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Sunday, February 1, 2009

God and Ancient China

Today service was simply awesome!!! Pastor Kong continue to preach on God and Ancient China Part 2. I've gotta say that God has been involve in our Chinese Culture even way back 2500 BC.... that's way beyond any other religion even exist.... Being a Chinese who quite interested in Chinese History, I am simply blown away by today's message. I bet Pastor Kong must done so much research to preach this message this 2 weeks. Let me give you a short History Lesson Now....

Way back 2500BC, even before any other Religion's being establish, China worship a common God whom they common know and called as, 上帝!! And later in the "Zhou Dynasty", it was change to 上天... And in many of Ancient Chinese poems "文言文" and song written by scholar and emperor shows how this 上帝 or 上天 was accurately describing the same Yahwah God we worship in the bible.

Earliest history being recorded was the "Shang Dynasty" which is around the same period as bible time in Exodus.... Some significance events recorded in the early bible are events like the creation, Noah's Ark and the tower of Babel. If all these event in the bible were significant enough and were true happening, then people in China during then would remember clearly and recorded into their history as well... This is where Chinese character are form!! Ancient Chinese character were unique as it was not form by any lettering but by picture which is a form of recording history. So some of the bible events were recorded in the Chinese Character. A few exmple here.

Example 1

(Boat) 船 = 舟＋八＋口

A record of Noah's Ark. 船 (boat) was a formation of a boat with a family of eight (八口人). Bible recorded that Noah and his family were a total of eight people who only got into the boat. Wow

Example 2:

（forbidden) 禁　＝木＋木＋示

A record of Adam and Eve fall in Genesis. 禁 (forbidden) was a formation of 2 trees symbolises the tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and 示 is revelation symbolises Adam and eve falls after eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

Example 3:

(Righteousness) 义

A record of Jesus death. 义in simplified Chinese is a formation of the cross and the dot symbolize blood shed. It's a picture of how Jesus shed his blood on the cross to bring righteousness to all mankind.

Isn't that amazing... how God has been revealing himself subtlety to whole of the Chinese humanity and how often I hear from people that Jesus is an "ang mo" God for the westerners only. Hello!!! God revealed to the Chinese even way back 2500 BC.

Of course, Pastor also share with us that one of the China greatest Emperor, Kang Xi's (康熙) was also a Christian and a believer. That's unbelievable but was indeed proven from many of his writing and song. The name of God was often being exalted in his writing. It was introduce to me the very first time that Christianity was very widely spread during then. Even the Emperor Kang Xi gave an instruction to missionaries to preach and convert.

The question then arises therefore, if the ancient Chinese worshiped God, why did they depart from that practice and admit a pantheon of Buddhist and Taoist deities in the course of their long history?? Crisis hit China because of religious believer in the Roman Catholic.... It's was also know widely in History as the “Rites Controversy”.... Religious people started to persecute China for paying respect to their ancestors, despising their culture and denying their faith, the pope deny all the efforts of the Jesuits who had an intellectually brilliant and profound impact on China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Quoted from this website: http://www.ttf.org/index/journal/detail/faith-in-the-creator/

The “Rites Controversy” in the Catholic Church was so destructive that it caused the Chinese emperor himself to shut down all Christian activities in China in disgust. Catholics who had been granted total freedom to teach and convert in 1691 were by 1722 being hounded out of China. At issue was the question whether Chinese traditional veneration of ancestors was a form of “worship,” or was merely an affirmation of respect for them. Many have speculated how different China’s modern history might have been if China’s greatest emperor, Kang Xi, had been won over to the Christian faith instead of being driven to exasperation by Vatican pettiness.

Sad, but I realised that Christian should never be overly religious over matters that does not affect our spirituality.... Recently, I have met Christian(stranger actually) who criticise openly on my dressing and say that my dressing will lead to lustful temptation to all the brother out there.. haha.. this is classic men!! I think God is allowing me to meet people like this to assure me that there are really people like that out there who think that wearing conservatively is a form of Holiness.... Anyway, I am really encourage by the message and I pray that my parent will soon get save because He is the God for everybody!!!

- Life story of Ruxin.... ;