Did Weird Christian Rituals and Faith Healing Kill Mack Wolford in May 2012?

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Submitted by JR Harris on Sat, 06/02/2012 - 18:15

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This time the ritual was held in a park, and it killed Mack Wolford at 44. His father was killed the same way...... I believe weird Spiritual Rituals are partly to blame for this. This ritual is credited with killing over 100 people and they still do it.

Death of snake handling preacher shines light on lethal Appalachian tradition

By 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.

Read more: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/01/death-of-snake-handling-preache...

Don't forget to look at the almost 2000 comments in 2 days

For more about Serpent Handling, see this article by Paula I. Nielson Mar 14, 2010 entitled "Serpent-Handling Pentecostal Christians: Snake-Handlers Found in Christianity in Southeastern United States
http://suite101.com/article/serpent-handling-pentecost-christians-a213121

JR Harris's picture

JR Harris

Sat, 06/02/2012 - 18:28

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.”

"Tradition 10 - Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy." Please follow orders from the Interchurch Center if you are an AA member and don't comment.

becket's picture

becket

Sat, 06/02/2012 - 19:56

Looks to me like the cause of death is snakebite. Nothing more, nothing less.

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

JR Harris's picture

JR Harris

Sat, 06/02/2012 - 20:05

If you notice, he was also taking strychnine, which is also administered during the Belladonna Cure that Bill Wilson had that marked the end of his drinking career after he saw a white light.

Coincidence? Look for the similarities, not the differences.

"Tradition 10 - Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy." Please follow orders from the Interchurch Center if you are an AA member and don't comment.

jonnijoy's picture

jonnijoy

Sun, 06/03/2012 - 05:02

Lol! I would say a snake killed him. But I heard that snake had been to a few AA mtgs earlier. Wolford's own dad was a serpent handler who died from a snake bite in 1983.
http://youtu.be/IHjaW9sXl7s

jonnijoy's picture

jonnijoy

Sun, 06/03/2012 - 06:19

Heres to you Jr Harris. You earned it, enjoy

http://youtu.be/85gO8XLb4ug

aasux

Sun, 06/03/2012 - 20:02

Get these genes out of circulation asap. Natural selection and snake venom hopefully will get the rest of these whack jobs out of the picture soon.

live_free_or_die's picture

live_free_or_die

Mon, 06/04/2012 - 08:13

moron.

Alcoholics Anonymous: MyNotGodHasItCovered®
http://www.expaa.org/
http://bereanresearch.com/
http://badrecovery.blogspot.com/
NOT AA:
Rational Recovery, SOS, HAMS
http://alcoholabusesolutions.com/

jonnijoy's picture

jonnijoy

Mon, 06/04/2012 - 10:17

I would like to see them pass around black mambas

jonnijoy's picture

jonnijoy

Mon, 06/04/2012 - 10:21

Seems to me if they really believed they would bring in the really kick ads snakes like mambas cobras browns and a few taipans

JR Harris's picture

JR Harris

Fri, 06/29/2012 - 08:25

"George Went Hensley (c. 1880 – July 25, 1955) was an American Pentecostal minister best known for popularizing the practice of snake handling. A native of rural Appalachia, Hensley experienced a religious conversion around 1910: on the basis of a literal interpretation of scripture, he came to believe that the New Testament commanded all Christians to handle venomous snakes."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Went_Hensley

I guess it is a good thing that Bill Wilson didn't have his "Spiritual Awakening" during a Serpent handling experience..... It is in the bible.

"Tradition 10 - Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy." Please follow orders from the Interchurch Center if you are an AA member and don't comment.

JR Harris's picture

JR Harris

Fri, 06/29/2012 - 08:34

.....The service, which can last in excess of three hours, begins spontaneously and informally with several rousing hymns accompanied by four or five electric and acoustic guitars, clanging cymbals and jingling tambourines. Participants join in by dancing with a great deal of hand-clapping and foot-stomping. The pastor welcomes the congregation and asks all to, "have a good time in the Lord" and to be moved and "do what the spirit would have you do." (Kane 1974:295). Occasionally, the faithful will take the lectern, offer a prayer or preach a passage. After the pastor's greetings, the congregation kneels in general prayer, this is followed by an unprompted and chaotic chorus of thanks to God for past "blessings" and requests for God's help in healing the sick. The guitars and tambourines commence with another hymn followed by both men and women rejoicing in song. The music and singing increases in tempo and intensity matched by the devotees frenetic dancing, jumping, twirling, prancing, strutting and falling to the ground violently shaking and speaking in nonsensical tongues (Kane 1974:295). ......

Source: Cameron Freeman http://www.cameronfreeman.com/index.cfm?Fuseaction=ArticleDisplay&Articl...

"Tradition 10 - Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy." Please follow orders from the Interchurch Center if you are an AA member and don't comment.

JR Harris's picture

JR Harris

Sat, 06/30/2012 - 06:12

Follow the discussion - Is Serpent Handling Spiritual or Religious? Can being bitten by a deadly snake make you Spiritual, Religious or both? http://orange-papers.org/forum/node/1792

"Tradition 10 - Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy." Please follow orders from the Interchurch Center if you are an AA member and don't comment.