Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
— Luke 10:19
Reverend Notts, a brawny, big-eyed man was one of the best snake handling preachers in the Appalachian Mountains bar none. He’d handled rattlers for years. He claimed he felt the power of the Holy Spirit enter into him as he took up serpents. He danced wildly, possessed by the Holy Spirit, and ecstatic, while he talked in tongues to the rattlers.
On Christmas Eve in 1953, he made the mistake of trying his luck with an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, one of the most dangerous rattlers on the planet. When holding the rattler, he started hooping and hollering and talking so much gibberish that the rattle had had enough of his nonsense.
Exasperated with Reverend Notts, it reared back, hissed, and bit him on the neck, delivering a massive amount of deadly hemotoxic venom, enough to kill a bull elephant.
The Reverend, as mad as a raging bull, bit the rattler back on its neck. They both fell to the ground unconscious. The Diamondback rattler died, the Reverend more venomous than the ratter lived.
Bob Boyd