Read Online Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dennis Covington
Ads: Link
the weather permitted, in an open field
on top of Sand Mountain, where Brother Carl Porter, J.L. Dyal, and the End-Time Evangelist, Brother Charles McGlocklin, would lead services under muscadine vines, honeysuckle, and starlight, like believers used to do in the old days, before the world with all its deceitfulness and vanities lured them down from the mountains and into the city, where a woman might be tempted to back up on the Lord and stop drinking strychnine, and her husband would have to take matters into his own hands by putting a gun to her head and forcing her to reach into the serpent box.
4
UNDER THE BRUSH ARBOR
T he card he pressed into my hand read: “Charles McGlocklin, the End-Time Evangelist. ” “You can have as much of God as you want,” he said. His voice was low and urgent. “These seminary preachers don’t understand that. They don’t understand the spirit of the Lord. They’re taught by man. They know the forms of godliness, but they deny the power.”
Brother Charles was a big man in his early fifties with a full head of dark hair and hands the size of waffle irons. He didn’t have a church himself, and he didn’t particularly want one. He’d preached on the radio, he said, and at county fairs and trade days. In years past, he’d driven all over the South, conducting revivals under a tent he’d hauled in the back of his ‘72 Chevy van. He said he had even stood on the road in front
of his house trailer in New Hope, Alabama, and preached at passing cars.
“I get a lot of stares,” he added, and then he put his big hand on my shoulder and drew me toward him confidentially. “I have received visitations by angels,” he said. “One of them was seven feet tall. It was a frightening experience.”
I said I bet it was.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “One night I was fasting and praying on the mountain, and I was taken out in the spirit. The Lord appeared to me in layers of light.” His grip tightened on my shoulder. “He spoke a twelve-hour message to me on one word: polluted.”
“Polluted?”
“Yes. Polluted. Now, you think about that for a minute. A twelve-hour message.”
I thought about it for a minute, and then decided Brother Charles was out of his mind.
In time, I’d find out he wasn’t, despite the fact that he kept four copperheads in a terrarium on his kitchen counter between the Mr. Coffee and the microwave. He said God moved on him one night to handle a big timber rattler right there in the kitchen. His wife, Aline, showed me a photo of him doing it. Aline was thirteen years younger than Charles, childlike and frankly beautiful, a Holiness mystic from Race
Track Road who worked the night shift weaving bandage gauze. “I had just got up, getting ready to go to work,” she said, “and my camera was just laying there.” She pointed at the photo. “You see how the Holy Ghost moved on him?”
In the photo, Charles is standing in the kitchen in his white T-shirt and jeans. He has a rattlesnake in one hand, and he appears to be shouting at it as though it were a sensible and rebellious thing. “There’s serpents, and then there’s fiery serpents,” Charles said. “That one was a fiery serpent.”
Another time, Charles said he wanted to take up a serpent real bad, but he didn’t have one on hand. The Holy Ghost told him, “You don’t have a snake, but you’ve got a heater.” So Charles ran to the wood-burning stove in the living room and laid his hands on it. “Baby, that thing was hot,” he said. But his hands, when he finally took them off the stove, weren’t a bit burned. Instead, they were as cold as a block of ice, he said.
Aline reminded him that he did get a blister from a skillet once, but Charles said, “God wasn’t in that. That was in myself. That’s why I got burned.”
“You were just thinking about that corn bread,” Aline added with a knowing smile.
Long before I was a guest in their home,
on top of Sand Mountain, where Brother Carl Porter, J.L. Dyal, and the End-Time Evangelist, Brother Charles McGlocklin, would lead services under muscadine vines, honeysuckle, and starlight, like believers used to do in the old days, before the world with all its deceitfulness and vanities lured them down from the mountains and into the city, where a woman might be tempted to back up on the Lord and stop drinking strychnine, and her husband would have to take matters into his own hands by putting a gun to her head and forcing her to reach into the serpent box.
4
UNDER THE BRUSH ARBOR
T he card he pressed into my hand read: “Charles McGlocklin, the End-Time Evangelist. ” “You can have as much of God as you want,” he said. His voice was low and urgent. “These seminary preachers don’t understand that. They don’t understand the spirit of the Lord. They’re taught by man. They know the forms of godliness, but they deny the power.”
Brother Charles was a big man in his early fifties with a full head of dark hair and hands the size of waffle irons. He didn’t have a church himself, and he didn’t particularly want one. He’d preached on the radio, he said, and at county fairs and trade days. In years past, he’d driven all over the South, conducting revivals under a tent he’d hauled in the back of his ‘72 Chevy van. He said he had even stood on the road in front
of his house trailer in New Hope, Alabama, and preached at passing cars.
“I get a lot of stares,” he added, and then he put his big hand on my shoulder and drew me toward him confidentially. “I have received visitations by angels,” he said. “One of them was seven feet tall. It was a frightening experience.”
I said I bet it was.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “One night I was fasting and praying on the mountain, and I was taken out in the spirit. The Lord appeared to me in layers of light.” His grip tightened on my shoulder. “He spoke a twelve-hour message to me on one word: polluted.”
“Polluted?”
“Yes. Polluted. Now, you think about that for a minute. A twelve-hour message.”
I thought about it for a minute, and then decided Brother Charles was out of his mind.
In time, I’d find out he wasn’t, despite the fact that he kept four copperheads in a terrarium on his kitchen counter between the Mr. Coffee and the microwave. He said God moved on him one night to handle a big timber rattler right there in the kitchen. His wife, Aline, showed me a photo of him doing it. Aline was thirteen years younger than Charles, childlike and frankly beautiful, a Holiness mystic from Race
Track Road who worked the night shift weaving bandage gauze. “I had just got up, getting ready to go to work,” she said, “and my camera was just laying there.” She pointed at the photo. “You see how the Holy Ghost moved on him?”
In the photo, Charles is standing in the kitchen in his white T-shirt and jeans. He has a rattlesnake in one hand, and he appears to be shouting at it as though it were a sensible and rebellious thing. “There’s serpents, and then there’s fiery serpents,” Charles said. “That one was a fiery serpent.”
Another time, Charles said he wanted to take up a serpent real bad, but he didn’t have one on hand. The Holy Ghost told him, “You don’t have a snake, but you’ve got a heater.” So Charles ran to the wood-burning stove in the living room and laid his hands on it. “Baby, that thing was hot,” he said. But his hands, when he finally took them off the stove, weren’t a bit burned. Instead, they were as cold as a block of ice, he said.
Aline reminded him that he did get a blister from a skillet once, but Charles said, “God wasn’t in that. That was in myself. That’s why I got burned.”
“You were just thinking about that corn bread,” Aline added with a knowing smile.
Long before I was a guest in their home,
Similar Books
