Thursday, February 1st | Back to Eden

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T-O-D-A-Y. A healthier, happier you is just a click away. Welcome back, everyone. Today is Thursday, February the 1st. I'm Ryan Hill.

John Galantis. And you're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abidjan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028, or you can email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com.

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We're going to leave some links in the description so you can do just that. Well, today is a very special day. We have a very special episode planned for you today. Obviously, today is February 1st.

Start of Black History Month, and we've got a lot of topics to cover, but we want to take a second today and talk about a very special piece of local history that people may not be aware of, and we've got a special guest with us today. Until really recently, I wasn't aware of it. I know. Ken Spellman is here with us. Yeah. Welcome, Mr. Spellman. We're glad that you're on the show today. Thank you. Absolutely. We're here in the Clearview Today studio as well with Dr. Abaddon Shah, who is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism and local history buff. So, people don't really know this. You are really interested in not only American history, but also local history, the history of our town. That's right.

That's right. We came here back in 1998. I came as a youth pastor, and then in 1999, I moved here as the pastor of this church. And once we knew for sure that this was the place that God was calling us to be, then it was pretty much done deal. It was no longer back home or in my old church.

I said, stop saying that. This is my home. This is my church. This is where our family is going to grow up. This is where I want my kids to claim as their hometown, not, well, once, you know, Daddy was here and he was from there.

I said, no. And then came the next step, which is get to know the people, get to know the history, good, bad, and ugly, because it's all there. That's right. And then to really claim that as your history, even though I'm not from around here.

I mean, you can take one look at me and say this guy stands unaffiliated with any of this. But if you're going to claim this place, you have to claim the history as well. That's right. That's right.

And Mr. Spellman, I guess you're sort of echoing that as well. Of course. Of course. I'm not from here, but I fell in love with the place. I fell in love with the people. So when I came, I came with an open mind to receive it the way I heard mostly bad things. Yeah.

About Henderson. But I want to go where the water is moving. Amen. I'm glad to hear you say that because that's our heart here on the Clearview Today Show as well. And we do hear that kind of stuff.

And yet at the same time, we see God moving. And I think, Dr. Shaw, that's kind of what led you to, I think, meeting Mr. Spellman at the end of the day. Do you want to talk about how that happened?

Yeah. I'll share it briefly because I want to hear more from my good friend here. It was back in the summer of 2023 where I'm a member of the chamber. I'm on the board. And we got an email saying, hey, there's going to be a ribbon cutting at Out of Eden. And I had heard about something happening over there over the past couple of years and then had seen a sign on I-85. And I said, I really want to be there.

And look at my calendar. I was going to be out, out of town. And I said, I cannot believe that. I said, that's all right.

I have to make some time, go out there. And then back in October, I got a random email. It was not supposed to come to me. It was a mistake. It was a mistake. It was supposed to be a few people who were going to be part of this meeting about a production on the grounds of Out of Eden and something about Mr. Ken Spellman and all that. I said, oh, man. And then I looked down and saw how it came to me.

I was like, oh, this was a mistake. So I called up the chamber president and I said, look, I'm not on that guest list, but I would really like to be on that guest list. I want to show up. And I talked to John. Remember that day we were leaving? I said, look, I've asked Miss Sandra from the chamber if she could get us on the guest list because this is going to be, I feel something is happening here.

I just don't know what it is, but we need to be there. It was like we got permission to be there, but it still felt like we were crashing the party. It was kind of cool.

Yeah. When we walked in there, we were like, hmm. People are looking at us like, what are y'all doing here? Well, it was funny because you kind of get that high school rebellion, like, yeah, I'm rebelling, but it's like we have full permission. It's okay.

Just walk with confidence. Everybody's fine with us being there, but I felt cool walking in like I wasn't supposed to be there. Well, later I learned behind the scenes, Miss Sandra called Mr. Spellman and he's like, yeah, of course, we'll expand the list and include him on the guest list and John as well. And then once I sat down in that pavilion and you talk about that and I began to hear and I began to see the heart of Mr. Terrence and Michael Amell, who's in the studio, we'll get you on the show one of these days soon. And then when Ken got up to speak, I could sense the Holy Spirit moving and immediately I was hooked.

And then we spend the next hour and a half going around the property and seeing the history, the history of the people who owned that land and the history of the people who worked on that land as slaves and how all that came together. I mean, I was enraptured. Same. Same.

And I know this is what everyone's waiting for. Can you tell us the history of Back to Eden? How did you, so you were born in Norfolk and came here to Henderson and purchased this property and made this amazing discovery. Do you want to just start from the beginning and just tell us the story? Well, I did some time and you'll probably find out a little bit about that.

I did some time in prison and I won't talk about who was right or wrong, but I was right. Spoiler alert. I remember we were chatting and talking after our visit. He's like, back in that day, I didn't say a word. It was supposed to be quiet.

He said, today I would be singing. Let me tell you who's up to this and it's not me. That's right.

That's right. But I designed a program, we'll talk about that a little later. And I would teach you guys basic principles of life, some things that they had not had an opportunity to get from their childhood, from their teen years. And I had a passion for working with men in prison and their families. And I would encourage them to get the GED, to get education, to take vocational classes. And then I would teach them how to start their own businesses from prison and some of their families as well. So we started 17 businesses while I was in prison for people's families. And they would always ask, because I did 19 years, but some of the guys did two years, three years.

They would always ask, well, what are you going to do when you get out coach? And, you know, I said, well, I started 27 businesses prior to prison. So there's a lot that I can do, but I said, basically, I just want a piece of land. I want some chickens. I want fresh eggs. I want a pond.

A simple life. Yeah. That's it. And I want to build a tree house for my grandbabies, I said, and if I can have that the way the community can come in and enjoy the acre of land, I ask God for an acre, you know, I can work magic with that guy. And so I said, that's, that's all I want. So as we were looking for land, uh, moving from, from, uh, Raleigh, when I got out, we, we walked into this, this place on this property and the house was dated.

So my wife was no from the beginning. And I saw all these rundown sheds and I said, well, honey, I want to buy this place. This is the place I want, I said, because it's an acre and a half. And I said, it's got some sheds so I can store my equipment for my construction company.

And I had only been out of prison less than a year. And she said, well, you don't have any equipment. I said, well, I'll have some, you know, so that's coming. And she said, well, the house is dated. I can't live here. And I told her, I said, I'll remodel the house in three weeks. What year was this?

This was in 2000. Okay. Okay.

I said, I will remodel. You mean 2020? 2020. Right. You said 2000.

I said 2000. That's when I went in. So that's kind of stuck. I got you.

When you do 19 years in prison, you know, the day you went in, you never forget it. I got you. Yeah. So it was 2020. So this conversation happened in 2020, fairly recently. Yes. Yes. 2020. And, uh, as we were walking off the land, she said, well, if you can remodel the whole house in, uh, three weeks, we got a deal.

She didn't know who she was talking to this year. At that time. That was one of those moments to where, uh, I was trusting God and I didn't know how I was going to do it. I kind of just stuck my foot in my mouth, but in two and a half weeks I had the house remodeled. Wow.

Two people. That's amazing. Uh, but as I was walking off the land, I looked back and I said, this is Eden. This is going to be going to be my back to Eden. I want to go back to the beginning where I can live off the land. I want to be able to eat off the land. I want the water on the land.

I want to be just okay right here. And that's all I saw. So I went to a local printer, quick Brent, I'll shoot a little ad thing out for them. And I got a sign made back to Eden and I put it on the property and my wife got a little upset again.

You can't do that. You know, we don't own it, but the sign is still there today, three weeks, three years later. Same sign. And we, we've had the opportunity to come out and visit your place is gorgeous. It's beautiful. Um, you know, the, the, and it's evident the work that you've put in, but the, one of the things that struck me the most when we went out there is just the history of, of the place. Now, did you know when you were looking at, at this piece of land, the history behind it? I had no idea.

I had no idea. It was just a piece of land. It was just a piece of land and some old barns that were falling down and I saw that I could, you know, do some work on the barns and plant a garden. And it was just simple, just simple thought, uh, of, of this piece of land. Had no idea of, uh, who was on the land, who lived on the land. Uh, I just knew that God had blessed me with something special. Uh, and, and the night before we closed, the real estate agent called me and she said, Ken, she said, uh, that vacant plot next to it is an acre and that's going with the land.

So I thought I was buying an acre and a half and it ended up being two and a half acres. That was all still blessing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Amen.

And he turned something very simple into something sort of complex for his glory because the discovery that you made, how did you make the discovery that you made? Okay. Uh, I could see, uh, to the right of my property standing from a side of White Point road, there was a, uh, a large piece of land over there and it was just trees and, and I didn't know it was a house, uh, behind the trees because you couldn't see the house from side of White Point road. And a lot of locals have not seen that house until recently. Right. Right. And they didn't know there was a house back there.

Exactly. It was all woods. It was all woods. Well, the trees had grown down, the pine trees and the crepe meadows were huge.

They had grown down to the ground so I could, I could stand in my kitchen window and look towards the house and see lights at night, but I had no idea that it was a house. Uh, and, uh, I, I, I built a tree house, I cut some nature trails, I dug a pond and I had maxed out that two and a half acres and I was telling my wife, we want some more land. I went to look at some land in Lewisburg and I said, but I don't want it over there. I said, I want it close by and had no idea that this property, uh, within the next year would, uh, come available. And uh, the people that owned the 14 and a half acres next to it, uh, they called me over and then I found out it was a house over there and they should just walk down the path and turn left.

And, and, uh, Jerry Wertham, uh, was 74 years old and he was standing there and he said, my mother lives in this house, she's 97 and we're taking her with us, uh, to Arizona and then to, uh, Alabama to, to, to live with us and we're going to sell this property. He said, uh, tomorrow we're meeting with a developer and an agent and we're going to sign a contract. He said, but I see what you've done with, with my uncle's property. He said, we would love for you to have the property. He said, if it's any way, you know, we'd love for you to have it. Our family cemetery is on the property and I think it's a slave buried somewhere in the back. And I said, well, if you find that grave, I'll buy the property. So he looked, he looked for six hours, didn't find it.

Uh, but when I told him I wanted to buy the property and I asked him the price, um, and I said, yeah, I'll buy it. My wife, I could see her in my parenthesis. She gave me that look again, and I always use the phrase, she always looks at me like I got 10 heads.

She's like, one, two, three, four, here we go again, but we were able to close on it. And shortly after I had my guys, uh, connecting the nature trails that I had, uh, cut in for my grandbabies. Uh, they were connecting, we're doing trails on the other side behind this huge house that I had no idea was a plantation house. I didn't know when it was built. I didn't know what the sheds were that were on that side. They were just old, kind of creepy looking, uh, but I said more sheds for equipment. And uh, uh, as, as, uh, the guys were cutting the trails, they discovered rocks just like, uh, Jerry told me they discovered six and he said one, so I said six and then I had them start clearing out. And we discovered 40 to 50 slave graves and that struck my curiosity to, you know, what was going on here, what was this place all about, uh, who was here. And I started asking questions, asking the family questions, the people that I did know, they knew very little or they were sharing very little. And uh, so I contacted dispatch, they came out, looked at it, the historic society, uh, advanced county historic society came out and they validated that these were slave graves.

The huts, the sheds were slave quarters, uh, and it was just from there, it's been snowballing right there in your backyard, right there in my backyard. And uh, ABC 11 came out and did some reports and BET picked it up and uh, Roland's reviews on youtube picked it up and uh, and people were calling from all over the world actually about this property and this discovery. Wow.

That's insane. And I think it speaks a lot to your character and Dr. Shaw, I think you can speak to this too. Whereas a lot of people may have seen that and discovered it and been like, oh wow, that's quite interesting. And then let that be what it is. But that desire to keep digging and to say, who are these people? How does this, how does all of this fit in that inquisitive nature? Um, I think it's, it's sort of rare these days. Right. And especially where we are in our world today, it's like the history doesn't matter.

And to me it does matter. And so when we were on the property for that hour and a half just driving around and I saw Mr. Kent's passion about the place and the history about the plantation home and he walks through that home and he's explained to me, this is what it is and this is original and this is what the property looked like. I was like, that man is a man after my own heart because that's what I love. And he's into history.

And then we walked around the house and then came back and he showed me the slave quarters and it's a little museum that he has developed there with all the things found on the property and all that. And I was like, wow, because today people don't value those things. They feel like, ah, let's just get rid of that as bad history. Of course you will see the bad parts of history, but can you not learn from it? Can we not have principles that we can learn from and teach our next generation? And so I was drawn not only to the place, but also to him and his heart.

And that's why from the get-go it was like, you let us know what you need and we'll help you. I mean that truly is the heart because I can see where, I mean, if you look around today, you see where bad history brings out bitterness. Bad history brings out resentment or a need to rewrite and recast history in a more favorable light. But you don't feel that way. I mean, you feel like history is, like Dr. Shus said, to be learned from and to be valued for what it is.

Yes, yes I do. And I didn't see the people that own the property as bad people that were doing bad things. I saw it from the beginning, from the first day I discovered it. I saw it from the standpoint of, this is what we do today. If everybody's into driving Mustangs, people just buy Mustangs.

You know, if everybody's into a certain phone, everybody wants that phone. So people had servants to serve them and to help them progress in life. And that's the way I saw it. These were not, these were people that were doing what was in style at that time. Of course, some people abused their Mustangs and they drive too fast and get tickets. Of course, some people abused the fact that they got servants and they do certain things, but that's not everybody.

That's not the case with everybody. So I never had any bitterness or resentment because I wanted to learn as well. I wanted to grasp the moment from both sides of the spectrum. I wanted to see how they felt and how the slaves felt or the servants, I consider them servants at the time, because most of the history I found out as I did research how to genealogist to find out which, who were the slaves. I knew who the family members were because their names are on the tombstones, birth dates and the death dates are on the tombstones. But the slaves only had rocks that identified them. So that, you know, developed a passion in me to find out, well, who actually walked on this property?

Who were these people that built these huts and called them homes? And I saw what draw me really to Clearview, because a lot of people come. They say, we want to bring our people.

We want to find out what's going on, you know, and they're doing it for whatever reasons. But when Dr. Sean John came and I was exhausted. I had been touring and preparing for some things. And when they came, I observed the interest level with the people that are touring.

I give everybody the same tour. Some people I don't go as in depth with. But when I saw their passion for knowing, and the first thing that got me was I didn't know which guy was the pastor. That tells me a lot about the pastor, you know, and that's, you know, young, good looking dude. Yeah. That's all it is.

Yeah. So, you know, I still didn't know until even though I heard them say Dr. Sean, I heard them, you know, I didn't know until we were in the dedication room. And finally, John kind of let the cat out of the bag.

He said, well, whatever the doctor wants to do, whatever, you know, pastor wants to do. But before that, I mean, they were like, two buddies just walking around. And that kind of touched my heart that they had that kind of relationship.

And there was no hierarchy. There was no, they were like two brothers from a church. And I said, well, they got to be junior pastors, it's got to be somebody over these two guys. They're just walking around and with no time restraints and oh, as long as you want to take, we'll tour. And I said, okay, somebody's got to be telling these guys what to do. But I loved it. Yeah. Well, Dr. Sean has told me once that we're leaders among equals, like I'm driving the bus as the pastor, but the bus driver still, his life is just as important as everybody else's life.

And everybody else's life is as important in the bus as the bus drivers. You know, Dr. Sean, I know that that was a really great trip for us. How did it impact, and maybe Mr. Spone, you can answer to, your spiritual lives, your Christian faith, seeing all that history come to life right before your face? I mentioned this in one of the interviews that we had previously is I saw the story of redemption. I saw redemption is when God sends Jesus, his son to rescue us because we are sinners, hell bound. He came to rescue us, give us a new beginning.

I saw that in Mr. Ken's life, and then I saw it at Back to Eden. So that idea of redemption just gripped my soul. And I don't know, when I came back, I mean, you saw the passion I had, and I told Nicole, my wife, I said, you have got to see this.

Now, she's just as much passionate about the place as I was, and our team now is just as much passionate because I think, in some ways, they also saw that story of redemption, how your life was, and maybe we can talk about that and what all that you had to endure to get to this point. And another thing, I pulled up this passage here that really struck me, was James chapter 4, verse 6, God says, the Bible says, but he gives more grace. Therefore, he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. I saw humility in you, and I said, God's grace is upon this person, upon his family, upon this land, and upon the dream that I can see here. I love it. God's grace. That's right.

Yeah. For you, Mr. Spelman, in this process, how has your spiritual life been impacted, uncovering all this history and restoring the house and discovering the graves of the different slaves? How has your spiritual life been impacted? Well, when I was in prison for 19 years, I didn't feel as though I was being punished. I felt as though it was a reward to me to be chosen to go into a place that nobody wanted to go.

Wow. That's very rare. People will feel like that maybe after, but going in, that's very, very rare. Well, it took about a year of me being kind of upset with God. Fair enough. You know, asking, you know, why me? Why am I here? Right. I didn't do what they said I did, and they gave me all this time.

Am I going to have to do all this time? So I filed an appeal. At the same time, I'm trusting God to open the gate any time, and so I had to get really rooted and grounded in what God was doing more so than where I was and what I was doing. And I realized then, and I teach it in my program, that it's not the position of my body. It's the position of my heart. My heart has to stay right regardless of where I am, and this is when I started observing some of the people I was around that didn't have come from a two-parent household. They had never paid a light bill.

They never had a car payment, and they had not been taught, you know, why I should look people in the eye when I talk to them, why I should do certain things. So I developed a passion for helping those men and their families, and then I realized why God allowed this to happen, because I could have bonded out the first day, and I said, no, I didn't do it. I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to sit right here. You're going to let me out in two days. Then I said, you're going to let me out in two weeks, and I said, well, maybe you'll let me out in two years. Then after a while, I said, okay, God, back in your hands, I'll just sit right here until you say so. And I saw that I had been chosen to be in a place that I could assist some other people in their lives being better, and I knew that at that time, I had to give my life back to Christ all over again in a different way. So I had to die again to what I thought and what I was thinking and what I was feeling, and that set a precedence in my spiritual life that I was a sacrifice. That I was a vessel that God was pouring into for me to pour into other people, and I may as well just not be so rigid, because if I fall off the table and break, and if my heart is soft, then he can put me back together again, and he can shape and mold me into something better.

But if I'm brittle, then I'm going to scatter all over the place, and it'll be hard to pick up the pieces, because they'll be under the table. But spiritually, it did a lot for me, and as I worked with these men, and I worked with them on public speaking, oral communication, how to start a business, but God led me to write a session entitled Spiritual Awareness, and that was for those of us that thought we were there, but we weren't really aware of what God was doing. We were aware of what we wanted God to do for us and where we thought we were, but according to the word, we had to be what God has designed us to be, and that did a lot in my first two years, and I just kept that, and it was school.

I was learning, but I was also teaching, and then when I discovered the place, the slave cemetery and all these things, it was chapter two of me humbling myself and allowing God to use me in a place that I really didn't choose to be, really didn't want to be, but he had already equipped me for what I needed to be in that place, so I decided to just allow him to pour into me again so that I could pour into others. That's awesome. We've done so many countless shows on this platform about blooming where you're planted, and it's really cool how God has brought you into our lives so we can see that kind of come to life right in front of our eyes.

It's one thing to talk about it, but then to see it in a person that you're making a relationship with is very encouraging. Yes. Absolutely. So exciting. We want to continue this conversation. This is all the time we have for today's episode. We're going to continue to learn more about you, learn more about your life. Thank you so much for being on the episode today. Listeners, I hope you guys learned something today about blooming where God has planted you, and trusting God in the process.

Sometimes you might not see the next step, but trust God and step out in obedience. If you guys enjoyed today's episode, write in and let us know at 252-582-5028, or you can visit us online at clearyveetodayshow.com. Don't forget, you can partner with us financially on that same website. Scroll to the bottom, click that donate button, and let us know what's coming from our Cleary Today Show family. I also want to remind you to visit mightymuscadine.com, check out their line of products, and use that promo code today. That's T-O-D-A-Y on checkout. That's going to give you a discount on your products, as well as a portion of those proceeds coming right back here to the Cleary Today Show. We love you guys. We'll see you next time on Cleary Today. We'll see you next time.