The ghost of Charleston

Bobby-Henry,-Srpins-THIS-ONThe ghost of Charleston

11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against [a]flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.            Ephesians 6:11-12 (NASB)

      This past weekend my family and I had the privilege of visiting the state of South Carolina. Our reason for visiting was to enjoy my wife’s father’s side of the family in a mini-family reunion.

We had a great time and as always the ‘hog-pickin’, which is my favorite, was as binding to our past as it was most enjoyable to my palate.

The state of South Carolina is filthy rich with Black history and woven into its antiquity is the blood of our ancestral courage and fortitude, which is engrained in her soil because of the bodies and the blood spilled due to hatred and the fight for freedom.

This hatred seems to linger like a bad hangover made from the corn of this very same blood stained soil.

And like its odious past, some of the stench lingers today in forms of ghosts.

I would appear ludicrous if I were to state that all of South Carolina is a bad, God forsaken place, because it’s not.

Just as most places on this earth, there are the good, bad and the indifferent and South Carolina is no exception and here lately Charleston, South Carolina is the epitome of what’s good and very bad about South Carolina.

For me at the time of my visit, the ugly ghost of Charleston’s past looms over the city as if it were an eerie, creepy fog hovering over the city like buzzards waiting to scrape the flesh from slowly dying carcasses of a people who time has al-most forgotten.

I only viewed Charleston through a crack, a tiny portal shaped by nine dead in a shooting at a Black church. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church Charleston, S.C., for me will forever be in the same sentence with Denmark Vesey (1767-1822),, an African-American who fought to liberate his people from slavery, and planned an abortive slave insurrection. Denmark Vesey, sometime in 1818 joined the city’s new African Methodist Episcopal congregation, then the center of Charleston’s enslaved community.

After careful examination of the historical record, the judgment of Sterling Stuckey remains valid: “Vesey’s example must be regarded as one of the most courageous ever to threaten the racist foundations of America…. He stands today, as he stood yesterday … as an awesome projection of the possibilities for militant action on the part of a people who have for centuries been made to bow down in fear.” http://biography.yourdictionary.com/denmark-vesey

While I was there in Charleston, I could somehow feel the ghostly presence of an abysmal haunting past and there was something still lurking in the shadows of this ethereal place.

Are ghosts factual? The word ghost appears over 100 times in the New American Standard Version of the Bible. In the over 100 appearances, the word at no time was used to represent a ghostly spirit of somebody who had entered the enteral resting place no longer to return. The two ways it is used are as a title, “the Holy Ghost,” the third person of the Godhead or Trinity and in the expression “to give up the ghost,” denoting “to die.”

Should we be fearful of ghosts?

We do not have to be scared of Satan and his imitations, living or dead, when we give our hearts to Jesus. 1 John 4:1,4, NKJV says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God. . . You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

James 4:7-8, NKJV reassure us that if we; “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

There is no trickery, lies or deceit with God. His Word says that when we are true to Jesus, and obey Him by conviction, there is no need to fear the devil or his empts or any evil thing that comes in the form of ghost or somebody’s debilitating hatred.

“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” Luke 10:19, NKJV

38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor an-gels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Romans 8:31 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost!”

GOD LEFT US A COMFORTER, THE HOLY GHOST!

About Carma Henry 24481 Articles
Carma Lynn Henry Westside Gazette Newspaper 545 N.W. 7th Terrace, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33311 Office: (954) 525-1489 Fax: (954) 525-1861

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