Growing up in West Virginia, I was keenly aware of charismatic Christian serpent handlers, although I didn’t know any adherents to this particular flavor of Pentecostalism personally. One of the more note-worthy adherents to this odd hillbilly faith was the late Mack Wolford, who died Sunday of, you guessed it, a rattlesnake bite. You’d think that he might have learned an important lesson when his daddy died of a rattlesnake bite back in 1983, at the age of 39, but no, Wolford wanted to keep the faith alive.

Look what it got him:

Mack Wolford, a flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from West Virginia whose serpent-handling talents were profiled last November in The Washington Post Magazine, hoped the outdoor service he had planned for Sunday at an isolated state park would be a “homecoming like the old days,” full of folks speaking in tongues, handling snakes and having a “great time.” But it was not the sort of homecoming he foresaw.

Instead, Wolford, who turned 44 the previous day, was bitten by a rattlesnake he owned for years. He died late Sunday.

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

He and other adherents cited Mark 16:17-18 as the reason for their practice: “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

Except when they don’t.

Read more at The Washington Post