The Cure for Venom

On February 14, 2014, the news broadcast the story of Jamie Coots, a snake handler and pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in Middlesboro, Kentucky, United States of America. For four months, Pastor Coots had been traveling around with a rattlesnake and was bitten by it during a weekend church service.

He refused to accept the cure for the deadly venom in his body and eventually died. Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles.

They are sly, slippery, and stealthy.

Some snakes are venomous, but not all are.

The venomous ones inject their deadly venom to kill their prey, while others wrap themselves around their prey and constrict and suffocate them.

After Creation, man’s first encounter with a snake was in the Garden of Eden. God had warned Adam and Eve not to touch a certain tree, but Satan disguised himself as a beautiful serpent and hid in that very tree —the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve was drawn to the tree, and Satan spread the venom of deception to her.

Eve was beguiled, ate the fruit, shared it with Adam, and plunged the whole world into sin and eternal death. In Genesis 3:15, God instituted the cure to counteract the venom of sin. He would send His Son Jesus to rescue humanity and crush the head of the snake —Satan. According to Numbers 21, when the children of Israel reached Edom, they had to detour around it. They grumbled and complained bitterly about God and Moses. God sent fiery serpents into the camp. Many Israelites were bitten and died from the venom. After the people cried out to God, He told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it upon a pole, and all who looked on it would be healed.

This was their only cure. In John 3, Jesus talked with the Jewish leader Nicodemus about the kingdom of God and spiritual rebirth.

Jesus explained that just as the bronze serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, the Son of man must be lifted up that all who believe may have eternal life.

Bula Rose Haughton Thompson