dies, these Pentecostals reason, it is simply their time to go. “It devastated me,” one Tennessee serpent handler confided to me about Wolford’s death last week. “It just shook my very foundation. But (handling snakes) is still the Word of God.” Vicie Haywood, Wolford’s mother - whose husband died 29 years ago from a rattlesnake bite during a worship service - is heartbroken. But she has no doubts about the righteousness of serpent handling. “It’s still the Word, and I want to go on doing what the Word says,” she told the Washington Post on Wednesday. Last fall I asked Wolford if handling serpents wasn’t tempting God, a common question from mainstream Christians. “Tempting God is disbelief in God, not belief in Him,” he said, citing an incident in the Old Testament in which Moses slapped his staff against a rock to provide water in the desert rather than speak to the rock as God had commanded. By using his own resources – a stick – rather than counting on God to act when Moses simply spoke to the rock, the patriarch was condemned for lack of belief and forbidden to enter the Promised Land. He added that he regularly drinks strychnine during worship services, to show God has power over poison. “In my life I’ve probably drunk two gallons of it,” Wolford said. “Once you drink it, there is no turning back. All your muscles contract at once. Your body starts stiffening out. Your lungs; it’s like you can’t breathe.” He’d gotten sick from strychnine a handful of times. “I was up all night struggling to breathe and move my muscles and repeating Bible verses that say you can ‘drink any deadly thing and it won’t hurt you,’ ” Wolford told me, recounting one episode. He said a voice in his head taunted him as he struggled to recover. “The devil said, ‘You’re going to die, you’re going to die,’ ” he said. “You can’t go to the hospital. There is not a lot they can do. But (seeking medical help) means you’re already starting to lose faith.” After he was bitten last Sunday, Wolford may have thought his faith would bring him through that trauma, as it had so many times before. He had four spots on his right hand from where copperheads had bitten him. When he finally gave his family permission to call paramedics, about eight hours after being bitten, he must have known his battle was near over. By the time he arrived at the local hospital in Bluefield, he was dead. soundoff (7,439 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 Next »
Next entry »The Gospel of Stephen King
|
  About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
|
|
|
The DEMOCRATS will let you handle SNAKES but they want to keep the BIRTH CONTROL PILL CONCESSIONS all for themselves.
Strychnine is for pu ss ies. If they had real faith, they'd use cyanide. And rattlesnakes? Really? I think people would be more impressed to see you handle something exotic. Say, a black mamba.
Well, one less nut job out there. Please give them some more serpents.
Somebody give these fools something more than a Copperhead. Like say, a few black Mambas or Coral snakes. Then we'll see how much longer they think that "God is protecting [them]"
Now that's funny right there. I don't care who you are.
Larry would have a field day with this one.
There's a simple explanation and word for this: stupid.
First it says he was bitten by a yellow timber rattler,then it says 4 copperhead bites. The media is horrible.
He was bitten (and killed) by the rattler. The 4 copperhead strikes/bites were previous injuries. That's how I took it, anyway. Regardless, what a fool.
Maybe that means if, once in your life you have to handle a snake or drink some kind of toxic drink, God will save your life. Doesn;t the Bible also mention "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God"?
Now if we could only send a boat load of these snakes to the vatican.
I'm rooting for the snakes...
Thinning the herd.
Well yes, evolution at work. It sometimes takes a few generations to purge the weak, infirm and feeble minded from the ranks. Look's like it has almost caught up.
Ah yes, evolution at work. It sometimes takes a few generations to purge the weak, infirm and feeble minded from the ranks. Look's like it has almost caught up.
Like father like son. I wish Mr. Darwin would be more efficient and take these people out before they reproduce.
The stupid always breed early.
You have to take those passeges out of context to make them say what they are saying; the Bible also tells me that God will watch over me but I am not going to walk down a freeway with a blindfold on to test Him
Moses, I do watch over you too. Trust me, have faith. Build me a temple. Send me money.
Moses, my problem with that? "Christians" like to pick and choose which scripures are literal as opposed to metaphorical. Extremely self-serving. Opinion, only.
"Extremely self-serving"
.
You just described 90% of the Christians
Moses sez:
" ... the Bible also tells me that God will watch over me but I am not going to walk down a freeway with a blindfold on to test Him"
so Moses you openly admit that you do NOT have faith in god to watch over you; there ARE limits to faith.
Knowingly or not ... you have taken the first step to become an Atheist .. ( that really wasn't so hard was it ) Welcome 🙂
Does anybody else see the hilariously delicious irony of Christian whackadoos proving Darwin correct by voluntarily removing themselves from the gene pool with their delusional stupidity?
LOL Religion
See below!
These s-c-h-l-o-n-g s-h-i-t dipped eating s-o-d-o-m-i-t-e-s, and their a-t-h-e-i-s-t counterparts the April fool’s day celebrants, can’t debate one on one due to their prevalent ignorance and cowardice, several hundred of them have nothing constructive to say, except oral d-e-f-e-c-a-t-I-o-n.
Yeah. So?
Oral d-e-f-e-c-a-t-I-o-n can be a productive exercise for those of us who can detect dramatic irony in the lives of your like-minded kin, my scatological friend.
Debating with a man of faith is a losing proposition. His commitment to winning at all odds is stronger than his ability to explore ideas logically, one of the prime attributes of debate. Sorry Henry, screaming hyphenetically is d-d-d-dumb.
I don't think I will ever be able to quit laughing at this. :^)
“Remember, back in the Bible, it was the miracles that drew people to Christ.”
From South Park:
Jesus: The miracle I’m most famous for is turning water into wine.
Stan: Can you do it again?
Jesus: Very well. I shall perform the miracle. Behold. Here you can see ordinary water, clear, clean. Okay now, turn around. [Stan looks at Jesus quizzically. Jesus is now holding the pitcher] Er, nuh, tur- turn around. [Stan turns away and Jesus quickly switches pitchers] Uh, okay now, turn back. [Stan turns back] It is now wine!
Stan: That’s it? That’s how you did that trick?
Jesus: Well, yeah.
Stan: That trick sucks, Jesus.
Jesus: Oh well, I guess it worked a little better on people 2000 years ago.
So is this guy still dead?
Like almost everybody that dies...yes, they are still dead
wait!!!wait!!! I think i just saw him move. Yes,...Yes...He's Alive..He's alive...Hallelujah!! Blessed be the lord!!!
Chris – To explain clearly...I do believe 'Me Again' was just making satire of the situation and was NOT serious, as was I...(sign...sign...) Comprende?
chris; what do you mean "almost"