Transcription of the Tape: “Talking Bull,” recorded July, 2002.
Interviewer: Dr. David Tasker.
Story Teller: Pr. Jim Manele.
Pr. Manele. The story comes from the Kwaibaita area.
Dr. Tasker: How do you spell that?
Pr. Manele: The letter is spelled KWAIBAITA.
Dr. Tasker: Is it a coastal area or is it inland?
Pr. Manele. Kwaibaita is inland. Kwaibaita in fact means “big river.”
This is in Malaita. It’s near our hospital, Atoifi, in the eastern part of
Malaita [
Dr. Tasker: How did that happen?
Pr. Manele: This was back in 1990.
Just a bit of a background for you to understand why things happened the way
they did. Every time our nurses and medical workers (from
Dr. Tasker: And he’s the paramount chief?
Pr. Manele. Yes.
Pr. Tasker: How many people do you think there are in the area?
Pr. Manele. About a thousand people. The boundary is between Kwaio and Kwarai area. It’s quite a populated area because a lot of people live on the river valley.
The paramount chief must have had a guilty conscious for sometimes stopping them from accepting the Adventist message, only their medicines. And for some time he battled with it. Some time in September of that year, 1990, he experienced something that happened which drastically changed his life.
One Sabbath morning he decided, with his wife and child, to visit his garden a little distance away from the village. To get there, you have to go through a cow padlock, and there were some goats with the cows in the padlock, probably about ten or so. So they had to go through this cow padlock to get to the other side where the garden is. When they entered through the fence and the cows saw them, something strange happened. All the cows stood up in a straight line facing them, like soldiers on parade. They stood in a very straight line. As the chief approached these cows and bulls, he though they would move away to let him pass through. But they stood still and did not run away. They stood there and looked at the chief, the wife and the child who were close behind. The chief made his way from the left hand side of this line of cows and bulls. Right at the end of the line was the bull, big and fat. The chief approached the bull but it didn’t move. Instead it suddenly spoke in the Kwaibaita language. It said; “why did you come to the garden at this time? Don’t you know that today is the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord God?” The chief was shocked and looked around to check if it was a mistake. The voice was coming from the bull and as it was talking, the mouth was moving when it spoke.
The chief, (his name is Timothy,) was able to work out that it was this bull talking to him, nobody else. Even more surprising, the bull called his name, it said; “Timothy!” Then it called again; “Timothy, I am speaking to you; Timothy!” Timothy was brought to attention. He stood there shaking because he had never seen an animal talking before. The wife and the child also heard the bull talking and the chief said; there must be a devil in you talking like that, and the bull responded by saying: “I am not the devil. I’m the voice of Jesus talking to you.”
Timothy gave the bull his attention, opened his ears and he was looking very, very curious. The bull said; “Today is the Sabbath of God. Don’t you know that God gave you six days to work and the seventh is the Sabbath? Don’t you know that? You have been a pastor and yet you don’t know these things? How blind can you be? God gave you six days to work; the seventh day is the Sabbath. You must not work today in your garden today. Go home and read Jer 1:5. After you have read it, share it with your people and look for the SDA pastor, whose name is Pr. Bata and when you find the SDA pastor, talk to him and he will further explain things to you.” Then the bull stopped talking.
This man was really horrified, and fell down and cried. He cried because this was a rebuke to him. It challenged him to because he was the pastor of his people and he was teaching them the wrong things. So he dropped down to the ground and cried for a while, and then stood up and told his wife and the child that they would not go any further into the garden now. “We must go back and rest. We must not work.” So they returned to the village and he called the whole village together and told everything that happened that day, and he told them, “today we must not do any work. We must start to rest because the bull spoke to me. It was the voice of Jesus that spoke to me through the bull.” So that day, they did not do any work. They stayed in the village until evening.
Early on Sunday morning he took a walk through the bush, through the mountains and arrived at Atoifi hospital; a journey of about four hours. When he arrived at the hospital, he introduced himself; “I am the chief of Kwaibaita, my name is Timothy and I am looking for Pr. Bata.”
“Who told you about Pr. Bata?”
“I have a story to tell. I have a story to tell Pr. Bata.” So he was taken to Maikoia village where he met up with Pr. Baita. There he told Pr. Baita his story, and everything that the bull said. He told him “I have already kept the Sabbath,” so Pr. Bata studied the Bible with Timothy for three months. He was baptized in his village and many people came around to witness his baptism. He made an appeal and made a public confession and appealed for those who wanted to join him to stand on one side and those who wished to remain as they were on the other side. The majority of the people joined him so later they put up a little church and I was invited to dedicate the church so I went and dedicated the church.
Timothy took me to the padlock and showed me the bull and I saw it for myself. He asked me what should we do with this bull? I advised them to leave the bull and not to kill it, for God had used this bull in a miraculous way.
Today, there is a very big church in a nearby village, not in the chief’s village but another village. The building was funded and built by some Australians and that church is now the centre of our work in that area.