“They will continue, and praise Jamie Coots as a martyr who died for his faith.” 
 
 Coots died on Saturday night after being bitten on the right hand during a service at his Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name church. The 42-year-old, who featured prominently in the National Geographic series Snake Salvation, refused medical attention on religious grounds. His funeral is due to be held in his hometown of Middlesboro on Tuesday evening. Coots’s son, Cody, said his family had expected him to survive because he had been bitten eight times before. “Everybody was getting in, shouting, taking up serpents, speaking in tongues, handling fire,” he told Kentucky’s WKYT-TV. “You could just feel the power of God.” 
 
 Coots had continued flouting a 74-year-old Kentucky law banning the use of poisonous snakes in religious services, even after a woman died from a bite during a ceremony he conducted in 1995. Photograph: John Bazemore/AP 
 
 Hamblin, 23, was last year charged with illegally possessing poisonous reptiles and had 53 rattlesnakes, copperheads and other breeds seized from his church. “I don’t actually want to die of a serpent bite, but I’d rather die and leave these walks of life with a serpent bite knowing there are people standing around me praying than to be in a car wreck and people standing around me cussing,” he said. The snake-handling pastor starring on the reality show "Snake Salvation," died from a snake bite Saturday, according to Middlesboro police. It’s kind of a win-win situation, as far as they see it.”
– If your reaction to the death of the snake-handling Kentucky pastor killed by one of his own snakes on Saturday was "he must have been delusional," WBIR digs into why the exact opposite is, in one way, the case. It spoke with a range of religion professors about Pastor Jamie Coots' death, and the consensus is clear: Coots had no illusions about the risks or potential consequences; snake handlers do not believe they will not be bitten, and know death is a possibility. As Maryville College religion professor Dr. Brian Pennington explains, "These are not irrational people. They know very well the fate that Pastor Coots suffered could be suffered by any of them who does this during a service." In fact, the man who originated the practice in Tennessee a century ago, Pastor George Hensley, himself died of a snakebite. It's one of 92 deaths attributed to snakebites during worships as counted by one study, and experts says Coots' death will do little to cool worshipers to the practice, which is illegal in Tennessee and Kentucky. Quite the opposite, "They will continue, and praise Jamie Coots as a martyr who died for his faith," says University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Professor Ralph Hood, per the Guardian. Still, Coots' son, Cody, did tell WKYT he expected his father to survive the bite—as he had on eight previous occasions.