Why He Looked To Nature When It Was Time To Rebel

A solar eclipse lit up the Virginia sky. Nat Turner took it as the ultimate sign from God to rebel, and the natural world helped carry him through to liberation.

Why He Looked To Nature When It Was Time To Rebel
Via Wikmedia Commons

Nat Turner was a fiercely spiritual man. His belief in God carried him through some of his darkest hours, but this deeply divine understanding of nature also helped Turner when he was in the trenches plotting against the oppressors.

Turner knew that Bible scriptures weren’t the sole source of spiritual guidance and recognized that God communicated with him through the nature around him.

He looked to the stars as “the lights of the Saviour’s hands, stretched forth from east to west.”

When a solar eclipse took to Southampton, Virginia’s sky, months before his famous rebellion, Turner believed it to be a sign from source to begin recruiting comrades. God told Turner to start the revolt in August when the sun turned a greenish hue.

Turner proves that a love for God can co-exist with our ancestral ways of honoring the world around us. We should see nature, images, numbers, and more as signs of divine timing and guidance.

Nature is a powerful reflection of God and our spirits. We can tap into the stars and skies as signs at any point of the journey, but especially in liberation-seeking. Like Turner, we must listen to the spiritual downloads we receive and move accordingly.


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