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onager

(9,356 posts)
12. And now a new generation is "grasping the power!"
Thu Jun 7, 2012, 09:50 PM
Jun 2012
Young snake handlers say they grasp the power of faith

...While older serpent handlers were wary of outsiders, these younger believers welcome visitors and use Facebook to promote their often misunderstood — and illegal — version of Christianity. They want to show the beauty and power of their extreme form of spirituality. And they hope eventually to reverse a state ban on handling snakes in church.

Since the early 1900s, a handful of true believers in Eastern Tennessee and other parts of Appalachia have practiced the so-called signs of the gospel, found in a little-known passage in the King James Version of the Gospel of Mark:

"And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 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."


http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-06-03/snake-handlers-pentecostal-tennessee/55354206/1

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