In Stooping Oak

Near Stooping Oak, Tenn., on the Cumberland Plateau, newshawks last month found a tall, gaunt, 45-year-old named Jackson Whitlow who was daily growing gaunter from a fast to which he said the Lord had called him early in March. His face blotched from his "stomach trouble," Jackson Whitlow daily hoed the vegetable patch behind his cabin, seemed to have no plans beyond continuing his fast, accepting at its end some earthly bounty which the Lord had in mind for him.

Telling how he had left the Separate Baptists to deal directly with God. Jackson Whitlow said: "I prayed and said I would do whatever the Lord told me. He told me to sell my pigs and goods and give the money to the poor, and I did. Then He called on me to fast, but He didn't say why. The day after I started in, I took a little potato soup without any grease. That learned me my lesson. I nearly died, it made me so sick. That was just the Lord punishing me for my disobedience. . . . I started this fast at the call of the Lord, and I'll not stop until He tells me to."

Jackson Whitlow took to his bed. Last week, when he passed his 50th day of fasting (but drinking water), his 137 Ibs. had wasted to 97, his intestines were bleeding and two doctors who vainly urged him to eat predicted he would die anyway. Someone wrote him a postcard:

"Jackson, eat. You have suffered long enough.

"GOD."

Snorted he: "They can't fool me that way. I know God doesn't use the mails."

The "God" of Harlem's Negroes,

Father Divine,* telegraphed Jackson Whitlow a command to cease his fast. The Tennessean said he had not heard of the black "God."

On the 52nd day of his fast,+ Jackson Whitlow, after hearing what he said was the Devil's voice "temptin' me on every hand," thought he heard God telling him to "take a little wine for thy stomach's sake." His wife scurried out for elderberry wine, fed him a few spoonfuls. A second message from the Lord recommended orange juice. Finally, said Jackson Whitlow, the Lord prescribed squirrel soup and beef tea, which his doctor approved and supplemented with whey and more orange juice. Said Jackson Whitlow: "The Lord's divine purpose has not been revealed to me yet, but it will be before long. I'm mighty happy it's all over."

-In Manhattan last week, the police case against Father Divine, who with two followers is charged with the assault of a New Jersey contractor named Harry Green (TIME. May 3), was stalled because Green had not yet recovered from the wounds he received in ''God's Kingdom No. 1." -In 1916 an optometrist of Youngstown, Ohio named Dr. Harman G. Huffman fasted 59 days to cure his heart trouble, died of starvation. In 1920 Mayor Terence MacSwiney of Cork lasted 74 days before dying of starvation as a political gesture.

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