Rattlesnake

[PMcGee]

This one came through my camp a couple years ago. Luckily I saw it before my dog did.


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[Highvoltage1]

No way I’d be camping in a floor less tent in some of these areas!

 

[Axle]

South central. Pratt/Barber county

Okay I’m in the Wichita area. Never seen one around here and I hope it stays that way!

 

[Jdeck09]

Been fortunate to avoid the big boys and only encounter a few small ones.

 

[OregonSteeler]

My dad worked with a fella who met his end during a snake service. At his funeral they busted out serpents again and his daughter met her end.

I've never heard of anything like this? What is this all about?

 

[MaddMatt]

I've never heard of anything like this? What is this all about?

Snake handling, at least in the Appalachians, is sometime practices in Pentecostal and Holiness churches. They base it off Mark 16:17-18

"17;And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;18;They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

 

[Andrew12gauge]

I've never heard of anything like this? What is this all about?

Hillbilly churches where they handle serpents because if you’re truly faithful enough God will protect you


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[Chris in TN]

Hillbilly churches where they handle serpents because if you’re truly faithful enough God will protect you


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After the second not-so-great awakening in the early 1800's in rural America, as a sort of psuedo-reveial branched off up into every holler in Appalachia, people really lost focus of what Christianity was about.

I lived in eastern TN for several years. I had a chance to be in some very, very rural places, and those weird offshoots of Christianity, where they usually still believe part of the core tenets of Christianity but de-emphasize them in favor of other things that are either wrong or a gross misunderstanding of the relevant texts at best, are still there. It was bizarre to see. Snake-handling was one of the worst manifestations of it, but there are others. If you were a basic evangelical Christian who understood and believed the basic, core tenets of the faith, and had some grasp of history, and you moved from the First Baptist Church of Main Street USA, a bible-believing church with some grasp of history, and found yourself casting about visiting a handful of little churches in rural Appalachia today, you'd see some strange things.

We never actually saw snake-handling. But we were aware of its existence.