A snake-handling pastor who appeared on TV show Snake Salvation is fighting for his life after being bitten by a rattlesnake months after his father succumbed in the same fashion.
Cody Winn was holding the snake at his church in Middlesboro, Kentucky, when he was bitten on the hand, according to fellow preacher.
Once bitten, the pastor, Cody, had asked his congregation to take him to the mountaintop where God would judge whether he is to pull through or succumb to the same fate as his father.
Instead of following the words of the pastor, one follower took him to hospital where doctors told the pastor he was lucky to be alive.
The pastor whose church is inspired by the biblical verse Mark 16:18 which reads, ‘They will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them,’ was instead forcefully taken to hospital by defiant congregants.
The snake came close to severing the temporal artery, which would almost certainly kill him.
Blood could be seen all over his shirt as he was being rushed to hospital.
Cody’s father, Jamie Coots, died when he was only 42 – Jamie was bitten by a rattlesnake at the same church in Middlesboro, Kentucky, Cody was, back in 2014.
Another pastor, David Brock, also died after being bitten in 2015.
Three years earlier before David Brock’s death, Pastor Mack Randall Wolford also passed away after being bitten by a timber rattlesnake in 2012 in Virginia.
Metro News reports that during sermons the pastor “often picks up snakes from a box and carries one or two of them aloft while he preaches.”