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Whispers
The Answer
Dy lioDby Stone
No mere man has ever seen, heard or
even imagined what wonderful things
God has ready for those who love the
Lord. But we know about these things
because has sent his Spirit to tell us, and
his Spirit searches out and shows us all of
God’s deepest secrets. No one can really
know what anyone else is thinking, or
what he is really like, except that person
himself.. And no one can know God’s
thoughts except God’s own Spriiit. And
God has actually given us his Spirit (not
the world’s spirit) to tell us about the
wonderful free gifts of grace and blessing
that God has given to us.
1 Cor. 2:9-12 (LIVBIB)
First of aD, before one can begin to
comprehend the amazing truth of this
passage, some background truth must be
laid. Mainly, that God has made man a
3-fold being. He is comprised of a body
(blood, bone, and flesh), a soul (intellect,
emotion and will), and a spirit (1 Ihess.
5:23). Contrary to popular belief, the soul
and spirit are two separate units of our
being. The soul of man is the unit we
exercise in living and planning our daily
lives but the spirit is our being’s
life-giving force. It is that “breath of
God” which he breathed into us which
makes us unique creatures in this earth.
The spirit is also the agent through which
God desires to feUowship and speak with
his children. Romans 8:7 tells us that the
mind does not subject itself to God. In
other words, our mind has no capability
to relate to God. Our finite minds are not
able to comprehend a God that is
everthing and everywhere at the same
time and who has no beginning or end.
This is the reason religion is just an
exercise in futility-it teaches and trains
the mind to relate to God which is an
impossibility. If we could comprehend
the greatness of God within our minds
then we would be able to describe or give
a definition of a limitless God in limited
human terminology. We are only able to
list some of God’s characteristics. But
God has provided man with a spirit which
is able to comprehend his greataess. The
spirit is commonly referred to as “the
heart” which we know to be God’s
dwelling place within his children.
Through the course of time, Christians
have lost the vision of why God created
them.....for fellowship. He wishes to
walk and talk with us everyday as he did
with Adam. He wishes to share his
deepest secrets personally with you if you
will only listen. When God speaks to a
man, it is rarely in a loud, booming voice,
but in a quiet, firm whisper. This small
voice is heard from within and not by the
natural ear. God can and does speak to
his people through the utterance of gifts
of the spirit, but to have God share his
secrets with you personally is of a mudi
higher value and worth.
“How do you hear the voice of God?”
You learn to hear it by cleaning up your
spirit. Your spirit is like a well of water.
It has been contaminated and polluted by
the elementary things of this world and
has to be purified by God’s love. This is
acxomplished by reading the Word and
meditating in it, praying in the spirit, and
making the Lord your only delight. The
more quality time you spend edifying
your spirit the clearer and clearer the
voice of the Lord will become to you.
Soon, it will be easy to discern the voice
of the Lord within your heart. God
delights in communicating with his
children personally and he will not
overlook your desire to communicate with
him. Make a quality decision to start an
anti-poDution drive within your spirit and
then listen expectantly for his whispers of
love.
I will not leave you as orphans; I will
come to you.
John 14 ;18
Folklore
The Ballad of Tom Dula
and Laura Foster
by Marlene Berry
It was Thursday evening, January 24,
1866 when Laura Foster left her father’s
farm to go off and secretly marry Thomas
Ehila. Laura, who was a beautiful girl
with chestnut curis and blue eyes, was
seen on Friday riding to meet Tom but no
one ever saw her alive after that.
Laura reached the place called Bates
Place in W ilkes County where she was to
meet her husband-to-be. Unknowing to
poor Laura, her cousin Ann Melton, was
waiting there secretly with Tom. Tom
lulled Laura into a feeling of security and
then with the help of Ann, stabbed Laura
in the heart. They then stuffed her body
into a small, roughly dug grave and this
was where Laura was found some six
weeks later.
Tom was arrested for the murder and
Ann was arrested as an accessory. They
were arraigned together but were given
separate trials. Tom was found guilty but
an appeal was put through by his
lawyers. He was again found guilty and
was hung on May 1, 1868. Before he
went to the gallows, Tom Dula confessed
to the murder but said he had no
accomplice.
Ann was held in jail until late 1868. It
was then that she was finally tried and
cleared of the charge against her. With
her release this tragedy had supposedly
ended.
Tom never implicated Ann in Laura’s
murder. Some .say he loved her too mudi
and died for her to keep her safe. Ann
remained free of blame until right before
her death when, on her death-bed, she
confessed that she helped kill Laura. The
story goes that during the last minutes of
her life, Ann’s bed was surrounded by
blue flames and that she screamed in
agony that a black man with a pitdifork
was coming after her. This was the real
end to this tragedy.
There have many ballads written about
Tom Dula and the murder of Laura
Foster. It has been passed down through
generations as a legend of a beautiful
heroine who had been betrayed by the
man she loved. The Ballad of Tom
Dooley is also this same ballad except
that Tom’s name has been changed along
through the years.
Here is the most popular version of the
ballad of Tom and Laura:
Hang down your head Tom Dula,
Hang down your head and cry.
You killed poor Laura Foster,
And now you’re bound to die.
You met her on the hill-top.
And God Almighty knows.
You met her on the hill-top
And there you hid her clothes.
You met her on the hill-top,
You said she’d be your wife.
You met her on the hill-top
And there you took her life.
by Bobby Stone
Religion has been accused of being a
vehement repressor of creativity and the
supreme stifler of cdl curiosity. This
assertion is certainly valid when the
history of the “organized church” is
traced through the centuries. But such
an attitude is in direct contradiction to
Jesus’ claim “I came that you might have
life and that you might have it more
abundantly.” The honest truth is that
religion is only a veil that hides and
hinders the seeing of the true light of the
gospel presented by Jesus - Christianity.
In fact, religion and Christianity are
contrary in many aspects; Religion is
man’s search for God, Christianity is
God’s search for man; religion is
dependent upon laws of conduct, Christ
ianity is dependent upon God’s
unmerited favor; religion seeks, Christi
anity has found.
In infinite wisdom, Jesus was 100
percent man and 100 percent divine. He
came to destroy the thief (Satan) who
seeks only to steal, kill and destroy.
Jesus through his 100 percent sacrifice on
the cross redeemed us 100 percent from
the power of Satan’s bondage and
oppression. The reason God requires
men to accept his son’s redetiption is not
for selfish satisfaction on His part, but he
knows the best thing in the world for a
person is to have a loving, righteous and
holy God living within him. He wants to
make man into the best that he can
possibly be. He is not unjust - he does
not seek to limit man’s abilities. He
wants to increase and accentuate them to
the point of perfection. Unlike many
leaders, God is not afraid of your
potent!^ and therefore does not seek to
limit it. Contrary to popular belief,
Christianity is not a standard of “can-
nots” but rather a standard of “can-
dos.” The opportunities vastly outnum
ber the limitations. All of this is possible
because Jesus has defeated Satan and
has become the “head of all principality
and power.” Before Jesus left, he gave
us the same authority that he now enjoys.
Satan now only has as mudi power as
Christians allow him to have. Jesus
stripped Satan of all power 2,000 years
ago. Satan does not retain one victory he
can claim as his own.
The truth inevitably brings up the
question of tests and trials. The Bible
says Satan can only tempt man with what
is common or understood by him. 1 Peter
1:16 says we are only in trials “if need
be.” God is not a tantalizer or a teaser.
The only reason a man needs to go
through a trial is to give God the
opportunity to teach him a new ‘ ‘answer’ ’
in him that he had failed to realize prior to
the test. He longs to reveal a new facet of
his character that would never have been
conprehended any other way. There
fore, “the answer is not of the need, but
the need is of the answer.” SELAH.
To understand this we must look to the
cross of Jesus. Elverything written in the
Old Testament points forward to the
sacrifice of God’s only son. All the
offerings were only synAolic of the death
of Jesus which brought the real reden^)-
tion of man. Man had a need - Jesus
came to meet that need. But he only
needed to die once to provide the answer.
For that reason, today we look back to the
cross because that is the place where our
answer was provided. “In this way God
took away Satan’s power to accuse you of
sin, and God openly displayed to the
whole worid Christ’s triumph at the cross
where your sins were taken away.” Col.
2:15. Christ provided every answer we
would ever need, so today whenever a
problem arises we just have to look to
Jesus for the answer he has already
provided.
What does this mean? . . . Satan
doesn’t have a chance! Everything he
pulls on us already has an answer
provided - the need is of the answer.
There was once a time when the answer
came because of the need. That was
when Christ died to redeem man from the
bondage and limitations of sin - but never
again. Since the death of Christ, and
throughout eternity the need will always
arise because the answer has already
been provided that the answer (Jesus)
might have the preeminence.
And he Is the head of the body, the
diurdi, who is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead that in all things
he might have the preeminence.
Cherokee Legend
Creation of the Earth
by Marlene Berry
At one tirne, the earth was covered
with water and therefore void of life. All
the living things lived in a vault in the
sky. Gradually, this sky vault became
very crowded and the inhabitants began
to fear that they might fall off. Out of this
fear grew the desire to know what was
below the waters that were under their
vault. A little water bug volunteered to
go down and see what he could find, so,
he flew out of the sky vault and dived into
the water. He brought up mud from the
bottom and it grew to form an island
whidi they called earth. After this, the
earth, which was flat, was fastened by
four giant ropes to the sky.
Once the earth had been formed, the
inhabitants of the sky vault were anxious
to live on this land but it was still too wet
and soft. Birds were sent to see if the
land was dry enough to live on. When the
buzzard was sent down, he flew too dose
to the earth and his wings hit the wet soil
forming the iixruntains found in Cherokee
country.
Finally, the earth was dry enough for
the inhabitants to come down, but when
they arrived, they found tire earth in
darkness. Tlrey went out and found a
sun. It was placed in an east-west path
across the sky. They placed the sun too
dose to the earth and it nearly burned up
the living creatures of the earth. This
dose erqrosure to the sun produced a
reddish corr^rlexion on some of the life on
earth.
The conjure men moved the sun to a
position that was seven breadths above
the earth. Because this height caused the
sun to arch in its path around the earth,
night and day were created.