An encounter with cottonmouths

I used to listen to Christian radio all the time when I was a young believer. And it wasn’t Christian music I gravitated toward; no, I gobbled up all the Bible teaching I could find on my AM radio dial—both national ministries and some very colorful local preachers.

One of those preachers from around here was a woman I believe by the name of Jo Ann Bateman. I’ve done internet searches for her and have come up short, so if anyone knows anything about her, please share.

Like many of the local radio preachers, Jo Ann had the voice of solid country stock, and I’m thinking she hailed from southern Illinois or rural Missouri. She was a gutsy woman, bold and full of the Word and the Holy Ghost, and she traveled around to small churches and meetings as she preached the gospel.

I’ll never forget the radio program when she described what happened to her late one warm spring night. I remember it this way:

She was driving home from a meeting through a light rain on a southern Illinois highway not very far from the Mississippi River. Somehow she lost control of the vehicle and slid across the wet highway onto the shoulder and then into the mud. The car was stuck, but not badly, so she and her traveling companion determined that it wouldn’t be too difficult to push it out and back onto the shoulder.

Then her friend saw something. The ground, illuminated by the headlights, was writhing and thrashing–not still, not stationary. Nervously, she whispered a quick warning to Jo Ann, hoping it was just her exhaustion playing tricks on her eyes.

“Jo Ann, don’t move! Look! On the ground! In the headlights!”

Right then I imagine Jo Ann’s heart skipped a beat or two. They had careened SPLAT into some mud in the middle of what appeared to be a convention of water moccasins—cottonmouths—the most aggressive venomous snake in the region. And this was no small convention, either; evidently dozens and dozens had awakened from their winter slumber buried in the mud and rocks by the highway on that warm spring evening. And those snakes were none too happy with the metal monster of a car that had just plowed, uninvited, into their territory.

But Jo Ann Bateman, the gutsy, bold woman of the Word that she was, snapped out of her fear and into action instantly. As the cottonmouths slithered ever closer to the car and the women, Joann pointed her finger at the lead snake and decreed in her country twang, “My Daddy’s bigger than your daddy, Mr. Cottonmouth, and in the name of Jesus, I command you and all your kin to LEAVE!! NOW!!”

The words had barely left her mouth when the lead snake turned around and slithered away. One by one, every other cottonmouth followed suit. She and her friend were then able to maneuver the car out of the mud unmolested.

And then, days later, I got to hear about it on the radio.

In Psalm 91, the wonderful protection psalm, the Lord declares, “You will tread upon the lion and cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will trample down” (verse 13).

But there are times (like all the time!) when you just don’t want to walk on snakes if you can help it! And thank goodness, the Lord has an “app” for that—it’s called walking in your authority in the name of Jesus!

What an amazing blessing it is to know that we do, indeed, have authority in His name!

Dorothy

…at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth…Philippians 2:10