Mark Wolford was highlighted in a November 2011 article in the Washington Post.  This “flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from West Virginia” is not media-shy and was not reluctant to call attention to his crusade to keep the practice of snake-handling alive.  Mark and his fellow followers take the words of Christ from Mark 16:18, “they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them,” as a command.  Mark made the news again last Sunday, possibly for the last time, when he was bitten by a rattlesnake he had just handled.  He died later that evening from the bite.  He was forty-four.

Mark was practicing a religious tradition that is popular among a few believers.  They handle snakes and some drink poison to prove their faith.  In fact, Mark’s father had died in 1983 at the age of thirty-nine in the same manner.  Those who believe like Mark interpret the words of Christ in the aforementioned passage literally.  They think they are obeying the command of Christ, and are putting their faith in Him to the test, by handling poisonous snakes.  They believe they will not be bitten, or if bitten, they will suffer no harm.

I believe in the literal meaning of Christ’ words also, but with a distinction.  The words they believe are an imperative, I believe to be prophetic.  In the twenty-eighth chapter of the book of Acts beginning in verse three we have an account of the apostle Paul, who along with his fellow travelers, is shipwrecked on the island of Malta.  While gathering wood for a fire Paul is bitten by a viper.  Paul shakes the serpent off into the fire and suffers no harm from the venom.

The words of Christ become clear in the light of this account.  If a messenger of the Gospel is by chance bitten by a poisonous serpent, he will be divinely protected so that the spread of the Gospel is unhindered.  The promise of protection is extended to those messengers who others may attempt to poison with a tainted drink.  Jesus’ statements were His prophetic insight that such events would occur by chance, and the design of the enemies of the Gospel, not a command to deliberately subject ourselves to such things to prove our faith.

When Jesus was tempted by the devil to prove his faith by throwing Himself of the pinnacle of the temple He responded, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test (Matthew 4:7).”  Jesus quoted these words from Deuteronomy 6:16 to show God the Father has commanded us to do nothing to deliberately put Him to the test or attempt to force His hand.  We should not think that the Creator can be manipulated by His creatures.

Mark Wolford, and his father before him, and others like them, who have died handling poisonous snakes or drinking a poisonous concoction, did not die because they lacked faith.  They died because they misunderstood the Scriptures.

In like manner, many today suffer physical and spiritual injury because they either do not understand or purposefully misinterpret the Scriptures.  The apostle Peter addresses this issue when talking about the writings of the apostle Paul.  He refers to Paul’s letters “which the untaught and the unstable distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”  Misapprehension of the Scriptures can be both deadly and damnable.

Peter warns against allowing the Scriptures to become “a matter of one’s own interpretation (2 Peter 1:20-21).”  When God inspired the various biblical authors to write His Word, He was communicating a specific message within a historical context.  The Bible is to be studied objectively.  That is to say Bible scholars study to understand God’s specific message then, so they can understand how to properly apply its principles now.  The Bible is not a book that is meant to be subjected to interpretation according to one’s personal perspective or philosophy, or their likes and dislikes.  God’s word is not meant to be twisted and distorted to suit one’s politics, lifestyle, or culture.  God says what he means, and means what He says.

Mark Wolford’s misguided understanding of the declaration of Jesus proved deadly, but I am not convinced his actions are damnable.  Our first parents did not prove to be good serpent handlers either.  Failing to trust God’s command and declared consequences of doing so resulted in Adam and Eve mishandling the serpent’s sales pitch.  The result of their actions proved damnable, and that is why some serpents’ bite is deadly.

No matter how you look at it, man does not have good outcomes when he tries to handle serpents.

     Ben was born on September 18, 1951, in Detroit, Michigan.  When he was eight years old his parents divorced.  His mother only had a third grade education, but worked hard at several menial jobs to provide for Ben and his brother Curtis.  A poor student, Ben was mocked by his classmates and he began to respond violently.  Poor and troubled, Ben’s life was in a downward spiral.    
     Concerned her sons were not doing well academically, Ben’s mother Sonya restricted their TV time requiring them to do their homework first.  She made the boys get library cards and read two books a week and submit a book report to her on what they read.  Within the year Ben’s scholastic progress amazed his teachers and fellow students.  When he won an achievement award, a white teacher ridiculed the white students for allowing a black student to best them academically.    
     Though he was improving in school, he still had a violent temper.  Once he threatened his mother with a hammer and in another incident seriously injured a classmate by bashing his head into a locker.  Then in an argument with a friend over which radio station to listen to, he tried to stab him with a knife.  The knife struck his friend’s belt buckle and broke.  Fearing he had hurt his friend he ran home and locked himself in the bathroom with a Bible.  He asked God to help him control his anger and read Proverbs 16:32, “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.”    
     Ben graduated from Yale in 1973, and then attended the School of Medicine at the University of Michigan.  He became a resident at John Hopkins University in 1977.  Specializing in neurosurgery he made medical history when he successfully separated the craniopagus Binder twins in 1987.  It was the first time siamese twins conjoined at the head had been surgically parted and lived.    
     Today Benjamin Solomon Carson, Sr., has been the head of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins University’s Children Center for more than twenty-five years.  He continues to perform three hundred surgeries a year and is a board member of numerous educational institutions and businesses.  He is an internationally respected neurosurgeon and has earned recognition and awards that time and space prevent being shared here.  In 2008 President Bush awarded him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of the United States of America.    
     When Jim Wagner, President of Emory University, invited Carson to give the commencement address this past May 14, he said, “Few men or women have demonstrated to so inspiring a degree the transformational effect of liberal learning and the humanities.  Dr. Carson has transformed lives both inside the operating room and beyond.”  But four professors, one hundred sixty faculty members and a number of students protested Wagner’s choice of Carson.    
     Carson is a dedicated Christian and flatly rejects the theory of evolution.  He has said the fossil record does not “provide evidence for the evolution of humans from a common ancestor with other apes.”  Carson correctly surmises the theory of evolution is morally bankrupt, and also holds that “life is too complex to have originated by the natural process of evolution.”      
     His detractors claim “the theory of evolution is as strongly supported as the theory of gravity and the theory that infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms.”  Gravity and germs causing disease are not theories, they are observable facts.  Evolution is not even in the same ballpark, and to think it and say it is the best evidence, at least in respect to evolutionists, that they may share a simian ancestry.  Carson knows what sounds good in the classroom does not always work in the operating room.    
     The made for television movie Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story was my introduction to the life and achievements of Ben Carson.  My brother in Christ believes man is created in the image of God.  I have often said and I believe Ben would agree, that “man has an image to live up to, not a lineage to live down.”    
     One would think that out of respect for the sheer magnitude of his accomplishments and the height of his achievements, Ben Carson’s detractors could have tolerated his remarks and presence at Emory’s graduation ceremony and remained silent.  But wounded intellects seem to unerringly default to their pigheaded nature.  In the end the man whose “gifted hands” could separate the shared brains of conjoined twins could not separate the professors of evolution from their own prejudices.