|
One of the
first pieces of information that Chuck and I learned through talking
with the people at the Church of the Lord Jesus was that Dewey
Chafin had been bitten 133 (now 139) times throughout his forty plus
years of serpent handling. Almost all of the men and some of the women
in the church exhibit some sort of deformity on their hands and fingers
from a past serpent bite. An atrophied finger, the loss of movement in
part of a hand, or simple scars from a serpent’s fangs, are proudly
exhibited by these church members when they are asked about their
“battle scars.” According to Brother Bob, Pastor of the church, the
serpents “are the visible sign of the devil,” and when one has power
over these serpents through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, he or she
is, in effect, exerting control over the devil. None of the church
members seeks medical attention when bitten by a poisonous snake; in
fact, Brother Bob’s stepdaughter was killed by a serpent bite in the
60s. But what does it mean when someone is bitten or when someone dies
of a bite? Has the power of God failed that person in some way?
At one of the first services that Chuck and I attended, we
witnessed an individual’s being bitten five times by a handful of
copperheads. This person was not seriously hurt, but his hands and arms
swelled up pretty badly. Brother Ray was
eighty-two years old and had been with the church almost since its
beginning in the late 40s. He was a very powerful force in the church,
and I absolutely loved to hear and watch him sing and dance in the
services. Ray was always one of the first people to handle the serpents
in the services, and he had his own boxes of the creatures that he
himself hunted, which he brought with him to church. Ray’s right hand
was bitten over twenty years ago by a diamondback rattlesnake and became
extremely atrophied. His index and middle fingers were completely
unusable, and both of his hands had a swollen appearance. Before that
service, Ray had been bitten 89 times throughout the almost fifty years
that he
|
