A Western Viginia Call for Snakes

To set the stage for this thread, our hero, the Circuit Rider Robert Sheffey, is traveling his circuit....

Having passed by Wythe County he was invited to a home where a young teenage girl had given birth to a baby. After hearing that the baby was born out of wedlock he asked a young boy, “Would you go bring me the sheepskin on my saddle, son? The sunbeams are coming through that elm tree at the top of the hill like the very gates of heaven were open. Do not come and get me. I will be down when I am through!”

When he descended the hill all the rest had eaten their dinner and the newborn baby boy lay in his cradle, giving a low, trembling cry.

“Is the girl all right?” He directed his question toward the midwife.

“0’ course she is. The young’uns make a lot of noise, but they’re tough as pine knots.”

He asked if he could have something to eat and as they fixed his plate he talked with the new mother.

“He’s a pretty baby. Have you seen him, Mr. Sheffey? Big feet like mine and all . . . I want you to baptize him too. Brother Sheffey, I know I have sinned. Will God forgive me – and use my son and not curse him?” she began...

“As soon as I eat we will have a family service around the bed of the new mother,” he said to all.

It was clear when he began that nobody in the household was accustomed to family prayer. He could always tell. They squirmed and shuffled and played with their fingers and picked at a thousand pieces of imaginary lint upon their clothing.

“The young sister has confessed her sin to me already,” he began, “and she prays to a loving God to forgive her and use this child. Human mistakes can be turned around and proved a blessing to God, though we must always bear the scars of our failures. I have prayed and asked my dear Lord to make this little one a blessing in this house. I asked the Lord to make this mother a good mother and for this grandmother also to feel a new burst of life as she comes to love the little one. I’m going to ask for more than that, for the storehouse of our Lord is surely bountiful.

He grasped the infant by the foot before he prayed. Timidly, they bowed as he spoke…

“Oh Lord, we have not loved Thee enough, for surely Thy gifts are ten thousand times more generous than we have ever asked. Lord, we ask of Thee a mighty thing today – not to our glory but Thine. Take this little infant boy and make of him Thine advocate who will stand in a hundred pulpits across this land and bring a thousand souls into Thy kingdom. And, Lord, Thy servant Sheffey would like to know Thy plan for this little one’s life. In Jesus name.”

 

On the way home, galloping hooves approached from behind him. He guided Gideon to the road shoulder so as to allow the speeding rider all the room he needed. Rather than passing, however, the young boy reined to a halt by Robert’s side.

“My brother, George, got bit by a rattlesnake this mornin’. We’re afraid he’s goin’ to die. Father just now seen you passin’ and said for me to overtake you and get you to pray for George.”

“Do I know you and your family? Your face is not familiar,” Robert said.

“No, you don’t know us, but father knows of you, he says if you pray for George that the Lord would let him live.”

Robert followed the boy home, where George lay on the grass in the back yard. A solemn-faced woman who refused to meet the inquiring gaze of her visitor attended the wounded man, and presently the father came from the kitchen.

“Reverend Sheffey, call upon the Lord so my boy will live,” the father said.

“Have you ever called upon the Lord’s name, my brother?”

“No, but if you’ll do it the Lord will surely hear our prayers. It is said that many things you pray for come to pass even after many years.”

“And you have a wife and children, I see. How many? Do they ever call upon the name of the Lord?”

“No, guess not.” The father hung his head.

“Son, would you fetch my sheepskin from my saddle?” Robert said to the boy who had overtaken him

He started to kneel, and all of them had bowed and closed their eyes before he got both knees on the prayer mat. Robert could tell, as with the Wythe county family he had just visited, with all the squirming and shuffling, that this family too was unaccustomed to family prayer.

“Oh Lord Jesus,” Robert prayed, “Please bring Thy healing to this young man, and Lord in the same breath we thank thee for snakes and pray that there be many of them. It is because of a snake that this family calls upon thy holy name. One of the sons has been bitten, and they call upon Thee.

“Except for the snake this family would never in their lifetimes turned to you. What a blessing this lowly, crawling thing has been! Lord, I want you to send lots of snakes. Send another one to bite the youngest boy here, and send still another to bite this woman who never had her boys kneel by her chair, that they might hear the prayers of their mother. And, Lord, above all things, send a great big rattler, a really large one, to bite the old man so that he may call upon thy name fervently and much. In Jesus name I pray…. Amen.”

 

Before Sheffey would pass away he got a letter from the young baby prayed for in the original post....

“Dear Reverend Sheffey: I finally got your address from the Holston conference, where I learned you are still listed as a local preacher. I am told that many years ago you sat at the foot of my unmarried mother’s bed in a remote hollow in Wythe County and prayed for me and my family. Tradition handed down further states that you took my little foot in your hand as you prayed and asked God to use me in spite of the circumstances of my birth. You asked, I believe, that God would make a preacher of me and stand me in many pulpits across the land until I had brought a thousand souls into the kingdom. It is my joy to inform you that I have served churches from Tennessee to Texas (where I now am, as you can see from the postmark) and that the sixth day of August marked the day I baptized my one thousandth convert. I am still a young man and I must tell you I plan to work another forty years. Dear friend, you badly underestimated God’s power!”

 

The Saint of the Wilderness, by Jess Carr.

 

Bob Jones University's Unusual Films also did a movie about him.