Founders
George Went Hensley (1880–1955) introduced snake handling practices into the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), circa 1910. He later resigned his ministry and started the first holiness movement church to require snake handling as evidence of salvation. Sister-churches later sprang up throughout the Appalachian region.
However, many of the followers were brought into the movement in the late 19th century by charismatic traveling preachers who boasted of great miracles and allegedly demonstrated wonders. James Miller claimed to have received a Revelation from God to handle serpents and baptize in the Jesus Only formula of Acts 2:38 in the King James Bible. By the beginning of the 20th Century, snake handling had spread to Canada, where a small number of Canadians embraced the Mark 16 revelation.
Another key scripture used to support their belief is Acts 28:1-6, which tells that Paul was bitten by a venomous viper and suffered no harm.
Read more about this topic: Snake Handling
Famous quotes containing the word founders:
“It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“A spot whereon the founders lived and died
Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees,
Or gardens rich in memory glorified
Marriages, alliances, and families,
And every bride’s ambition satisfied.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)