Dangerous Business
May 31, 2012 (Thursday)
It has happened again. In West Virginia. A well-known, likeable pastor has died from a rattlesnake bite. He owned the snake, and had used it in serpent-handling worship services for years, but this time was different. The snake did what snakes do, and, true to his personal beliefs, the preacher refused medical help and died. This is a sad and very tragic event and our hearts go out to this man’s loved ones and followers, with a prayer that they all might see that this is not something God wants them to do.
Religions which practice serpent-handling base their practice on beliefs based on the Biblical book of Mark, Chapter 16, Verse 18, “they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
I am not a Bible Scholar by any means, but I have learned to trust certain scholars who have impeccable records of reverence for the Word of God, and A. T. Robertson is one of them. Here’s what he said about Mark 16:18: “The great doubt concerning the genuineness of these verses (fairly conclusive proof against them in my opinion) renders it unwise to take these verses as the foundation for doctrine or practice unless supported by other and genuine portions of the New Testament” (Word Pictures in the New Testament).
Didn’t the Apostle Paul get bitten by a snake on Malta, and suffer no ill effects? Yes, that’s what happened. He shook it off into the fire from which it came. But please notice, as you read that account in the Book of Acts, that this was no “serpent-handling service.” This was plainly a miracle of God in which God spared his servant a premature death. This type of thing may be what Jesus was talking about in Luke 10:19.
Snakes play their part in the natural schemes of ecology, but their place is out there in the natural world, not in the church house. If anyone asks you to do something foolish just to show that you trust God, walk away from him. This includes snake-handling, but it also includes no telling what. One of the great gifts of God is “common sense.”