"They will take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them" is the proof text behind a small but real Pentecostal tradition of snake-handling and poison-drinking as tests of faith, mainly concentrated in Appalachian "Signs Following" churches descended from the early twentieth-century ministry of George Went Hensley. It is also cited more broadly, without the physical practice, as a guarantee that genuine faith will always produce these five specific miraculous signs in a believer's life. Before any theological point can even be made about this passage, a textual question has to be addressed honestly: the earliest and best-attested Greek manuscripts of Mark's Gospel do not contain verses 9–20 at all. This is not a fringe or skeptical claim — it is the near-universal judgment of textual scholarship across denominational lines, reflected in the double-bracketing of this section in modern critical Greek texts. That fact alone should give any reader pause before building a defining practice, let alone risking one's life, on this passage. And even granting the passage full canonical weight, as much of church history and many faithful readers have, its own grammar describes what accompanied the apostles' unique founding mission — it does not command believers to seek out venomous snakes or poison as ongoing tests of faith.

Key Passage

Mark 16:9–20 — The Longer Ending Mark 16:14-20

NASB95: "These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."

The textual question, addressed directly. Mark's Gospel, in its two oldest and most reliable complete manuscripts — Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, both fourth century — ends at 16:8, with the women fleeing the empty tomb "for they were afraid." The passage traditionally numbered 16:9–20 is absent from these manuscripts, from the earliest Old Latin witness (Codex Bobiensis), from the oldest Syriac manuscript (the Sinaitic Syriac), and from the earliest Sahidic Coptic translation — a remarkably early and geographically diverse pattern of absence. The United Bible Societies' and Nestle-Aland critical Greek texts, the standard scholarly editions underlying virtually all modern translations, place these verses in double brackets specifically to flag them as very likely not part of Mark's original composition, even while (rightly, in the editors' own stated reasoning) retaining them in the printed text because of their wide use in the later manuscript tradition and Christian history. This is not a modern liberal innovation; it reflects sober text-critical method applied consistently to every book of the New Testament, the same method that gives us confidence in the wording of the rest of Mark's Gospel. Internal stylistic evidence — a noticeably different vocabulary and an abrupt, disconnected transition from verse 8 — corroborates the external manuscript evidence. Most likely, an early scribe or community, uncomfortable with Mark's stark original ending at the empty tomb, supplied a fuller conclusion (possibly compiled from material found in Luke, John, and Acts) sometime in the second century.

What this does — and does not — mean. This textual evidence does not mean the content of verses 9–20 is false doctrine; nothing in the passage contradicts anything taught elsewhere in Scripture, and the resurrection appearances it describes align with the other Gospels' testimony. What it means is that this specific passage carries less textual certainty than any other section of Mark, and building a distinctive, life-risking practice — as Appalachian "Signs Following" churches, tracing to George Went Hensley's ministry beginning in 1910, have done with snake-handling — on the least secure textual foundation in the entire New Testament is exegetically and pastorally unwise, regardless of one's view of the passage's ultimate canonical status.

Even read as Scripture, the grammar is descriptive, not a repeatable command. Granting the passage canonical weight, as much of the church has throughout history, its own internal logic still does not support the snake-handling application. The signs are described as accompanying "those who have believed" (v. 17) in the context of the apostles' initial worldwide gospel proclamation, and the passage closes: "And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed" (v. 20). The grammar throughout is descriptive — reporting what God did to authenticate the apostolic message at its founding moment — not imperative. Nowhere does the text command believers to go seek out venomous snakes or drink poison as a test of faith. The one narrative episode elsewhere in the New Testament that actually matches this description is instructive by contrast: in Acts 28:3-6, Paul is bitten by a viper accidentally, while gathering firewood, and survives it — an unsought, incidental instance of divine protection amid ordinary ministry, not a deliberately engineered test.

Cross-reference: the principle Jesus Himself invoked against deliberate danger-seeking. When tempted by Satan to throw Himself from the temple and test whether angels would catch Him, Jesus responded, "You shall not put the LORD your God to the test" (Matthew 4:7, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16). Deliberately handling venomous snakes or drinking poison to demonstrate faith runs directly against this principle — manufacturing danger in order to force God's hand is precisely the pattern of testing Jesus refused, even though He, of all people, had genuine reason to expect angelic protection.

A note on tradition, stated fairly. The Church of God with Signs Following and related Appalachian congregations hold this practice sincerely, as an act of obedience they believe Scripture commands, and several participants have died from snakebites over the past century while continuing the tradition, a fact their own communities do not hide. The correction offered here is not a mockery of their sincerity but a call to weigh both the textual uncertainty of the passage they build the practice on and the descriptive, non-imperative grammar of the passage even if it is accepted as fully canonical.

Conclusion

Mark 16:17–18 sits inside a passage whose place in Mark's original Gospel is genuinely, seriously contested by the best available manuscript evidence — a fact every reader deserves to know before any doctrine or practice is built on it. Even granting the passage its traditional canonical status, its grammar describes signs that accompanied the apostles' founding proclamation of the gospel; it does not command believers to manufacture danger as a test of faith, a pattern Scripture elsewhere explicitly forbids. The one genuine biblical example of surviving a venomous snakebite — Paul on Malta — was unsought and incidental, the opposite pattern from deliberate snake-handling as ritual.